Will sat still, absorbing what had just happened. If it was all real, then not only had he succeeded in reaching Gaby, but he’d caught a glimpse of his enemy. How had that happened? It was as if a wire had been crossed or a frequency mistuned, and perhaps that was not so surprising. If he’d reached Gaby by thinking so intently of her, and the two people in shadow were thinking intently of both Gaby and himself, why shouldn’t he stumble across them? They ought to have guarded against it. Perhaps they didn’t expect him to learn so fast. They would know better now.
Of course it meant that they could be watching him now—his actions at least, probably his thoughts too. How did that work? There was so much he didn’t know, and he repressed an impulse to kick at the dirt in frustration. Then he realized that, if they could watch his thoughts, there wasn’t any point in repressing impulses, so he went ahead and kicked out with his heel, leaving a deep scuff in the dirt. Then he stood up.
“Yes, I’m frustrated,” he said aloud. “You people have been ahead of me since I was born. Way ahead. But I’m going to catch up. Just watch me.” Was that false bravado? They would know if it was. It was a horrible, trapped feeling, knowing that someone might know everything you thought. Might know exactly how horrible and trapped you felt, and might be rejoicing in it. He gritted his teeth. They might be laughing, right now, at how unnerved he was to think that they might be laughing at him. And there was no escape.
“Except one,” he said. “You have me now, but I will get out of here, and I will get stronger, and I will understand. And then I’ll win. If you’re watching me, it’s because you know I’m a threat. I promise you, I’ll be more of one before long.”
With that, he dismissed all thoughts of their watching him. There was nothing he could do about that. It was time to begin to see what else he could do. He paced around a little while, noting absently that the scuff he’d made in the ground was gone. Then a thought struck him. Physical impressions did not hold in this space, but would mental impressions? He had long ago perfected the art of making things he wanted appear in dreams. Once you knew you were dreaming, and could move where you wanted, changing the landscape to suit yourself was easy. And this place, like the shadow-dogs, seemed to have some of the logic of dreams.
He began simply, by carving a W on the trunk of a tree. It was astonishingly easy, no more difficult than doing it in a dream would have been. All he had to do was look at the tree, and decide there was going to be a W on it. If he imagined it precisely, as thick strokes or thin, then it would have the qualities he gave it; if not, something in the deeps of his brain, invisible and inaccessible, would choose attributes for it.
Very well, now for the real test: if he walked away, would the tree hold the impression his mind had made on it, or would it be erased as his torn-up clod of grass had been erased? As before, he turned his back and walked ten paces. Then he turned around.
Immediately he cursed himself for not being more careful about noting the exact position of the tree. But then, that would be foolish, wouldn’t it? He’d already seen that these trees could move around. He did not see his initial carved on a trunk, but neither could he be sure that he was looking at the exact same tree.
He hunted, walking slowly back along the route he thought he had taken. No carved trees appeared on this side. He circled the ones nearest to where he thought he’d stood. All their trunks appeared smooth as ever. He took a slowly widening circle, tracing what he hoped was a dizzy spiral, swinging around each tree in his path, until his head spun. At first he tried to be meticulous about not missing any, but soon this appeared to be hopeless and he gave it up, instead letting his feet take him where they would, moving from tree to tree like a giddy comet, as if he was waltzing with each of them in turn, half-laughing at the foolishness of the enterprise but determined to see it through anyway. He would not be overwhelmed, this stupid everlasting forest would not get the best of him, never mind that he was probably under the influence of hunger-induced euphoria, he would find the mark he had made. And then he did.
He blinked dumbly at it: there it was, just as he had carved it, though, he was fairly certain, several yards at least away from where he had originally carved it. “HA!” he cried loudly. The emptiness of the forest absorbed the sound, but he did not mind that, and to show it, it spoke aloud again. “You thought you’d get me,” he called out. “Hide it all you like, this place can be mine, too.” He might be a prisoner, but at least he could redecorate his cell.
* * *
Gaby kept noticing that she was drumming her fingers on the kitchen counter, and kept stopping herself. She didn’t want to seem anxious, or uncertain, or impatient, or any of the things she was. She asked Nick for the third time, “Can I get you anything to eat or drink?”
For the third time, he replied, “No, thanks, I’m fine.” These were the only words they’d exchanged in the last ten minutes. Nick was sitting backwards on one of the kitchen chairs, his arms folded under his chin. Gaby was standing by the kitchen counter; she had found it impossible to sit down. They’d come back here, to her apartment, to regroup and make their next plan, but no planning had happened yet. All she could think, over and over, was, Will is trapped somewhere and we are not helping him. We don’t know how to help him.
The bathroom door opened and Julia emerged, her hair wet and stringy over her shoulders, wearing a sweater and skirt of Gaby’s.
“I feel like a new woman,” she said. “Honestly. I can tackle anything now. Thank you so much. Is there anything to eat?”
“Yes,” said Gaby, relieved. “We have stuff for sandwiches… I could make some pasta… and there’s half a Spanish omelette left over from a couple days ago.”
Julia came up after her and peered into the refrigerator. “That looks interesting, what is it?”
“Mostly egg, onion, and potato. You’ve never had one?”
“No, why would I?”
“My mom makes them all the time. Will used to ask for one every time he came over.”
“I don’t think I ever came to your house for dinner.”
“Oh. I guess you didn’t.” It was odd– she’d started thinking of Nick and Julia as essential pieces of that old life. Which they had been, but in a much more distant way than she was remembering. They hadn’t been her friends particularly; no reason they would have come to her house.
She served up the leftover omelette with bread and cold cuts. Nick, despite his persistent refusals of food, ate through nearly an entire pack of sliced turkey.
“We’d better watch it,” said Julia, “or we’ll get used to being in a home again. Nick, you’ll shower before we head out, won’t you?”
Nick grunted. “If we have time.”
“Go ahead,” said Gaby. “It’s not like we’re in a hurry to go anywhere.”
“Yeah…” said Julia in a dubious voice. “Which brings us to the question: where are we headed next?”
“Well, I suppose we can’t go back to the church,” said Gaby. “And I still don’t think we should stay here overnight.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Julia impatiently. “We know where we’re sleeping tonight, it’s the kudzu church.” At Gaby’s blank look she explained, “We found it when we were first scouting the area; we can’t actually sleep in the building, it’s completely overgrown, but there’s still a nice-sized cemetery and we can sleep in the van. We always have a second place picked out, in case we’re discovered at the first.”
“Oh. That’s smart.”
“Yeah, well. What I want to know is, what are we doing next? How can we find Will?”
Gaby caught herself drumming her fingers again. That was the last question she wanted to hear. She stared down at the counter for a long time as the silence spun out. Finally she looked up, to see Nick and Julia watching her unrelentingly. She sighed. “I don’t know.” She hated hearing herself say it.
“You don’t know? So… what have you been working on all this time? We figured you were coming up with a plan.”
Yes. That would be what they expected. That would be how Will had been with them; he would have fallen silent for long spans of time, and then emerged with a plan. She didn’t know how he’d have behaved if he found himself unable to devise one. Quite possibly that hadn’t yet happened. It might have this time, if he’d been here instead of her. He was more confident than she was, but she could match him idea for idea when they got going. And now she had nothing.
“I was trying to,” she said. They were still waiting for more. “I’ve been thinking the problem over since we left. I don’t see anything we can do.”
Julia frowned. “Nothing? After everything we learned?”
“We didn’t learn anything!” Gaby was surprised this had escaped them. “What did he tell us? That there are more people like myself and Will: which we guessed. That some of them can do things Will and I can’t: which is unhelpful at the moment. That we have enemies: if we knew one thing, we knew that.”
“Well… but what about the things Matthias told us?”
“That Will might have been taken when he was leaving the house? Or told something that led him somewhere dangerous? We don’t have any idea who might have taken him, or where, or why. Nothing Matthias told us does a scrap of good.’
“He risked his life to tell us!” Julia cried. “Or… risked something, anyway. It was an incredibly brave thing to do!”
“Brave, yeah. Sure. But that doesn’t make it helpful.”
“How can it not be helpful? We know there was a woman who came to his uncle’s house… we know his uncle probably had something to do, one way or another, with Will’s disappearing.”
“And what does that get us?”
“Well, we could go back there. Make him tell us what he knows.”
“How would you make him? If he wasn’t willing to risk Matthias to keep Will from danger, why would he risk him to send us into it?”
“Well, a bad plan is better than no plan.”
“Is it?” said Gaby. “A bad plan could get people hurt. If we go back there, we might draw the attention of whoever threatened them. Do you want to be responsible for risking that?”
Julia drew a breath, stopped herself, and frowned. “No. Of course not. But what else are we going to do? Just give up on Will?”
“No,” Gaby echoed. “Of course not.” She sighed. “I just can’t think of anything that’s not way too risky. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with here, not really. But Will reached me in my dreams last night. Maybe, once I go to sleep, he’ll be able to get through to me again.”
“So that’s the plan. Go to sleep.”
Gaby shrugged one shoulder. “It’s all we can do. For now, anyway. We can keep thinking about it.”
Julia stood still, considering. “What do you think, Nick?”
“I think Gaby’s right that we might put the Delacroix house in danger if we went back there. That doesn’t bother me too much, if it’s a question of saving Will, but I think we should wait. If we’re lucky, Gaby will hear from Will again. If not, we can go back and try to find out more from Mr. Delacroix.”
Julia sighed. “Okay. The kudzu church it is then, I guess. Can I fill up our water jugs from your tap, Gaby?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Gaby gathered up the dishes to wash, Nick went to take a shower, and Julia walked out to the van to get the water jugs. When she came back, she and Gaby worked awkwardly around each other in the small kitchen, neither of them speaking. Gaby couldn’t tell whether she was irritated with Julia, or afraid Julia was irritated with her. She felt she’d failed somehow, in not coming up with a workable plan, but what plan could she have had? This was the real world; some problems didn’t have solutions. Even Will admitted that.
Of course, when Will was confronted with a problem that didn’t have a solution, he usually solved it anyway, by changing the rules. What would he be doing right now, if he were her?
Gaby had gone to the dining room to put away a glass; as she walked back, there was a great thunk and splosh in the kitchen. Julia was standing at the sink, water pouring all over the floor from the jug she’d dropped—thankfully it was plastic—and staring.
“What?” Gaby cried. Julia was staring at Gaby’s feet, at the ground by her feet, and she knew what that meant. One obvious answer. But it was so startling that Gaby couldn’t at first believe it. Not a shadow-dog here, inside. Not one that had followed them into the house. “It’s not,” she said.
Julia nodded, keeping her eyes on the ground. There was a single overhead light in the kitchen, and a cluster of four bulbs in the dining room, casting two faint shadows in opposite directions. And beside the foreshortened columns of Gaby’s shadow, just a few inches away but plainly cast by nothing visible, was a smaller, faintly triangular blob.
