Wood Sprites

41: The Edge Of Two Worlds

During the first Startup, Monroeville had been one finger of urban sprawl extending along I-376 to where the artery led out of the heart of Pittsburgh to connect up with the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Businesses extended only a block or two from the main roads and few buildings were taller than one story. Its largest claim to fame up to that point had been a 1978 horror movie filmed in its shopping mall.

Reporters during the first Startup repeated that point often when a mated pair of sauruses went on a rampage in the parking lot. The twins had studied the hours of videos taken from that time, and Louise thought she would be able to recognize landmarks. Over the years, though, Monroeville had grown as a gateway to Elfhome, taking over neighboring towns as it expanded. The road edged with low-slung businesses was gone. In its place were dozens of thirty-story skyscrapers and skeletons of even taller buildings still under construction.

Their hotel was one of the newer buildings, and the presidential suite proved to be a penthouse apartment. From the living room, they could see for miles. The hotel had been built with views of the Rim in mind; it stood on the last hilltop before the quarantine zone. Even in the deepening shadows of twilight, it was easy to spot the curving line where Monroeville stopped and the Rim started. It arched from horizon to horizon, sweeping close to the hotel as it passed.

Louise peered downward and spotted the tall border fence just a block away, edging a 7-Eleven parking lot. She was surprised that Monroeville pressed up so tight against it. In all the news reports she’d ever seen, the video showed the fence bordered by desolate fields. Beyond it lay a mile of burned sterile land, a no-man’s-land to isolate Elfhome flora and fauna and make it easy for the EIA border guard to spot illegal immigrants. Far in the distance, the tall ironwood trees rose as a solid, unbroken wall.

“So close,” Jillian whispered with forehead and hands pressed to the glass.

They had less than a week to rescue the tengu children, and then the forest beyond the fence would be swapped for Pittsburgh. If Team Mischief hadn’t succeeded by then, the fight would be moved to Elfhome as the secret elves transported the nestlings across the border. Yves would have thousands of oni warriors at his command. Last anyone heard, Windwolf had been hundreds of miles away at Aum Renau. And one by one, the tengu children would be murdered.

Louise turned away from the window, trying to focus. They’d spent the nine hours on the train verifying that the children weren’t in the safe house anymore, nor at any of the other safe houses that Crow Boy knew that his people used while seeking the freedom of Pittsburgh. Logic suggested that Yves would have kept the children close to the quarantine zone, but it was nearly a hundred and sixty miles in circumference.

Less than a week and hundreds of square miles.

“Pft, nuts!” Joy muttered from the minibar, and a can went flying across the hotel room. “Oh! Candy!”

The cans of nuts landed beside the babies, who were ransacking the luggage, looking for the mini-hovercarts. Nikola was operating Tesla to move the heavy things and the girls were in the mice, darting here and there, squeaking excitedly. Like the Johnsons’ children, eventually they’d found their first train ride unbearably long and boring. Taking their cues from the real children, the babies had repeatedly asked how much longer the trip would be and fought with each other. At least the Team Mischief babies did not vomit, poop, pee, or scream — something that the Johnson kids did with alarming frequency. The three children had been an education on how difficult parenting really was. After five hours, Louise had been really wishing the Johnsons had off switches.

The hotel room door opened and Crow Boy came in carrying bags of takeout.

“The house is empty.” His voice was wooden. He set the bags on the suite’s dinette table. “Empty and clean.”

Louise breathed out in mixed relief. They’d tapped spy satellites on the train, pinpointed the safe house, and examined it remotely by every means they could think of. Crow Boy had insisted on going and checking it alone. The twins agreed because the only thing they couldn’t discount were the children being dead inside.

He collapsed into one of the chairs. “I feel so useless.”

“We’ll find them.” She opened the bags. “Indian?” There had been a Chinese restaurant just on the corner.

“I don’t know who I can trust.” He laid his head on the table. “Not everyone who is Chinese is an oni, but the human-looking oni are all traveling with Chinese visas. The oni need to have people close to both sides of the quarantine zones to get their people in and out unseen. The EIA have weeded out the moles in their agency, but there are plenty of others on Earth. We need to be careful not to be seen.”

She nodded, her stomach flipping at the thought of being captured again. Yves had been careless once, mostly because Feng had been there, distracting him. Yves wouldn’t underestimate the twins again. This time he’d know all about the babies and Joy.

Her hands trembled slightly as she opened up the containers of palak paneer, vegetable korma, chicken tikka masala, samosa, and naan bread.

Crow Boy reached out and took her hand; his was large and calloused compared to hers. “You only need to find them. I’ll deal with the guard.” For a moment he seemed like an adult man, and then the moment was gone, and he was an exhausted, battered fourteen-year-old boy with the world on his shoulders.

“I told you: no charging in.” She smacked him on the top of his head. “We’re smarter than Yves. He’ll never see us coming.”

Crow Boy’s shoulders shook with silent laughter.

“Promise!” Louise smacked him again.

“I will do anything you ask of me, but I won’t let you put yourself in danger. If it comes to a fight, you must let me do what I’ve been trained to do. Alone.”

At the mansion, he had taken on half a dozen adults by himself. He taken out two and held his own for several minutes against four. Those he was fighting had been worried enough to call for help.

“Are you like some kind of super ninja warrior?” Louise asked.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

His shoulders shook again with silent laughter. “It is a long story of love and honor and loyalty, but the simple answer is yes.”

“Oh, come on!” Louise cried. “I know you’re tired, but we need to know everything we can about what’s going on. If we’d known what was going on right after our first visit to the museum, we could have stopped — stopped everything. As it was, we didn’t even get a message to our sister warning her or Windwolf.”

He laughed tiredly. “Geez, where do I even start?” He sighed and was silent for a little while. “My people were human once. We lived in what is now China during the time of the Warring States, over two thousand years ago. The first Wong Jin was a wise sage who had fallen out of favor with the Flame Emperor. He and his seven loyal and brave servants became bandits, kind of like Robin Hood and his merry men, if Robin Hood had a secret cave hideout that led to another world. Over time, they gathered hundreds of poor people to them in a remote mountain village on Onihida. Then one day—” He laughed. “You have to understand, we love to tell stories about Wong Jin. It gives us hope that someday — if we’re clever — we’ll outsmart our enemies and find freedom.”

“One day—” Louise prompted him.

“One day Wong Jin and his servants were out on one of their many adventures — which mostly involved stealing something and then escaping in a clever way — when they discovered Elfhome. And there, basically on the doorstep to that world, was Providence. Most men would have been frightened — and certainly Wong Jin’s men wanted to flee the dragon — but Wong Jin saw that Providence was an intelligent creature and so engaged him in conversation.

“The dragons had put Elfhome under edict. By the laws of his people, Providence could not travel to Elfhome, but he’d lost his daughter on that world. Fearing the worst, he pleaded with Wong Jin to find his child and bring her to him. He promised to reward Wong Jin richly if he succeeded. Wong Jin accepted the challenge. Providence marked Wong Jin so his daughter would know that Wong Jin was his Chosen. To make a long, long story short, Wong Jin carefully made his way through the elves’ defenses to find where Providence’s child had been entrapped. Only he arrived too late. The elves had already shattered the child to pieces.”

Louise thought of Joy and the eleven baby dragons all still inside Dufae’s chest. She and Jillian had been so focused on saving their siblings that they hadn’t stopped to consider where the baby dragons had came from. Dufae had known that the nactka were “loaded,” but had he understood that meant that each one had an intelligent creature locked inside?

“What did Wong Jin do?” Louise asked.

“He was about to return with bits and pieces of the daughter when he discovered that the elves had also created a hybrid, a dragon-elf child. Assuming that Providence wanted anything related to his daughter, Wong Jin stole the child and carried her back to Onihida. Somewhere along the way, things got complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“They fell in love.” Crow Boy said this like a typical boy; that love was weird and possibly icky. “By the time they reached Onihida, Wong Jin did not want to hand her over to Providence, nor did she want to leave Wong Jin. While his men were fearful of Providence, they pledged that they would protect her with their lives.”

“So Wong Jin brought to Providence all the shattered pieces of his child, including the female dragon-elf. He reminded Providence that he had promised Wong Jin a rich reward. For his prize, Wong Jin wanted the female, and only her. They braced themselves for a fight, but Providence knew that this would happen; it was why he picked Wong Jin to be his Chosen. He gave his blessing to their marriage and promised to watch over their people as their guardian. And to Wong Jin’s seven loyal servants, Providence gave magical powers so that they could guard his daughter.”

“So Wong Jin became your king and you’re one of the knights?”

“When you give thieves magical powers you don’t get knights in shining armor, you get super ninjas.”

“Wait, if you were humans, where did all the crow stuff come from?” Jillian joined them at the table. She picked up one of the samosas and started to eat it.

“For hundreds of years, life was good. The land was rich, our neighbors were distant, and we had our guardian, Providence. We had all that we needed, and Earth became a place of legend for us. But then about a thousand years ago, the oni came to our valley and captured Providence. Dragons have a dual existence. Their minds and their bodies can exist separately. His spirit came to our dream crow and begged for us to kill his body. If the oni intended just to kill Providence, it would be one thing, for it would have freed his soul. What they intended, though, was to shatter him down and remake him into a weapon of war. It would have been worse than what the elves had done to his daughter. He could not allow it.”

“But — but — why kill him? Why not save him?”

“What he asked was for the blood guard to sacrifice themselves. The oni had Providence in a magical trap. The blood guard would need to fight to his side. There would be no time to free him, only time enough to strike a killing blow before they would be overwhelmed. They were a thousand against an army. It was a slaughter on both sides. The Chosen One and all of the blood guard that fought that day died. But our people succeeded at what Providence had asked; we killed him, freeing his soul.”

“A thousand lives for one?” Jillian cried. “That was a win?”

“If the oni had kept control of his soul, the damage would have been worse. They had caught other dragons and shattered them and experimented. They wanted Providence to craft what would be basically a global living spell. It could reach for thousands of miles, affect millions of people, guided by his soul. It would be like an intelligent nuclear bomb, programmed to seek and destroy, and having no will of its own to resist its orders. As it was, they gathered my people together and experimented with just his body. They locked the survivors within one massive cage and cast one spell. Everyone was transformed; merged with crows that — that. .” He trailed off, his eyes widening slightly, and then he blushed and looked down. “You don’t need to hear all the gross parts. One spell and we were forever changed as a race. Providence shielded us from the worst that could have happened. Because of him, we still function as humans. Mostly. We have bird feet and we lay eggs. But we couldn’t fly. We didn’t have wings at first. Providence provided the spell for our wings.”

Dufae’s chest had contained twelve “loaded” nactka. The twins exchanged glances and shivered. Dufae had opened the box and instantly known that he had to flee with it to Earth where it was harmless, lest it fall into the wrong hands. According to Yves, Ming had it now on Elfhome.

“The dragons had tried to isolate Onihida. Keep the evil that had taken root from spreading. But they missed one pathway. The oni guessed of its existence, but they couldn’t find it. Somehow they tricked the elves into finding it. As the oni started to flood their people through it to China, we got out the newborn Chosen One and all of the blood-guard children that survived our enslavement. We fled to Japan and took refuge in a mountainous temple with a sect of warrior monks known as the yamabushi.”

That explained his Japanese name. Louise wondered what kind of magical powers he had. She also wondered what exactly Joy could do. If Providence could give out magical powers, what did it mean for the baby dragon?

Crow Boy lifted his head and gave Louise a desperate look. “We thought Jin Wong had sacrificed himself on the chance of finding us a new home, one where we could live free. We’ve been waiting for the mark of Providence to appear on a new Chosen. So many of the bloodline have been killed, and now the oni has the baby in their control, and because of that, Riki let himself fall into their power. At the hospital, though, you said that Jin’s returning. Does that mean he’s not dead?”

He wanted it to be true. Considering all that he’d been through — and what could lay ahead — it seemed cruel to tell him that she had no idea what she had babbled out.

“I–I-I don’t know. .” She couldn’t crush his hope. “I don’t know how he’ll return. Or when.”

“Please, can you try to do another prophecy?”

The word shocked Louise. Prophecy? Her?

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Louise said. “I don’t even remember what I said. It sounded like nonsense to me. Jillian covered my eyes.” Louise unfolded one of the napkins that had come with the takeout and pressed it to her face to illustrate. “And it just happened.”

“We could get an Ouija board,” Jillian grumbled. “Would make as much sense.”

Louise blushed and started to drop her hands, but Crow Boy caught her wrist.

“Please. Just try.” His voice sounded husky, like he was about to cry.

She took a deep breath. Just try? Try what? If she did have a magical power, so far she had only done the equivalent of randomly changing channels on a television. What she needed was meaningful search terms to pull up what she wanted. Captain Jin Wong. The Tainlong Hao. Providence’s Chosen One. What had she been thinking of at the hospital? They were trying to feed the police information on Alexander being in danger. .

“Brilliance strikes into the darkness!” It was like plugging into an electrical outlet: power came sure and strong. “The attack is true, and the dark pathway is torn asunder! All that were trapped are free! Providence Child spreads his wings as he falls. He falls!”

Louise found herself on her feet, pointing toward the window.

Something streaked past, a fiery comet in the dark night.

“What the hell?” Jillian ran across the room to lean against the glass. “What is that?”

“It’s Esme!” Louise cried. “She’s trying to save Providence’s Child.”