Shadows

CHAPTER 11

THERE WAS NO REASON FOR OUR HOUSE NOT TO be quiet on a weekday evening but I didn’t like it. I was sure it was the wrong kind of quiet. Val’s last student should have just left. Mom should have just got home—and her car was in the driveway. Ran was maybe home or maybe not yet. But it was always quiet when I came home after school. I only felt so funny because the armydar was scrambling my brains. Or Takahiro was scrambling my . . . whatever.

The gruuaa mobbed me the moment I slid out of the car. Me and Takahiro, but especially me. Something wrong. Something awfully, horribly wrong. Val. Of course. It had to be Val: Val who had brought them here, or who had brought him here. And there still weren’t as many gruuaa as there had been last night, when Val sent most of them with Takahiro—they’d left us at the shelter, and they weren’t here either.

“Maybe you’d better stay with the car,” I said.

“No can do, white girl,” said Jill. I knew that voice. It meant her f-word was telling her stuff, and she wasn’t going to tell me what. “I’ll just roll the windows down a little for our friends.” It was pretty chilly; the Family would be fine. And I was shivering just because of the weather. Just because of the weather. Takahiro held my hand. I had a cape and a hood of gruuaa, and more of them were winding around my feet like cats: they were so urgent and insistent I was almost tripping over them, although there was nothing there to trip over. I waded down the path and opened the front door—and was promptly knocked into Taks, behind me, by a frantic Mongo. He didn’t behave like this: he did enthusiasm, not panic. Nor was he the least bit interested in the car, and he adored other dogs. Majid, I realized, was with us too, and Mongo was even ignoring a cat the size of a wolverine coming into his house.

Mom was sitting curled up at the far end of the sofa, in the dark. The streetlights were coming on outdoors, the curtains were drawn, but she hadn’t turned any lights on. “Mom?” I said. I turned the overhead light on, and she turned her head toward me. Her face was wet with tears. “Mom?”

“They’ve taken him,” she said. “Val. They came and took him away.” Jill slipped past me and went into the kitchen. I heard the kettle banged down on the stove and the little whoosh of the gas lighting. I went and sat by my mother, and took her hands. Several gruuaa climbed up the front of the sofa and pooled in her lap. Mongo pressed up against my leg from the other side and put his nose against her knee.

“Who?” I said. “Where? Where were they taking him?”

She shook her head, but her voice sounded a little stronger when she answered. “The major who was here yesterday—when you were here,” and she nodded at Takahiro, who was sitting beside her on the floor, also wrapped in gruuaa. “Donnelly. He came back with a warrant. He said that Val is . . .” Her voice broke, and the tears began again.

“Mom,” I said. I hated seeing my mother cry. I’d seen her cry after Dad died—but not like this. She’d been shattered by Dad’s death—but she’d also been angry, and full of a blazing energy, determined to protect Ran and me, and keep our crippled family a family. But now she was crying helplessly, exhaustedly, despairingly. It made me feel five years old, and more scared than I’d ever been in my life.

“The warrant says he’s a magician and a spy,” she said softly. “That they know who he really is, and that he only got into this country by some—some trick. They said they were sorry for me, for having been—” She stopped talking, pulled her hands away from mine and put them over her face. I put my arms around her and she laid her head on my shoulder and wept like a little girl.

Jill arrived with a tray. “Coffee with extra sugar,” she said. “And a ham sandwich. Shocky people should eat.” Mom sat up and was beginning to shake her head. “My mom says,” added Jill, although it was exactly what my own mom would say if it had been happening to someone else. Jill picked up the plate and offered it. It was three against one (four, counting Mongo. Five, counting Majid. Even if they were staring at the sandwich rather than Mom). Mom reluctantly took a half, looked at it, and bit into it doubtfully.

Jill’s mom was right (of course). You could see my mom settling down a little. She got through nearly half of her half sandwich before she laid it down. “We’re going to my sister upstate,” she said in what was almost her normal voice. “They’ve taken my husband, why shouldn’t I want to go to my sister for a while?” Even if she is notorious for pro bono work for people accused of magic, I added silently. “There are a lot of people leaving town till they get this cobey rift shut down thoroughly—and turn the armydar off. They’re starting to call it a rift—there’s a rumor that another cobey opened at the north end of town.” The park—and us—were near the southwest end. So it was a series, and it was getting longer. A lot had happened while we were lying low at the shelter. “Tennel & Zeet is closing, and they’ve canceled school for the rest of the week—Val’s last tutorial didn’t bother to show up—the army has decided they want the sheltered buildings for military use.

“I’ve already called Gwenda—her groundline crashed after about a minute, but she’s expecting us. I was just thinking about what we need to take with us when . . . when it all kind of caught up with me.” She took a deep breath. “Takahiro, you should come with us. We can go past your place on our way out of town for whatever you want to bring with you. I’ll talk to Kay. . . . Electric angels, what is that,” she added, having just caught sight of Majid.

“That’s Majid,” I said. “We—er—there are a few more in Jill’s car.”

“Cats?” said Mom, baffled.

“Well, dogs, actually,” I said. “But the gruuaa all left while we were at the shelter—when they took Val, I guess. And Taks said the animals—our ordinary animals help. There are a few gruuaa here, although most of them must have gone with Val. . . . How are you?” I said to Takahiro.

“I’m okay,” he said. He smiled at me. “Don’t worry.”

Mom, who has Mom Instinct and knows me way too well, was distracted from everything—even Val—by Takahiro’s smile. Taks wasn’t a big smiler, ordinarily, and the situation wasn’t exactly a big-smiley one. She turned to look at me pretty hard. “Hmm,” she said. “Jill, your mom called and wanted to know if I knew where you were—the armydar was interfering with the signal for your pocket phone and she couldn’t get hold of you. I’m sorry, I should have told you at once. She called before . . . before . . .” Mom’s voice wavered briefly. “She sounded pretty upset. We’ve got a groundphone in the kitchen.”

Jill jumped up to phone.

“I’ve been trying to phone Ran, tell him to come home, but I can’t raise him either. I guessed you’d be at the shelter—but even Clare’s groundphone is out. I’d’ve started worrying about you too if you hadn’t come home soon.” She tried to smile. Usually she was a really good smiler. Not tonight.

“Drink your coffee,” I said. “It’ll get cold.”

“Eat your sandwich,” said Takahiro from the floor. “Or the invasion force will get it.” Majid was (mostly) in Taks’ lap but his eyes were clearly trained on the sandwich on the coffee table.

There was a muffled yell from the kitchen. “What?”

We all turned toward her, but werewolf reflexes are faster even than Majid’s and Takahiro had the plate over his own head before Majid finished his pounce. Majid disappeared. I hoped this wasn’t the end of a beautiful friendship. Majid, foiled, tended to be cranky.

Jill reappeared at the kitchen door. “They took Arnie. They took Arnie.”

“They—?” I said.

“Major Blow-it-out-your-ass-and-set-fire-to-it,” she said violently. “Donnelly. The same bugsucker who took Val.”

“I don’t understand,” said Mom. Neither did I. Arnie sold drain cleaner and soldering irons and barbecues and birdseed. I could see why they took Val—they were wrong, and I wanted to solder their asses to a barbecue, but I could see how their ugly minds were working. But Arnie?

“They say his mother and grandmother were magicians, and he didn’t have his genes chopped off or whatever it is they do because his grandmom figured how to fake it and then his mom did it for him too.”

Mom and I carefully didn’t look at each other, but Jill was staring at the wall. “And they can’t arrest her because she died. But he’s still got the genes.”

“They can’t mean to do it now?” said Mom, and I could hear her being appalled. “They’ll—they could kill him.”

“Or turn him into a vegetable,” said Jill even more violently. “Magdag, what do we do? Mom’s saying to come home, we’re leaving town too, that if I don’t get back there fast she’ll pack my suitcase for me. I—I don’t even like Arnie all that much. I mean, he’s okay, and he keeps my brothers from killing each other, but—” And she burst into tears.

I bounced off the sofa and put my arms around the second wildly crying woman in half an hour. I loved Jill as much as I loved my own mom. And my hatred for Major Blow-it-out-your-ass was getting kind of out of control. “What do we do?” Jill wept into my shoulder. “What do we do?”

“We go after them,” I said suddenly. “I’m sure the gruuaa will show us where.”

“Good,” said Takahiro, and got to his feet. “I’m coming too.”

I looked at him over Jill’s bent head. I wanted him to come—I wanted really, really badly for him to come. I wanted it even more badly as I began to realize that I meant it, about going after them—going after Val and Arnie. We had no idea where they were, or if they were anywhere near each other. Or who else might be with them.

“Don’t be absurd,” said Mom, but she didn’t sound grown-up commonsensical angry, just bewildered.

“I think absurd is what we’ve got,” said Takahiro. “Being a werewolf is pretty absurd. I’m used to it.”

“I really want you to come,” I said. “But—”

“You might be able to use a hundred-and-sixty-pound wolf,” said Takahiro. “Think about it.”

“Okay,” I said. We smiled at each other. Absurdly.

Jill was still crying, but she raised her head and looked at me. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” I said, but I was thinking: All very well, the gruuaa might be able to get us—as far as we can get, but then what? Major Blow-it would hardly be holding them somewhere that two teenage girls and a hundred-and-sixty-pound timber wolf could break them out of easily.

There was a knock on the door. Jill and I startled so hard our heads banged together. We stood there clutching each other—nobody’s idea of a courageous rescue party. Mom got up, wiped her face hastily with one hand, and answered the door.

It was Casimir.

“I am sorry,” he said, and looked over Mom’s shoulder at Jill and me standing like incompetently reanimated zombies at the end of the front hall, in the little space between the kitchen table and the back of the sofa. His eyes met mine and he smiled, but it was a worried smile, and it didn’t dazzle me the way it had yesterday. Jill and I moved apart, and Takahiro walked around the end of the sofa to stand beside us. Takahiro and Casimir hadn’t met before; Taks didn’t eat a lot of pizza. They looked at each other. I couldn’t see Takahiro’s face but I could see Casimir’s, and I couldn’t read his expression: it might have been shock. Even if he could read somehow that Taks and I had been kissing, I didn’t think that would qualify for shock. I didn’t like the other possibility.

“I can see I am here at a bad time,” he said, and I waited for him to finish, I’ll come back some other day. And next time, call first, I thought. He’d phoned first yesterday. Maybe the armydar was getting to him too.

But instead what he said was, “May I come in?”

Gods’ engines. We didn’t need any more complications. Even beautiful ones with heart-stopping dimples.

Mom, probably still a little confused by recent events, stood aside, and he walked in with that same wild-animal grace I’d noticed yesterday. He didn’t need trees and daylight; he had it walking down a short narrow hall in a boring little house at the dull end of town. Takahiro, who really was a wild animal, walked like a human boy who thought he was too tall.

Casimir stopped in front of me. “My mother is a magician. She did not like it that I wished to study science. I almost did not accept the scholarship to Runyon, even though I had applied for it, because she disliked it so much. And then they almost did not let me come, because my mother is a magician. But at last they did let me come. I have been in this country only a fortnight. I began the job that my mentor found for me at the beginning of the week. On the third day of my new job, a large cobey opened in a town less than ten miles away from the town I now lived and worked in. I had been told during the two days of induction seminars the trust gives to all its students on arrival that we would not see a cobey here, that big ones were so rare it was not worth wasting time telling us what to do if we did, that if there was one anywhere the army cobey units would have contained it before we knew it existed.

“That night, before the cobey was announced, two young women walked into my new workplace, and one of them called the other one mgdaga. The mgdaga is our great heroine; there have been several mgdaga in the history of my country, although the last one was over two hundred years ago.

“On the fourth day,” Casimir continued, his eyes never wavering from my face, “I met the mgdaga again, and saw her perform a magic I have never heard was within the skill of any magician, and my mother knows a great deal about magicians and what they are capable of, and I have learnt much of what she knows merely by being her son. I discovered that the mgdaga was a friend to gruuaa—and that she was stepdaughter to Valadi Crudon, himself a great magician, who had disappeared from his homeland in some mystery seven years ago. My mother taught me that there is no coincidence, only shortsightedness.”

Most of this had washed over Mom, fortunately, but she reacted to Val’s name. She said sharply, “He did not disappear. He uses his own name. He has always used his own name.”

Casimir nodded, although the way he did it was almost a bow. “It is only other magicians who—who revere him. And I imagine the olzcar—bureaucrats put a—a blind on his name, so that it did not stand out. So that if you looked for it, it would look like—like—”

“John Smith,” I said. “And the gruuaa followed him. He believed they—his old masters, his old government—had taken all his magic, but the gruuaa followed him anyway. And hid the fact that not all of his magic was gone. He came here, to Newworld. And the gruuaa—hid him.”

I raised my hand in what had become a habitual gesture, to run my fingers gently across the slightly-disturbed-air that was Hix where she was looped around my neck.

“I believe no human has ever really understood gruuaa,” said Casimir. “But they are very loyal to those they choose.”

There was a little silence. There was no way I was going along with this magdag thing, but we still needed to get on the road after Val—before the non-magdag’s nerve broke.

“He did no magic,” said Mom. “He didn’t even know about the gruuaa—till Maggie told him. But he did no magic.”

Thanks, Mom, I thought, but Casimir was already staring at me.

“But—Takahiro—” Jill said cautiously.

Taks shook his head. “What Val did for me was just from knowing about . . . There wasn’t any magic.”

Casimir looked thoughtfully at Takahiro. “You’re a were,” he said. We all stiffened and I moved involuntarily closer to Taks as if I could protect him. The hamster protecting the mountain lion. But hamsters are more acceptable in small social groups.

“How do you know?” said Takahiro levelly, not trying to deny it.

Casimir ducked his head again. “I’m sorry. But I would like to convince you that I am on your side.”

“On the—the what?” murmured Jill. “The magdag’s side?”

“The mgdaga,” said Casimir. “Yes.”

“Why?” said Mom. “Why do you want to convince us? Why do you think it’s about sides?”

“A mgdaga only appears when there is need of her,” said Casimir calmly, like we were discussing pizza-topping choices. “I know Takahiro is a were because my mother has friends who are weres, and after they have worn their animal selves recently there are traces left on their human selves. You have been your animal self recently, I think.”

So that’s how you managed to move the plate before Majid got it, I thought, as Takahiro said, “Yes.”

Casimir nodded, and then looked around at us again. “Is Valadi not here?” he said. “He will know of the tradition of the Ukovian mgdaga.”

“They’ve taken him away,” said Mom, and she was beginning to sound angry. That was better than desperate and fragile. “The army came—and took him away.”

Casimir looked at me again. “Don’t look at me like that,” I said resentfully.

“Magdag,” breathed Jill.

“Oh stop,” I said. “Okay, Casimir, listen. We’re going after him—Val. And Arnie too. Jill’s mom’s partner. They’ve taken him too, which makes even less sense. He’s born and bred Newworld, he was never a magician in the first place. Do you want to help us?”

“That is why I came here,” he said. “I do not like this—armydar. And I hoped the mgdaga would have something I could do.”

“Stop it,” I said. “That’s my first—er—whatever. No mgdaga gomi—garbage. I know about the gruuaa, but that’s all.”

“You are joking,” said Casimir. “I was in the park with you yesterday. When you folded up a large cobey and tucked it in on itself so tightly it could not come loose while we escaped—and then called the gruuaa to hide us from the army.”

“They never have announced a cobey in the park,” Jill said. “Mags is a good folder.”

My eyes went to my algebra book, lying innocently on the coffee table next to the empty tray. Innocent except for the fact that I’d left it in the car. “I didn’t call the gruuaa,” I said. “They came. Fortunately for us.”

Casimir shrugged, his elaborate, not-Newworld shrug, very like Val’s. “They knew to come,” said Casimir. “They have chosen you. And they knew you needed them. It is very nearly the same thing.”

Mom said, “Maggie?” It was half her Mom voice and half something else. It reminded me a little of Gwenda’s voice.

“I don’t know what happened,” I said, a little too loudly, not wanting to remember the wind that felt like it could rip the earth to shreds—the feeling that the earth was crumbling away underneath me. Or the feeling of folding the torn-out pages of an algebra book, and that awful, falling-into-the-void feeling that every fold I made was creating another endless invisible line that was trying to drag me down into that nothingness. That I was trapped in a web that I was weaving—folding—myself. “Takahiro’s a better folder than I am,” I said. “Enormously better. And it was that critter you gave me, Taks, that I chose to fold—to try to fold.” The fox-wolf-dragon. Like my Hands Folding Paper critter. I was talking to Taks now, as much as anything to make everyone stop staring at me. “I didn’t know what to do, and I remembered you’d said to keep her close.”

Takahiro nodded. “I—I don’t get this, but my mother was”—he glanced at Casimir—“also a magician, sort of. She taught me origami, and she taught me about the kami, and she taught me how—stuff crosses borders sometimes.”

Like being a were, I thought. That’s a great big border crossing.

“There’s been some buggie thing crossing borders anyway,” Jill said. I already knew she’d been picking up more lately—foresight stuff—more than just seeing gruuaa and having premonitions of doom while the armydar crushed us like a boot on a silverbug. And choosing to drive the Mammoth today. She went on: “I don’t know if that’s because of the cobey—the cobeys—with the number of silverbugs we’ve had around for like the past six months—or the armydar, the last couple of days. But—it’s like the borders are getting all messed up. I can almost see—it’s a little like the way the gruuaa twinkle in the corners of your eyes. And”—she was using her you’re-going-to-pay-attention-to-what-I’m-telling-you-and-then-you’re-going-to-pass-your-math-exam voice—“I think the armydar is making it worse.”

“Yes,” said Mom wearily. “It was my mom who taught us that, us four girls, when they were first inventing the armydar. That this is what would happen, sooner or later—that the army’s technology is itself unbalanced and could, and probably would, further unbalance the dangerous situation a big cobey creates.”

There was an ugly little silence.

“Then we’d better go,” I said, still too loudly—or maybe it was the armydar making my voice echo. “Do what we’re going to do.” Whatever that was.

“Maggie—” began Mom.

“Look, I have to,” I said. My cape had scattered, but there was now a single gruuaa trying to wind itself up my unoccupied-by-Mongo leg. I absentmindedly put my hand down to help her. Him. Whatever. It curled around my arm and up onto my shoulder. There were faint furry greetings or—what do I know—gossip-exchanging waggles. I was pretty sure—for no reason—that I had been clambered on by this one before. It wasn’t the one who’d come back to tell Hix what was going on after they’d all left us at the shelter, but it still felt half-familiar. I was going to have to learn more of their names. There was the faintest—the faintest drift of something across my mind—something that wasn’t me. Whilp, it said.

I shivered. “I have to,” I said again. I sounded like I was telling the truth.

Mom stared past Casimir to the wall. She’d rehung Great-grandmom’s quilt. The only light was from the lamp I’d turned on in the living room, and the quilt gleamed in the twilight, green and gold and palest pink and cream and deepest red and purple. I thought suddenly that I was wrong about this being a boring little house: no house could be boring with that quilt hanging on the wall. Many of the squares had plants on them, mostly flowers, a few with just leaves; you could see where Mom’s gardening instincts had come from. But quite a few had animals on them, and the animals were often watching you through some plant or other. I hadn’t thought of it in years, because this particular square hung near the floor, but it had fascinated me when I was shorter: it had a little round, furry or feathery face, peering out through leaves so dark they were almost black. You couldn’t see much of the face—except that it seemed to have three eyes.

I was pretty sure Mom knew I’d go whatever she said, but I’d rather she accepted it. But she was my mom, and I was seventeen years old, and it was kind of a jump from being a reliable dog owner to being a magdag.

We were all silent. We should be making plans, I thought. What plans are there we can make? We didn’t even know where Val or Arnie was. Maybe if I took Great-grandmom’s quilt off the wall again and laid it on the floor it could do the enchanted-flying-carpet trick. I couldn’t remember if flying carpets in fairy tales could go through walls or not. And the armydar might mess up its homing instinct. Doshiyo, I thought. Doshiyo, doshiyo. What do I do?

At last Mom nodded, a stiff little jerk. “Gods’ holy engines,” she said grimly. “I don’t think I can stop you, much as I think I should. And it’ll be easier afterward for both of us if I say okay now. But I also think the usual systems have broken down. That’s the cobey, perhaps—or the armydar. And I find Casimir’s version of events rather compelling.” She smiled at me; it was not a happy smile. “You are so much like your grandmother,” she said. “It doesn’t really express it to call her stubborn. When she made up her mind about something . . . she made granite look soft and pliable.” She paused. “Your grandmother—like your great-grandmother—was also a powerful magician.”

“And you, Mom?” I whispered.

“I’m the sister who gave it up,” she said. “I’m the one of the four of us girls who wanted to be normal. I’m the one who fell in love with someone whose family had never been gene-chopped because there was no gene to chop, who went to secretarial school so I could get a job sooner, because Ber was going to graduate from Runyon in a year and we could get married. And then I went to accounting classes in the evenings before you were born, because I liked arithmetic. You know where you are with addition and subtraction.” She leaned forward, over Mongo, still attached to my leg, and put her arms around me. Hix (and perhaps Whilp) did her bodiless-shadow thing: I felt her patting my face and I think Mom’s too, not at all dismayed by there being no space between us for her to be. I thought I felt Whilp making a nest in my hair. I have bad hair most days; a gruuaa couldn’t make it much worse.

“Go with love and luck,” said Mom. “And with magic. I send you with all that I can offer you.” She kissed me on the cheek—and there was a funny little tingly feeling, almost gruuaa-like.

“Giving up magic didn’t work so well for Val,” I said.

“No, it didn’t,” she agreed. “Which is probably why I’m not shutting you up in a closet right now. But you’d better leave before I break down entirely—before I remember that I’m your mom and you’re seventeen years old. Ran and I will go to Gwenda as soon as he gets home, which had better be soon. Come . . . come after us . . . as soon as you can. That house is not called Haven idly. There is still magic there—Gwenda will help us. I wish I were taking you and Val there now.”

I turned and nearly ran out the door. I also nearly tripped over Majid. “Come on,” said Jill, grabbing my arm. “No falling down. I’m sure we need you in one piece.”

We went down the sidewalk together while I said to myself, I am not going to cry, I am not going to cry. It will be fine, Val will like Haven, and he’ll figure out how to get along with Gwenda (my dad used to call her formidable). Takahiro appeared on my other side carrying Majid, who was (astonishingly) purring again. Mongo had come out with us and then shot ahead and had his forepaws up on the rear door of the Mammoth (this was not allowed, of course: dog claws scratch paint) and was wagging his tail so hard it was in danger of coming off, while Bella strained to get her muzzle through the quarter-open window to touch noses with him. “That’s a yes then,” said Jill. “If I open the door, will he get in, or will everyone else come out?”

“He’ll go in,” I said, “if we make it obvious enough that that’s the plan.” By the time this had been achieved, not without a certain amount of swearing and being hit in the face by wagging tails, Casimir had joined us. “If we put this end of the rear seat up, I can get in the back,” I said, pulling dog hair out of my mouth. “It’s either me or the dog food—that’s an easy one. And it’s dumb to take two cars. Then Casimir can get in front.” It was nearly dark; the streetlights had all come on and there were shadows everywhere. Some of them were gruuaa.

“I’ll come in the back with you,” said Takahiro. “You can sit on my lap.” I didn’t quite laugh, remembering how crowded the three of us had been on the drive over—and Casimir was a lot wider than either Taks or me. Shoulders. Yes, I know, I’d been kissing Taks and liked it a lot. And I wasn’t minding the idea of sitting in Taks’ lap at all either. But Casimir totally won on the shoulders and a girl can look. And if Taks was in back with me we could stuff everybody’s knapsacks under Casimir’s feet. He’d brought one that looked like he was going camping for a week. I didn’t want to think about what he imagined the magdag was going to need.

Supposing we found Val and Arnie and wanted to take them away from wherever they were, where were we going to put them? On the roof?

“And Mongo, Majid, and Bella will sit on us,” I said loudly, to drown out my thoughts.

“Odoroku beki,” said Takahiro. “We’ll cope somehow.”

We were pretty cozy in the back. It had been crowded back here before Takahiro, me, Mongo, and Majid. I settled down—trying to be less heavy is not really very constructive—and Takahiro put his arms around me. Hix and a few of her friends redraped themselves around both of us. I was way more comfortable than I should have been. Briefly. Till Mongo ricocheted off one of the front headrests and ended up in my lap. Bella put her head over his back, and I could feel Jonesie whuffling in one of my ears. Oh well. At least Majid didn’t seem to be killing anyone. Yet. Casimir got in the front, and Jill last. I could see the bag of dog food through the gap in the headrests. Bags of dog food can’t laugh, can they?

Jill put her hand on the key and then sat back. “Er—where are we going?”

Good question. Suddenly I wasn’t comfortable at all.

Casimir turned around so he was looking out past us through the rear of the car—or would have been, if there hadn’t been a lot of hairy bodies in the way. “There,” said Casimir, pointing.

I looked at him. “What?”

He smiled at me. It was a better smile than it had been earlier, and I felt Taks’ arms tighten—just a little. “There are a few small things that my mother gave me,” Casimir said.

“That got through the border guards,” I said.

“Like sewing your money into the lining of your coat,” said Jill. “So maybe the robbers won’t notice.”

“Good attitude, manuke,” I said. “I wonder if it’s generally known that the Newworld border is as full of holes as this car is full of dog hair.” But Jill wasn’t listening to me; she was trying to pick up what Casimir knew. Our eyes met. I could see that she was succeeding. And then . . . I began to pull it too, or it to pull me. It was a bit like a loop of gruuaa tugging in their insubstantial way. Maybe that’s what it was. Jill nodded, turned to face the front again, and started the car. It roared to life as befitted a giant hairy thing with tusks.

“Oh!” I said as Jill backed the Mammoth around in a deliberate, star-pupil-driver-ed way that said she was every bit as frightened as I was. “My algebra book! It had better come with us—”

“I’m sitting on it,” said Takahiro.

I relaxed again (sort of). I supposed it really wasn’t going to let itself be left behind now. I reached down past Takahiro’s skinny butt and gave its spine a pat.

“How close are we going to be able to come?” said Jill conversationally a minute later, negotiating the main street, which was unusually empty—and there had been no soldiers on the corner of Jebali. We were the only car at the midtown stoplight, which never happens except in the middle of the night. Two cars passed in front of us—both of them loaded to the roof with suitcases and boxes. Leaving town. Heading north and west, which was where Mom and Ran would be going soon too. With a car full of suitcases and boxes.

The newsboard banners were empty. There were silverbugs everywhere I looked—clustered in dizzying little clumps on the overhead power lines, glinting on storefront windowsills, and scattered apparently at random on the sidewalks. And ironically every one of the big metal anti-cobey boxes had a crown or swirl of silverbugs. So much for you, I thought at them. They didn’t reply. Two days ago I wouldn’t have expected them to. Today . . . today it was probably just the throb of the armydar making me spacey. I was almost getting used to the armydar. This couldn’t be good.

My stomach felt funny. I hoped we didn’t drive over any silverbugs.

We went our solitary way across the intersection. “To wherever,” said Jill.

“I am not sure,” said Casimir at the same time I said, “Probably not very.”

Takahiro said, “Even if we could drive up to the front door, we don’t want to, do we? It’s not like we’re coming to the local lockup for official visiting hours.”

I was beginning to feel that hazy tug more strongly. The gruuaa, I thought, had stabilized their line on Val.

“There’s that falling-down army base a few miles out of town in more or less this direction,” said Jill. “Out at the edge of the barrens. Goat Creek. Maybe it’s not as falling down as it looks.”

“There have been rumors for years that it isn’t,” said Takahiro. “Even that it’s completely in use. They’re just not saying for what. I’ve always wondered why—and who—runs the sheep out there, you know? The perimeter fence is from when it was a firing range and special-ops training and stuff, but the fence is still there. And so are a lot of sheep. So like now I’m wondering if they’re using them—like we’re using our guys here.” Mongo was doing one of his I-am-a-spineless-rubber-dog things and had twisted his own head around so he could lick Bella’s face as her head rested on his back. Of course there was a lot of face to Bella.

“Dad used to say that it was a conservation thing, the sheep,” I said. “Managing wild grassland or something.”

Takahiro snorted. “The only stuff that grows on the barrens is what can grow on the barrens. They don’t need sheep for that. And they had to import some kind of tough little feral sheep that could survive on what does grow there.”

Jill glanced in the rear view mirror at Takahiro. “The things you know.”

“I have the secret gizmohead insignia tattooed over my heart,” said Takahiro.

“Whatever,” I said. “This feels like the right direction.”

“Good,” said Casimir. “You feel it too.”

“It’s the gruuaa,” I said. There were a lot of them in the car with us. They seemed to be twisting themselves into a big, irregular, ever-so-slightly glowing net. I could both (kind of) see them draped all over everything in their usual raggedy globs and clusters of shadow, and also (kind of) see them as this big glowing network thing. It seemed to throb in time with the armydar, and with the flash of the streetlights over Mongo’s back. Light sometimes did strange dimensional things when it hit the dramatically black and white markings of a border collie. Such as the border collie in my lap at the moment. Flash. Flash.

“Perhaps, when this is over, you will teach me to speak to the gruuaa,” said Casimir.

I shook my head, but that made the flashing-network thing worse. “I can’t teach you anything,” I said. “I don’t know. It’s not really speaking.” Flash. Flash.

“But I like the idea there’s going to be an after,” said Jill.

The landscape changed as we got closer to the Old Barrens. The big lush trees put in by the town council disappeared and the tougher, scrubbier trees of the barrens took their place. The sourleaf grass that the sheep around the old army station had to live on began to show in clumps, especially in breaks in the paving. The farmland was all on the other side of town, toward Copperhill; this side there was only a polite strip of cultivated public land before it began disintegrating into the barrens. At first there were warehouses and big ugly slabs of grey industrial something or other and then they disappeared too. Now we were in the barrens for real. There were occasional sandpits and increasing stretches of scraggy, grey-green sourleaf grass, turning yellow for autumn, and looking kind of ominous in the twilight. We went click clack over the abandoned stretch of auxiliary railroad that had served the army base when Station had been a big town and the base had been open. Officially open.

Jill turned the local radio on. Even the usual burbling sounded subdued. There was still nothing to worry about, said the presenter, trying to sound chirpy and failing, but since the schools and many businesses had decided to close temporarily while the army finished securing the situation—

“Situation?” said Jill.

“Securing?” said Takahiro.

—much of the town had decided to take an unscheduled vacation.

“Vacation?” Jill, Takahiro, and I all said together.

But if any citizens had any concerns, there was an army presence at the high school, the local Watchguard offices, and city hall, and would be glad to answer any questions.

“Presence?” said Takahiro. “Concerns?”

“Well, at least they all seem to be busy elsewhere,” I said. The road was amazingly empty, except for silverbugs. There were way too many silverbugs. We saw one pickup truck with something like a lawn mower in the back and one closed van, which could have had anything at all in it. A small traveling plastic cobey model for educational purposes. Major Blow-it. Val. Probably not Val, since the gruuaa didn’t react.

Jill turned the radio off.