The Borderkind

CHAPTER 18

I n the gray mists of the Winding Way, Oliver had never felt so far from home. The world beyond the Veil was a step beyond the reality that he’d known his whole life, but this mystical road clearly represented a further step. No matter how extraordinary and impossible everything felt in the world of the legendary, everything there was tangible. It might be surreal in Oliver’s mind, but his senses could react to it.

The Winding Way existed as little more than a dream, yet the most lucid of his life. The mist swirled around him and Kitsune with a pulsing, living rhythm-playful and dancing, and sometimes menacing. In the back of his mind Oliver could not shake the idea that, with its awareness, the mist seemed like a ghost…or perhaps an entire sea of ghosts, all reacting to their presence.

It ought to have been entirely dark on the twisting road, for there seemed no source of ambient light. Whatever sky might hang above this mystic limbo through which they passed, the mist blotted out any view of it. And no light from stars or moon-if indeed they existed here-came through that gray shroud. Yet enough light filtered through the mist that it seemed, if not dusk, to be perpetually on the verge of full night.

At first Oliver had been cold, but now the mist felt close and warm so that a film of moisture coated his skin. It was not at all pleasant.

Yet simultaneous with this feeling of separation from his past and distance from the familiar there surged up within him a desperate anticipation. When they left this gray road and emerged again into the realm of the legendary, they would be at the castle of the Sandman. If they survived the encounter, he would be reunited with his sister. When he could throw his arms around her and crush her to him, he knew that nothing in his circumstances would seem quite as terrible. Oliver needed that comfort, even if it was fleeting.

If she’s still alive…

On the Winding Way, doubts seemed to rise like ghosts in the mist and were not easily dispelled. He told himself that Collette was fine, that he would have known somehow if she had died, and that if all of the mysterious things he’d heard were true-or even a fraction of them-the Sandman would have kept her alive as a lure to draw him in.

Which meant that the moment approached where their fates would be decided.

“How much longer?” he whispered. Rather, he’d spoken the words, but something about the Winding Way and its mists turned his voice to a whisper.

Kitsune did not turn. Hidden beneath her hooded cloak, she moved swiftly along the Winding Way, neither walking nor quite running. Oliver hurried to keep up with her, to keep her in sight in the gray mist. The smooth black ribbon of road curved to the left now and he broke into a trot to catch up.

“Kit?” he said, reaching out to touch her.

She slowed and turned toward him even as his fingers grazed her fur cloak. From the abruptness of her reaction he’d thought she might be angry with him, but then he saw the confusion in her eyes. Kitsune blinked several times and shook her head like she was trying to work out some thought that just wouldn’t fit in her mind and could not make its way to her lips.

“What…Kit, what is it?”

They stood there, though the mist swirling around them seemed to urge them onward, trying to sweep them further along the Winding Way.

“We’re here,” she said. “Or very nearly, I think.”

Oliver peered ahead. The black glass road took one more twist. “How does that work?”

Kitsune pushed back her hood and shook her hair out. She glanced over her shoulder at the mist. “It isn’t my magic, but imagine it like a current in an ocean. We step into the Winding Way and we are cast adrift. Except that the magic that created it allows us to alter the current with our desire and our intent, so that we drift to the very shore that is our destination. The road ends for us at the place we wish to go.”

“Anywhere in the Two Kingdoms?”

She frowned and he could see she was distracted. “In the eastern region of Euphrasia, almost anywhere. But only within the region. I have heard that there are other places where the Winding Way leads elsewhere-other currents in the ocean-but have never traveled those roads.”

Oliver studied her face; her eyes were troubled.

“I don’t like it here,” he said.

Kitsune shivered. “Neither do I. But I fear we will soon long for the isolation this place provides.”

They ought to be going. Oliver glanced toward the final twist in the road and then looked at the fox-woman again. The confusion lingered in her face.

“We should go.”

“Yes,” Kitsune said.

“My sister-”

“You asked about the Legend-Born…”

Oliver stared at Kitsune. “Yeah. One of the Hunters used the term, referring to me. You know what it means?”

Kitsune frowned. “Not precisely. But I have heard the term before. Since we set foot upon this road I have been searching my memory for anything I can remember.”

Almost stern, she narrowed her eyes and gazed at him. “You should never have been able to enter the Winding Way, Oliver. I told you-”

“You weren’t sure, though. You said yourself, it’s not your magic. You said-”

A curtain of gray mist swept between them, momentarily obscuring his view of Kitsune so that she was nothing but a vague outline.

“All of that is true, Oliver,” she said, her voice even more of a muffled whisper than it had been before. “I am not like you. I am one of the legendary, a Borderkind. But simply because we’re different does not mean I am some omniscient creature. I know only what I have learned. Legends have facets because they change with the telling, and not every aspect is always true. What I had heard about the Winding Way was that only the legendary could travel upon it.”

“Yes,” Oliver agreed. “And now we’ve obviously proven that isn’t true.”

“Have we?”

The words sounded far away and a chill raced through Oliver as he began to unravel precisely what Kitsune was asking.

The mist cleared and they were face-to-face again.

“Kit, I-”

“Oliver, just…listen,” she said. “When I heard the phrase Legend-Born, I recognized it from bits of folklore I have heard the Lost Ones discuss in the past. And not only Lost Ones, but legends as well. A legend amongst legends. What is most unique about this is that the stories I have heard…they’re from everywhere. Snatches of conversation in a jungle village in Yucatazca, curses in a pub in Perinthia, prayers in Shangri-La-”

He grinned. “There’s a Shangri-La?”

“Of course there is. Have you forgotten where you are? Please, just listen. I do not know the whole story because it is not in my nature to pay attention to such things. I am normally skittish around too many people and prefer my own company. But I have heard enough to understand the gist of the story.”

“Which is?”

“In all of the ages since the creation of the Veil, the Borderkind have moved back and forth between worlds, sometimes living amongst humans for long periods. Many of our kind have a fascination for the mundane world, and for humanity. Some even prefer that side to this one. A great many Borderkind chose to keep their tether to your world because they love humans. They watch from the shadows and the forests and from beneath the water. Or they walk amongst you. Borderkind have been known to take human lovers, Oliver. But this is strictly forbidden.”

Oliver shook his head. “Why?”

Kitsune frowned. “I’d always thought it superstition. Now I am not sure. There are stories, you see, from centuries past, about children being born from the union between human and Borderkind, and those children being hunted, and captured, and destroyed.”

He stared at her. “I don’t understand what this-”

“Of all of these stories, there’s only one that is recent. It concerns a Borderkind called Melisande, a French legend, a beautiful woman who loved fine dresses and pretty things. She was not simply a woman. She had the wings of a terrible dragon and from the waist down her body was that of a serpent.”

Frustrated, Oliver shook his head. “Look, Kit, we’re so close now. Collette is so close. We’ve got to…I mean, what does this have to do with anything?”

Her jade eyes flashed with impatience. “Everything! It has everything to do with you and Collette, if I’m right.”

Oliver nodded. “All right. Go on.”

Kitsune softened. She gnawed her lower lip for a moment and took a breath. “The legend amongst the Lost Ones says that Melisande-a Borderkind, remember-fell in love with an ordinary man and had children by him, and that they still live on the other side of the Veil. Happily ever after.”

These last words were laden with spite and irony, but Oliver paid little attention. Thoughts and images clicked through his mind, words overheard and words never understood.

He ran his hands through his hair, clutched the back of his head as if to keep it from breaking open from the pressure within.

“So, you’re saying-”

“The conversation I overheard between Frost and Wayland Smith,” Kitsune went on. “Frost lied to you, we know that. The Falconer wasn’t there hunting him, or not just hunting him. The Falconer was there for you, and Collette as well. I have been so confused by Frost’s words, my loyalties torn, but if this is…He really was there to protect you, Oliver.”

Oliver frowned deeply. “I don’t…”

But the words trailed off. He thought of the Hunter calling him Legend-Born, and of the way that the Sandman had murdered his father but abducted Collette in order to lure him in. Why? Why was he so important? And then he remembered-

“The Nagas,” Oliver said.

“In Twillig’s Gorge? What of them?”

“Don’t you remember?” he asked, a sick feeling churning in his stomach. “They called…they called me ‘brother.’ ”

Kitsune stared at him, mouth open in astonishment. She gazed around as though the mist would serve up the rest of the answers they sought. “Melisande was half-serpent, like them.”

Oliver sat down hard on the smooth black glass of the road. The mist swirled more tightly around him as though to get a better look, and he was sure he heard soft laughter in the distance. If there were ghosts here, they were amused by his horror.

Revulsion twisted in his gut and he shook his head. “It can’t…my mother…she was just my mom, Kit. And she died a long time ago, when I was really young. She was beautiful and kind but just ordinary. Just a woman. And my father…this Melisande could never have fallen in love with him.”

Kitsune stared at him. “But she did.”

Oliver flinched and stared up at her.

“All of the pieces fit.”

“But…” He breathed steadily, trying to catch his breath. “Why didn’t Frost tell me?”

“I don’t know. He might have thought you would be in more danger if you knew the truth. Oliver, I have told you everything I know of the Legend-Born, but obviously there is more to the story. If the Hunters want to destroy you and Collette, there must be a reason. We need to know the rest of that legend, to find out what it is about you two that they fear.”

The words echoed in his mind. Could it be that the Hunters feared him? No, not the Hunters. Their masters. Whoever had set the Hunters after the Borderkind, and after him and Collette, was the real enemy. If it was all true, it also meant that the quest that Frost and the others had embarked on, the war they were fighting, were Oliver’s causes, too. He had planned to stay here as long as it took, help in whatever way he could. But now, if all of this was real, he had little choice.

Kitsune reached down and helped him to his feet. Oliver held on to her hand a moment longer than necessary and a sliver of hurt flashed in her eyes before she pulled away.

They fell into step together, side by side along the twisting black glass road, moving through the mist.

“I’ve…I’ve never been more than ordinary,” he said without looking at her. “I always believed in magic. My father tried to grind that out of me, make me more practical, more realistic. But I always believed in my heart that there were magical things in the world. Not in me, though. I never thought there was anything special about me.”

“Perhaps your father was simply afraid of what you might become,” Kitsune said, as they came around that final curve and saw nothing but mist ahead, thick and impenetrable. “He stifled your imagination, hoping to keep your life from becoming more complicated.”

Oliver frowned. “If all of this is true, then what he did was keep secrets. He hid the truth, and he was a callous, hard bastard along the way. Don’t make him out to be a hero.”

Kitsune did not reply at first. When she did, her voice rasped and the mist muffled it so that it was even less than a whisper.

“For my part, if you and your sister are Legend-Born, I will be relieved.”

“What?” Oliver shot her a hard look. “Why?”

She kept walking, and when she answered, she did not look at him.

“I found it…disconcerting…to feel what I feel for an ordinary man. If you are half-legend, that would explain a great deal.”

Oliver could think of nothing to say to that, and so kept silent as they strode the last few yards into the thickening mist. In moments it grew so dense that Kitsune ceased even to be a shape in the swirling shroud and he reached out to grab a handful of her fur cloak, just to keep her close.

Then he stepped out of the mist and found himself standing beneath a starry night sky, a sliver moon hanging above in a crisp, cool night. He shivered and the clammy film that had built up on his skin during the journey dried in the cold mountain air. For they were, indeed, in the mountains. Oxen grazed nearby on rough grassy land and, around them, Oliver counted three separate mountain peaks. The mountains themselves were steep and the terrain varied from craggy stone to ugly, twisted little trees to a frozen cascade of ice. High up, all three peaks were capped with snow.

“It’s beautiful,” Kitsune whispered beside him.

Oliver glanced at her and saw behind them the gray mist that had delivered them to this place, evaporating. In moments it had dissipated entirely, leaving no trace of their arrival, save for their actual presence.

Kitsune’s admiration had not been for the mountains or the starry sky. Oliver swallowed hard and forced himself to turn his full attention upon the only structure built in the crux of those three mountains. At the base of the nearest there stood a massive pagoda-style palace with its many levels and fluted corners.

Made of sand.

In the eastern region of Euphrasia, this was the Sandman’s castle.

The sand that spilled out around the magnificent pagoda reached far enough across the rough land that Oliver and Kitsune were already standing upon it. The oxen grazed on rough grass nearby, but beneath Oliver’s feet was only soft, shifting sand.

“Collette’s here,” he said, more certain than he’d ever been of anything in his life.

Kitsune’s jade eyes gleamed in the starlight as she raised her hood, face grim. “Then let us retrieve her.”

Oliver slipped a hand into his pocket and clutched between his fingers the pillow feather that the Dustman had given him.

He started toward the pagoda-toward the Sandcastle-and Kitsune fell in beside him. Together they trudged up toward the tall double doors, the one aspect of the structure’s facade that matched the Sandcastle far to the west on the other side of the Atlantic Bridge.

The doors hung slightly open in invitation.

Oliver felt a strange calm descend upon him, settling into his bones with the chill of the night. He could hear his breathing too loud in his head. His hand found its way almost unbidden to the hilt of his sword, and with a bright whisper of metal upon metal, he drew it.

Kitsune slipped through the narrow gap between the doors. Oliver did not have her stealth, but neither was he concerned. The open door told him all that he needed to know about their arrival.

The Sandman expected them. He had been expecting them since the very moment that he had snatched Collette away from the house on Rose Ridge Lane, the Bascombe family home, on its bluff overlooking the ocean. Oliver did not want to think too much about that house and about his parents. If Kitsune’s theories about his mother were true, it changed every memory he had.

All that mattered now was Collette.

So if the Sandman knew they were coming, stealth be damned.

He kicked the door and it swung wide. Kitsune twisted to glare at him, surprise in her jade eyes. Oliver ignored the admonition and entered swiftly, investigating the shadows just inside the door, then turning his back to them, gazing into the dark corners he had yet to penetrate. The Sword of Hunyadi felt strangely light in his grasp, and he kept the blade raised, prepared to defend himself. If Rafael, his old fencing instructor, could see him now, the man would likely faint. He’d been taught sport and elegance, balance and dignity. Now he was learning bloodshed and survival.

Oliver recognized the chamber immediately, just as he was sure Kitsune did. They exchanged a glance and she nodded to confirm it, but the gesture was unnecessary. The Sandcastle had aspects in various regions throughout the Two Kingdoms, and perhaps even in such far-flung lands as Nubia and Atlantis. This was the second they had visited, and they knew of a third in Yucatazca. The exterior of this castle was drastically different.

But inside, it was the same.

In this vast cathedral chamber they had found the dead Red Caps, and the shattered remnants of the Sandman’s diamond prison. They had watched La Dormette die and been attacked by the Kirata. On that day, they had barely escaped with their lives, and Frost had been with them. Without him, they would surely have been killed.

Oliver moistened his lips, but his breathing remained steady. Frost wasn’t here now; they would have to find a way to survive on their own.

There were no lanterns lit within that massive reception hall. To the right, stairs along one wall led up to a second level, to a door that he presumed would take them deeper into the castle. But there were doors set into the walls on this level as well, all of them tightly closed. Starlight streamed in through the open windows, and a cool breeze whisked along the floor.

At the center of the room remained the shattered remnants of the diamond enclosure where once the Sandman had been imprisoned. Oliver pushed aside some of the broken shards with one boot, then glanced up at Kitsune.

The fox-woman stood twenty feet away, nearly lost in the shadow of a tall, fluted column that rose toward the ceiling high above. A dozen such columns stood in a circle around the hall, supporting the structure.

Cloaked in fur that seemed black, fringed with starlit orange, she caught his eyes and shrugged.

No sign of anyone.

Could it be that the Sandman remained unaware of their arrival? Oliver doubted it. And yet if that was possible, he had to resist the urge to call his sister’s name. They would have to start trying doors.

He gestured toward the stairs against the wall. If they were to find Collette, he thought it would be deeper within the castle rather than through any of those doors. He knew from experience that there was no telling where one of them might lead.

As he and Kitsune started to converge upon the stairs, there came the shushing sound of sand being disturbed.

Oliver spun and saw the hard-packed sand floor shifting. Something rose from it, sand cascading off of the figure, and in a moment she stood there, a small female form with wild hair.

“Collette?” he said softly, and took three steps toward her.

Then he slowed. Something was wrong with her. Even in the starlight he could see the utter lack of color in her hair and clothing.

His sword wavered. All of his courage and confidence lapsed in a moment of hesitation.

“Coll, what’s wrong?”

The figure turned. Its mouth hung open in a silent scream and where its eyes should have been were only black, empty pits. Oliver would have screamed, but now he was near enough to understand the lack of color.

This thing could not be his sister.

It was made of sand.

Raising his sword, he took the final two steps and brought the blade around in a smooth arc, and sliced the sand creature’s head cleanly off. It collapsed into a shapeless pile of dry sand.

In the same moment the floor began to stir and whisper in half a dozen places around the huge chamber.

“Oliver, be careful,” Kitsune said.

He nodded. His throat went dry and he could only watch in horror as the sand in the floor resolved itself into six more figures identical to the one he had just destroyed, each one an imitation of Collette, eyeless and silently screaming, desperate, clad only in what might have been ragged pajamas.

Then, in the center of the room-where Oliver himself had stood only moments before-a hissing noise began. A black hole formed and began to widen, sand slipping down into nothing, as though they stood in the upper chamber of an hourglass and the lower atrium beckoned.

A hulking figure rose from that hole, sand slipping around its legs.

It resolved itself in the starlight, becoming not one figure but two. The floor solidified beneath them, but all of the diamond shards had been swallowed by the shifting sand. The ones newly arrived were not like the others, not sculpted effigies of his sister.

Lemon-yellow eyes gleaming in the shadows, the Sandman hunched over Collette Bascombe, clutching her to him, much of her body draped beneath the curtain of his cloak. The starlight blanched his gray flesh to the sickly pallor of a cadaver and his fingers to skeletal bone as he wrapped one hand around her throat and twisted her face round to stare at her brother.

“Collette?” Oliver whispered.

The sand constructs all turned, wretched mouths turning into rictus grins as they started to walk slowly toward him.

His sister flinched at the sound of his voice. He was afraid, for a moment, that the Sandman truly had taken her eyes, but then she leaned away from the monster and he saw her features in the light from the moon and stars that shone through the windows.

“Oliver, you have to run. He’ll kill us both. That’s all he wants. There’s something special about us, something they want to destroy!” she said, voice rising frantically at the last.

The Sandman clapped a hand over her mouth to silence her. The monster, the child-killer, the thing that had murdered Oliver’s father and taken his eyes, did not smile or laugh or even speak. This was no storybook villain.

This is death, Oliver thought.

He gripped the sword tightly, raised it, and started toward the Sandman. Kitsune followed, moving around to his right, careful with each step. Her fur rippled with the muscles beneath and she bared her small, sharp teeth in defiance.

With his free hand Oliver reached into his pocket and withdrew the feather that waited for him there. For a moment he was afraid he would have lost it, but it felt almost warm to the touch.

Oliver held the feather before him like some sort of talisman.

“Dustman,” he said. “It’s time.”

The Sandman’s yellow eyes narrowed, and he flexed the fingers that covered Collette’s mouth. “You confuse me with another legend, foolish Bascombe.”

“Not at all,” Oliver replied.

A new breeze began swirling across the floor in the vast entrance hall of the Sandman’s castle. Dust and grit spun and eddied, and then burst suddenly upward as though something had erupted from within the sand itself.

The breeze died. The dust settled.

Just a few feet away from where Oliver stood, the Dustman brushed sand delicately from the sleeve of his greatcoat. The brim of his bowler obscured his eyes until he glanced up at Oliver.

“I’ll take that,” he said, retrieving the feather from Oliver’s hand. His sand fingers scraped Oliver’s skin.

The Dustman slipped the feather in the pocket of his greatcoat, then reached up with one hand and smoothed down his mustache. He turned toward the Sandman.

“Hello, brother.”

The Sandman had crouched lower, drawn back a few steps, dragging Collette with him. She struggled and he shushed her, glaring.

“You are not welcome here.”

“Nevertheless, here is where I am,” the Dustman said. Then his expression changed, and there was venom in his voice and his eyes. “You are the myth that tales have made you-”

“Don’t you dare call me that!” the Sandman shrieked, hideous black lips pulled back over needle teeth.

He let his hand come away from Collette’s mouth and she cried out Oliver’s name. The monster wrapped her hair in his fist and tugged her backward, drove her down, so that she fell to her knees at his side.

Oliver took a step forward, sword at the ready.

Kitsune snapped a cautionary word at him.

“You were never more than a beast,” the Dustman said, voice dripping with contempt. “But you’ve allied yourself with creatures even more monstrous than yourself, and turned your back on all of your kin. There is nothing for you now but death.”

The Sandman’s lemon eyes went wide and his voice became even more shrill. “My kin? My kin who betrayed me, who allowed me to endure an eternity as captive in my own home? I spurn you all. I spit on you. I shall smear your eyes beneath my heel.”

The Dustman nodded. “Come, then.”

With a mad roar, mouth stretched impossibly wide, the Sandman burst into a cloud of swirling sand, those sickly lemon eyes floating in its midst, and rushed at this new arrival, this creature who had called him brother.

For a moment, Collette choked on the cloud of him, trying to breathe and getting only sand in her mouth and lungs. Coughing, she bent low, throat and chest burning, eyes tightly closed against the scouring sand.

Then she was alone in the center of the room. Wiping at her eyes, she opened them to see the brothers careening toward one another, the Sandman a dervish of wind and grit and the other-Oliver had called him the Dustman-charging as though he were only a man.

Then the Dustman exploded in a wave of dirt and grit and the two miniature storms lashed at one another in the midst of that vast chamber.

Collette rasped, coughing up the sand that had gotten in her mouth and throat. She bent over, still on her knees, hacking and trying to catch her breath, and when she raised her head, she saw her brother running toward her.

From the moment she had seen Oliver, some dam of emotion had given way inside of her. Now even as she wheezed and coughed, Collette managed a flicker of a smile, relief flooding her.

Oliver ran toward his sister.

“Wait! Watch yourself!” called out his companion.

Collette looked over at the gorgeous Asian woman who had arrived with her brother and saw the alarm in the other woman’s face. The cloaked woman pointed and both Oliver and Collette turned to see that the sand-creatures-these horrid constructs that Collette now realized were made in her own image-had begun to close in around them.

The woman wrapped her fur cloak around herself and dropped to all fours. Collette blinked, stunned to see the woman’s entire body shrink in upon itself, the fur tightening around her. Instead of a petite, beautiful woman, she hit the ground as a fox.

The fox, a flash of coppery-red fur in the starlight, leaped at the nearest of the sand creatures. It tried to fight her, batting her away. The fox attacked again, driving her snout into the center of the creature. It collapsed, sand spilling down on top of her.

She shook it off.

The wind inside the Sandcastle howled louder and louder. The sand that comprised the floor and walls seemed to erode so that a dust storm whirled through the vast chamber, partially obscuring her vision.

“Oliver!” Collette cried, at last finding her voice.

Not far away she saw the raging twisters separate, and abruptly the Sandman reformed, standing defiantly in the midst of the driving winds. His cloak whisked around him, but he stood as though entirely untouched. A moment later the Dustman re-formed as well, this sophisticated, evolved brother to the monstrous thing that had been her captor for so long.

The Sandman glared and whispered something that was lost in the wind and the hiss of sand upon sand.

The constructs moved closer, slow as sleepwalkers, eyeless and silent. Oliver called her name and raced at the nearest of them, squinting against the dust storm. Though they had fought as children, she and Oliver had always been close, sharing secrets and troubles and fighting loneliness together in a home with no mother and a distant father. Collette would know her brother anywhere, but looking at him now, she knew that some people would not have recognized him.

Oliver’s hair was wild and he sported several weeks’worth of beard. Normally office-pale, his skin had taken on a healthy, ruddy hue. The peacoat and jeans he wore only added to the overall air of roughness that had transformed him, but the sword in his hands provided the finishing touch.

“Keep away from her!” Oliver bellowed as he raced toward Collette, swinging the blade. He hacked one of the sand creatures in half and it collapsed into a small dune on the chamber floor.

In moments, he and the fox had destroyed two others, and the rest of the sand things began to withdraw to a safer distance. Nearby, the Sandman and the Dustman continued tearing at one another. The Dustman thrust his fist through his brother’s chest so that when he withdrew it there was a gaping hole left behind, but the sand spilled in to fill the gap instantly.

Over and over, they tore one another apart.

Then Oliver was at her side.

“Collette!” he said, pulling her into an embrace with his free hand.

She fell against him, melting into the pleasure of his company. She was no longer alone in this nightmare place. Her little brother was here with her. Together, everything would be different.

“Hey, little bro,” she rasped.

Oliver held her at arm’s length and they grinned like fools at one another. His expression wavered first.

“We have a lot to talk about.”

Collette nodded. “Oh, yeah. You’re pretty much the only thing I’m sure is real in this whole world. I’ve got a lot of questions. And some things you should know. But can we-”

“Get the hell out of here, first?” her brother said.

The fox trotted up beside him. Though still in motion, her size altered abruptly. Her fur rippled and came loose, hanging down around her, and then as though she were removing her face, the fox drew back her hood to reveal once again the elegant features of the Asian woman who’d arrived with her brother.

“Jesus!” Collette said, flinching and staring at her. “I just…I don’t think I know what’s real!”

Oliver put a comforting hand behind her neck and kissed her forehead. “There’s an easy answer to that, sis. Everything. Everything is real. This is Kitsune.”

He turned to the fox-woman, whose green eyes were close to the most hypnotic things Collette had ever seen. “And Kit, this is my sister, Collette.”

Kitsune inclined her head. “A pleasure to meet you. But we really ought to go, now, while the battle rages.” She gestured toward the center of the room where the Sandman and Dustman tore at one another, blasts of grit bursting from their bodies with each blow and re-forming in the swirling, howling wind.

Oliver hesitated. “Shouldn’t we help the Dustman?”

Collette had known there was some connection, that somehow they had summoned the creature, but this was confirmation.

“What could we do?” she said. “You haven’t seen what he-”

“I know what he does,” Oliver said, grief in his eyes. “What he is.”

Kitsune nodded. “We should go. If the Dustman cannot destroy the Sandman, there’s nothing we can do to help him. He agreed to come, knowing what this war would bring.”

“All right,” Oliver said. “We go.”

Collette kept up with them as best she could. Oliver had his arm around her, helping even as he kept his sword at the ready. Kitsune led the way by a dozen paces and they raced for the door. The sand creatures, those horrible images of her, did not attempt to bar the way.

The door stood open. Fresh air blew in.

When they went out of the Sandcastle, they found an army waiting.