The Gypsy Morph

ELEVEN

LOGAN TOM drove the Ventra 5000 southeast into the mountains for what remained of the day after leaving the Portland area, following the two–lane road upon which Trim had set him. There were opportunities to take other roads, but the owl kept to the one they had started out on. He flew ahead, frequently cutting cross–country over fields and through forests, leaving Logan to assume that he would be met again somewhere down the road, which he always was. His hesitation about following Trim, so pronounced when he had first discovered that the owl was to be his guide, had given way to a grudging reliance. He supposed he would have been uneasy about following anyone, owl or human; his natural instinct after all these years on his own was to trust no one. But there was no one with whom to argue the matter, and Trim seemed set upon their course, so Logan quickly accepted the inevitable and went where he was led.

When darkness began to set in, they were at the foot of the big mountain he had spied earlier while crossing into Oregon over the Columbia. His maps identified it as Mount Hood. It was a massive rock, and the road led right up one side and into mountains that stretched beyond it to the south, so Logan knew he was going to face some rough traveling before the night was over. Stopping for sleep didn’t seem to be in the owl’s plans; he kept flying ahead, taking Logan higher and deeper into the chain, past Mount Hood and into the tangle of peaks beyond. Progress was slow, the roads narrow and winding and frequently littered with debris of one sort or another. In some places, the pavement was so badly split by crevices or collapsed beneath sinkholes that Logan had to drive the Ventra off road to continue. But the Ventra was such a beast that it surmounted obstacles almost effortlessly, its big wheels, high chassis, and powerful engine giving it the ability to do everything but climb trees. And Logan wouldn’t have bet against that.

When it finally got too dark to go farther safely, Trim winged his way back to Logan and settled on the Ventra’s roof. Logan pulled over, climbed out, and checked to be certain of the owl’s intent. Trim regarded him from the roof with saucer eyes, and then took flight. Logan watched him fly off a short distance and roost in a nearby tree. When the bird showed no signs of doing anything more, Logan climbed back inside the Ventra, shut down the AV’s engine, locked the doors, set the security alarms, settled back in his seat, and drifted off to sleep.

He woke to the sound of the owl’s soft hoot and a scrabbling of its talons on the Ventra’s metal roof. Sunlight was pouring down out of a cloudless sky, the day bright and clear. From the position of the sun, he guessed it was nearing midday. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, ate and drank a little something, turned the Ventra’s engine back on, and set out once more.

This day’s journey was rougher and more protracted. They left Mount Hood behind early and moved into high desert country where the landscape was bleak and empty and the road frequently disappeared beneath sand and scrub. Flat stretches were interspersed with hummocks and ravines, with dry washes and ridges so rocky that they looked like dragon spines. The country was volcanic, dotted with cinder cones and awash in cinder dust and lava rock. Cactus littered the terrain in vast clumps; everything else that grew was stunted and wintry and edged with thorns or razor–sharp bark. He drove the AV around and over and through it all, letting Trim show him the way, keeping clear of places where the sand and grit looked uncertain, as if covering sinkholes and crevasses that might drop him into a black pit.

Sometimes, he found himself navigating through ravines so deep that he could not see beyond the rims save for where the sky domed overhead. He had to trust to Trim in those situations, unable to determine with any accuracy even which direction he was going. Everything took a long time, and the hours rolled by without any noticeable progress. One section of the land looked pretty much like another. Off to the west, distant and remote, the chain of the mountains stretched parallel to his drive, their dark barren peaks cutting sharply against the sky, their rock a wall that locked away whatever lay beyond. There was an alien quality to those mountains that reminded him of his encounter with the spirits of the dead in the Rockies, and he found himself hoping that he would not have to go into them in order to find the Elves.

Elves. He thought about them the way he thought about the spirits of the dead–as insubstantial as smoke, as ephemeral as mist. He could not put faces to them, could not give them features, could not imagine their place in the world. Memory of the dead faded with time; of Elves, there were no memories at all. He might try to believe in them, but it would take an encounter with one to make them come alive.

He stopped and ate once during the day’s long drive, pulling off into a barren flat where the horizon stretched away into tomorrow. The emptiness was depressing, a warning of the world’s future. He tried not to think about that future, about what the Lady had told him, but he might as well have been trying not to think about eating and drinking. It was an unavoidable presence in his life, a reality that rode on his shoulders like a weight.

He switched his thinking over to Hawk and the Ghosts, wondering how they were managing without him, left to make their way east to where the boy would become leader of a tribe of children and caregivers, of strays and castoffs, and of creatures once human but no longer so. The boy and his children, Owl would say. He couldn’t quite picture this, either. But he knew it would happen because that was the task that the gypsy morph had been given to do.

And he would go with them.

To someplace new and different, to a fresh beginning.

He shook his head. He was twenty–eight years old, and he had lived almost his entire life traveling a single path, engaged in a single struggle. He could not imagine the sort of change that lay ahead. He could not imagine his place in it.

Sunset came and went, and still Trim led him on. Stars brightened the night sky, and because there was no competing light from anywhere on ground level he was able to keep track of the owl’s flight and find his way. The terrain had flattened out in the last hour or so, the road winding through low hills, closing on the mountains west. Within an hour of darkness pushing the last of the light below the horizon, he had left the highway and was driving along a singletrack road that was rutted and grown thick with weeds and scrub. He was in the mountain chain by now, the peaks dark pinnacles against the night sky. The Ventra worked its way steadily ahead, climbing and descending by equal turns, following the road he had set it upon, an old logging road, he guessed. Complete concentration was required in order to avoid the larger obstacles that might cause trouble even for the Ventra, so he was unaware of time passing as he drove.

Eventually, he gained the far side of the mountains and found himself deep in forests thick with foliage and glistening with life. He stared around, not quite believing what he was seeing. He had never seen trees as lush and full as these; he didn’t think they existed. It was the way the old world might have been, before the poisons and the changes in climate ruined it. The road wound through its center for a long time, navigating streams not yet dried out and ravines in which ferns grew, undulating in a soft wind like waves on open water.

Unable to help himself, he stopped the AV and climbed out. Motionless, he stood looking out into the darkness, into the forest that surrounded him. He smelled the air, breathing it in. Fresh and clean. He tasted it and found it free of bitterness, of any metallic edge. He listened. Night birds called to each other or maybe just to be heard, their cries echoing through the trees.

Where was he? What place was this?

Trim flew back into view and settled on the roof of the Ventra, round eyes regarding him intently. Logan stared at the bird. “Why don’t you tell me what else you know that I don’t?” he said.

He got into the AV and prepared to set off again, but the owl didn’t move from the vehicle roof. Apparently, this was it for the day. He climbed out again, asked aloud if they were done, waited for an answer–as if there might be one–and finally climbed back into the cab, secured the locks, and went to sleep.

When he woke next, it was not yet dawn. Trim was perched on the hood of the Ventra staring at him through the windshield, saucer eyes glowing like lamps. It was the stare that had brought him awake, he decided, pushing himself upright. He was stiff and groggy, but he made himself get out and walk around until both conditions had disappeared. The forest was a lush damp curtain, filled with new smells and muted colors. There were wildflowers growing all around him, an impossibility, a miracle. He stared at them as if they were something born of an alien world. He stared at the huge trees surrounding him, some with trunks so massive they dwarfed the stone columns of the abandoned government buildings he had seen in Chicago as a boy. The trunks were twisted and gnarly and had the look of something that had been tall and straight once but had been melted by the sun. They were all different, each one a sculpture carved by an artist of endless imagination.

He walked over to one, a giant with limbs that stretched so wide they brushed up against the other trees surrounding it, and he touched its rough bark with his fingers. He looked up into its center where shadows and leaves intermingled and everything felt hushed and hidden. He could see shards of starlight slanting through its multilayered canopy, dappling its limbs. He moved to one side and let a slender ray fall across his face. He smiled in the softness of its glow.

When he stepped away again, there were tears in his eyes. He couldn’t explain what had caused them, couldn’t understand how they had surfaced so quickly. Maybe they had been triggered by a memory from his boyhood or a dream he had forgotten. He brushed them away with the back of his hand. It was too much, he thought. This forest, with its smells and tastes and look and feel–it was too much. Everything was so overwhelming. No wonder he was crying.

Then Trim gave a small screech, and he glanced over to find the owl perched on the roof of the AV. Trim was ready to go. Logan sighed, turned away from the trees, and walked over to the bird. Immediately it flew away into the forest. Logan watched it go, waited for it to circle back in the way it did when telling him he needed to follow, saw it reappear higher up in the trees, and started to get into the AV. But then he realized that the road that had brought him in ended at this clearing. He scanned the landscape for signs of another road, then a trail, and finally a pathway or anything that resembled one. Nothing. Moreover, the trees were too thickly massed for the Ventra to pass. Wherever he was going, he was going to have to get there on foot.

Stuffing food and water containers into a backpack he slung over his shoulder, he picked up his black staff and set out.

He walked for about an hour, wending his way through the dark mass of the trees, climbing over fallen logs and in and out of shallow ravines, fording streams and skirting thorny brush, all the while following his winged guide. Trailers of mist curled through the forest like ethereal snakes. Starlight shone down through the screen of the leafy canopy, made pale and diffuse. Shadows layered the earth, climbed the trunks of the trees, crawled out on limbs, and disappeared into the ether. Birdsong followed after him, rose ahead of him, spread out around him in lilting welcome, brought to life by dawn’s approach. He found himself smiling. Where would he rather be than here, whatever the reason for coming?

Nowhere, he answered himself. Nowhere else.

He came upon the clearing unexpectedly, his eyes following Trim’s flight through the trees, only half paying attention to what until now had been an unchanging forest. But all at once he was standing in an open space on the high slopes of the mountainside, looking down on a forestland that stretched away for miles.

He was also staring at a hot–air balloon.

He recognized it for what it was immediately. The basket was sitting upright in the clearing with the air bag lying uphill on the ground in front of it, all of its stays attached, a compressor motor situated with a hose end funneling into the bag’s mouth, everything ready to fill the bag and take flight. He walked over to the balloon and stood looking down at it, wondering what it was doing here, who had flown it in, and why it was set out this way.

Trim had flown back again and was roosting on one edge of the basket, round eyes fixed on him.

“Another Knight of the Word,” a voice said from behind him. “What’s your name?”

He turned quickly, bringing up his staff. A young woman had emerged from the trees behind him. Mist wrapped her legs and spread away before her in a heavy carpet, giving her the appearance of having somehow been formed of it. He hadn’t heard her approach, hadn’t heard her at all. That didn’t happen often. She was tall and lithe with long blond hair tied back from her face with a headband. Her loose clothing blended perfectly with her surroundings, and the way she carried herself suggested that this was her country.

“Who are you?” she repeated.

When she spoke this time, he could see her perfectly, her features revealed by pale silver light that striped her body from head to foot and gave her an exotic, alien look. He felt something shift inside. The shift was small, but intense. He could not define what it was, but he knew instinctively what it meant. Nothing would ever be the same for him again.

He tightened his grip on the black staff out of a sudden need for reassurance. “I’m Logan Tom.”

She inclined her head, a cross between a greeting and an acknowledgment. “Are you friends with Angel Perez?”

He started to answer, to tell her he didn’t know anyone named Angel Perez, and then suddenly he noticed her ears, slightly pointed at the tips, and her eyebrows, which were slanted upward across her forehead. He stared at her just long enough that there was no mistaking what he was looking at.

He flushed, embarrassed. “Sorry. It’s just that …” He trailed off. “You’re an Elf, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “Did Angel tell you about us?”

“I don’t know Angel. I was sent by the Lady to find you. To find the Elves, I mean.”

She shook her head. “The Lady?”

“The voice of the Word.”

“I know of the Word. Of her Knights. Angel was one. She came to us earlier. To help us. Is that why you were sent?”

“That’s pretty much it. I was told there was a talisman you must use and that after you had done so, I was to guide you to where you were supposed to go.” He paused. “I was told that Angel was hurt, and I needed to take her place.”

“She was hurt keeping us safe, protecting us from demons that tracked us to where we found the talisman.”

They stared at each other for a moment, not speaking. Then Logan shook his head. “I don’t know what to say. I can’t stop looking at you. I didn’t know there were Elves before I was told to come here. Even after I was told, I didn’t believe it. Maybe I still don’t.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “I think maybe you do. Now. At any rate, we need you to believe if you are to help us.”

“I know that. I think what’s bothering me is that I didn’t know what to expect. I was looking for … something else.”

“And you found me.”

He nodded. “I guess that’s it.”

“No one is supposed to know about us, Logan. No one is supposed to believe we exist. That’s how we stay safe.”

“But now the demons know, don’t they? They’ve found you?”

She nodded.

“Are they here?”

She walked over and stood before him, so close she could have reached out and touched him if she had chosen to do so. She was too close, Logan thought. He stared at her. He had never met anyone like her, seen anyone like her, imagined anyone could make him feel like this. He didn’t care that she was an Elf. He didn’t care what she was. He barely knew her, and already he was thinking about things that he had never thought about anyone.

You will know who you are looking for, the Lady had told him when he asked, because your heart will tell you. He hadn’t understood until now what that meant.

He stared at her, and she stared right back at him. The connection was so strong it was palpable. He was suddenly confused and embarrassed. She shouldn’t have been able to tell what he was thinking, but she smiled as if she could.

“I’m Simralin Belloruus,” she said, taking his arm. “Walk back with me. It might take me a while, but I’ll explain everything.”

In THE COOL OF the PREDAWN, Kirisin walked from his sleeping quarters to the gardens that housed the Ellcrys. Ostensibly, he went alone, having been awakened by his sister before she left to assemble and make ready the hot–air balloon that would spirit them away after he had used the Loden. But he knew that in the shadows were Elven Hunters chosen by her to make certain he stayed safe. He didn’t see them, but he knew they were there. Sim wouldn’t have had it otherwise.

The path he followed was familiar, a path he had traveled hundreds of times in the company of the other Chosen on their way to offer morning greetings to the tree they were all sworn to protect. Biat, his best friend, Raya, Giln, and Jam–how many times they had walked it. Erisha, as well, although it was hard to think about her now. He would have gone to the others last night and told them everything that had happened since his flight from the city. He would have assured them that he had not killed Erisha, that he had tried to save her, that he would try to save them. He would have told them everything. He would have stayed with them and slept in his old bed. But Simralin said no. It wasn’t a good idea. No one must be told what was going to happen. The danger of panic was too great. She didn’t even mention the possibility of word slipping out and reaching the demonkind if too many people found out what was planned. But he understood it anyway. Any reunions or explanations would have to wait until this was over.

So in a small act of rebellion, he had chosen to take this more circuitous route from the sleeping quarters she had selected for him. At least he could walk the path he had shared with his friends. They would be sleeping and would not wake before he had done so, and his visit to the Ellcrys would be finished by the time they rose. Not long after that, they would be enclosed in the Loden and explanations and reunions wouldn’t matter.

He thought about the consequences of his actions for a moment. So much could go wrong, and almost all of it had to do with him. If he faltered, if he misjudged, if he rushed or hesitated at the wrong moment, he would fail. If he failed, everything would be lost.

In the moments before rising, lying silently in his bed, just coming awake, he had considered the possibility of keeping another of the Chosen out with him, a safeguard against his death before the city and its people could be restored. Biat, perhaps. Steady, reliable, the perfect choice. But did he have the right to ask such a thing? The burden, after all, had been given to him. Whoever stayed behind with him would share that burden, no matter how hard he tried to argue otherwise. Biat or another of the Chosen would stand at his shoulder and by doing so face the same dangers he did.

It was Simralin who had put it in perspective when asked her opinion earlier this morning. She was crouched next to him in the darkness, dressed and ready, her weapons strapped about her waist and over her shoulders, preparing to leave.

“You could do that, Little K. But if the demons manage to harm you, even to get close enough to do so, everyone around you, myself included, will already be dead. The presence of another Chosen wouldn’t make a difference.”

“But what if I am killed accidentally, even though you have expended your best efforts to keep that from happening?”

“What if you lose the Loden?” she replied. “What if you break it? What if it gets stolen? You can speculate all you want, Little K.” She paused. “Why don’t you just ask the Ellcrys what she wishes you to do?”

Ask the Ellcrys. Yes, he had thought afterward, that was what he would do.

So now he was on his way to speak to her. Or, more to the point, on his way to the gardens so that she could speak to him. But his uncertainties had not faded as he had hoped. Instead, they had intensified. He was awash in doubts. Not about the wisdom of keeping out another Chosen to aid him, but about his own abilities. He was being asked to do so much. Without skills, experience, or even much in the way of wisdom, he was being given a responsibility no one should have to bear. How was he to carry it out? How did he invoke the Loden’s power? What was needed to persuade it to enclose the Elves and their city along with the Ellcrys? How would he know afterward where he was to go and what he was to do once he got there? Thinking about it, about all of it, was so overwhelming that he almost turned back from his meeting. Someone else should be doing this, he kept thinking. He was not the right choice.

When he reached the gardens, he stood at their edge for several moments, looking at the tree and gathering his courage. He wasn’t sure what he would hear or even that he wanted to hear it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go any farther.

In the end, he did, of course. He stepped out into the starlit brightness of the clearing, out from the trees into the open, flinching as the light fell across his face and revealed him. As if, somehow, she could see that he was there. He came forward slowly, drinking in her impossible beauty, discovering anew aspects he had forgotten. He stood before her, just out of reach, staring into her scarlet canopy, blinking at the reflection of light from her silver limbs, awestruck in her presence.

She chose me, he thought suddenly. She could have chosen someone else, but she chose me. To his surprise, the words comforted him.

He walked into the dark pool of her shadow and dropped to his knees, head lowered, eyes closed, motionless and silent, waiting.

Waiting.

What if she does not speak to me?

He felt the spidery touch of a slender branch brush against his slumped shoulders.

— My beloved-He almost cried, so grateful was he, so relieved. “I have done what you asked of me,” he whispered aloud.

— Use the magic of the Loden and place me within, still rooted in my earth. Use the magic to place the Elves and their city within, as well. All of us belong within your safekeeping. Take us to where we will be made safe from what is to happen. You will know where that is and how you are to go. Others will show you the way. Others will go with you and protect you-

“But I don’t know how …,” he started, then stopped instantly as he felt the tip of the branch move to his neck.

— The path lies before you. The journey is set. You are my Chosen.

You are my beloved. You will know. You need no instruction or help to find your way. You need only your courage and your determination. Do you believe me-

“Yes,” he said at once. “I believe you.”

— Then do what you must, Kirisin Belloruus. Do what I have given you to do-He might have said more. He might have asked her more. He might have tried to discover the answers to questions that remained unanswered. But her limbs withdrew, and she was gone. He knelt before her, staring up into her branches, searching for movement, for recognition, for something further. But nothing revealed itself. She had said all she would.

He rose after a moment, waited a moment longer, still hoping, and then took a deep breath, turned, and walked away.

LOGAN tom walked next to Simralin Belloruus, head lowered in thought. She had just finished telling him everything that had happened to the Elves over the past few weeks leading up to the moment of his arrival, and he was trying to digest it. Trying to make it seem real might be a better way of putting it. He had seen and heard of some strange things in his time as a Knight of the Word, but never anything like this. That an entire city and its people could be saved from demons and once–men by being placed inside a gemstone was almost too much to accept.

Almost.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she asked him, apparently able to read his mind.

She didn’t sound angry or disappointed. She sounded mostly curious to hear how he would respond.

She looked over at him, and for what must have been the fiftieth time in the past hour he found himself wishing she would never look away.

“I believe you,” he said. “I would believe you if your story sounded three times this crazy.”

He had never been in love. He had not known what it would feel like. He understood what the term meant, but his life had not allowed for exploring its possibilities. There had been few he had really loved. His parents; Michael. That was it. And that was love of a different kind. Less intense, less hungry. What he felt for Simralin went so far beyond anything manageable that it shocked him. He could tell himself it was because he found her beautiful in a way that transcended anything he had ever known. But his attraction to her was a response to so much more. To her self–confidence and her way of speaking. To her smile and the quirky way she lifted one eyebrow when she was amused. To the way she carried herself. To the way she looked at him.

Feeling like this, being suddenly, impulsively in love, was so ridiculous and so reckless and wrongheaded that he could hardly come to grips with it. There was no space in his life for this. There was no time for it. He was engaged in the most important struggle of his life, entrusted with carrying out a mission that would ensure the survival of an entire nation—a race of people he hadn’t even believed existed before he found them. He needed to be cool and detached from everything but the responsibility he had been given. Yet here he was, imagining what it would be like if this woman were to love him back.

“Your brother,” he said, needing to break the silence between them. “So much depends on him. Is he up to that sort of pressure?”

She was looking away now, off into the trees. “Little K is a lot stronger than people give him credit for. He’s tough and he’s smart. He saved my life in the ice caves on Syrring Rise. He saved Angel’s life, too. Someone else–maybe almost anyone else–would have collapsed under the weight of the responsibility he was given. Fleeing his home and his city and his people when he had never been away for more than a few days and then just a short distance, using the Elfstones when he didn’t know what that would do to him, that took courage. I can’t even imagine what standing up to Culph and then to Tragen required.”

Logan nodded. “It might get worse.”

“It will get worse. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

He smiled despite himself. “Kirisin was doing pretty well with you as his protector. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to replace you.”

She gave him a look. “Does what I think worry you?”

He shrugged.

“You don’t seem like someone who cares what others think,” she pressed, making it sound like she was very sure. “You seem pretty self–sufficient.”

“That’s how it is with Knights of the Word. They work alone. They live alone.” He paused. “Worrying about what others think can get you killed.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “Tell me something about yourself.”

He looked over at her. “Tell you something?”

She nodded. “I told you everything about what happened to me. Tell me about what’s happened to you. About what you’ve been doing that brought you here.”

He was surprised at how eager he was to do so. He started at the very beginning, with his meeting with Two Bears, and then carried forward to his last visit from the Lady. He skipped some of it, the things that she didn’t need to know, the details of his battles, of his private struggles. He kept it simple and straightforward, telling her of the Ghosts and the gypsy morph and what was going to happen. She listened without interrupting him, watching his face, the look so intense he could feel its heat.

When he was finished, she gave him a smile. “If you weren’t standing here, if someone else told me this story, I would think it was just a story and nothing more.”

He smiled back. “I would think the same. If I hadn’t lived it.”

“Do you know where we’re supposed to go, even if Kirisin isn’t sure? Do you know where we will find this boy and all the other children? Angel’s children?”

He thought about it a moment. He didn’t know exactly, but somehow he thought he could find it anyway. Maybe Trim would know the way. But Trim had disappeared. There hadn’t been a sign of him since Logan had first encountered Simralin.

“I can get us to where we need to go. Then it’s up to the boy Hawk.”

Ahead, cottages appeared through the trees. The sun had risen behind them, a hazy orb hanging low in the east, still screened by the forest, its light diffuse and silvery. The predawn silence had given way to a steady rise of birdsong. From somewhere not too far ahead, a dog barked and voices could be heard.

“We’ll be there in a few minutes,” she said. “Arissen Belloruus will need to hear what brought you to us. But he will be happy you’ve come.”

They passed through the trees and found a pathway leading to the cluster of houses. The scent of flowers filled the morning air. Logan breathed it in.

“I’m happy you’ve come, too,” Simralin said suddenly.

She said it in a bold, challenging way, as if speaking the words cemented something between them that she understood better than he did. He looked over at her, but she was already striding ahead of him.

“This way,” she called back.

He had an odd thought at that moment, one he hadn’t had since Michael’s death. He would follow her anywhere.