Wood Sprites

Jillian realized that Louise intended to leave her behind. She gave Louise a betrayed look. “I want to go with you.”

“You can see magic,” Louise stated firmly. “It stands to reason that the greatest concentration of magic will be where the two worlds connect. It has to be hard to spot. If it was easy to find, then all the tourists visiting this cave would be popping over to Elfhome all the time.”

Jillian huffed at the inarguable logic. She flung her arms about Louise and clung tightly to her for several minutes, taking deep breaths.

Louise twisted a line from The Great Escape: “I haven’t seen Pittsburgh yet, not from the ground or from the air, and I plan on doing both before the war is over.”

Jillian snorted and pulled away. “Put a fence in front of these girls. . and they’ll climb it.” That was the tagline for the movie when it was released.

“Climb it? We’d run a bulldozer through it!”

Jillian laughed in surprise. She snapped a salute and sauntered away, whistling the movie’s theme song.

* * *

While Crow Boy took the luggage mules on to the gift shop, Louise stopped at the entrance to the Hall of the Mountain King. She eyed the graffiti etched into the stone that might have been left by Esme. Bell was number sixty-seven in the list of the most common surnames in the United States; any number of Bells could have etched a date and an arrow into the wall. Was this really one of Esme’s cryptic clues? When Louise first saw it, she was sure it meant that they were supposed to follow it to Elfhome. Now she was wondering if it meant this was the best place to collapse the passageway.

Certainly it was a logical spot. The ceiling was at its lowest point. Trying to ignore her doubts and fears, she set up a scry spell. The sandstone formed a solid ceiling for twenty feet before giving way to a thin layer of dirt at the surface far above.

I’m going to bury us. This could be our grave if I’m wrong.

Louise pressed her hands to her eyes. Was she right? Was this the best action? Jillian was her control; without knowing, her twin operated on logic. The doubt on her twin’s face had been easy to read. They weren’t on Elfhome proper yet and they didn’t understand the delicate forces that created the pathway. Even though she was nearly a quarter-mile from the Dining Hall cave, she could trigger a shift in the entire area and break the connection between the worlds. They had no idea when Yves would arrive; she could wait until they were safely on Elfhome.

All her instincts, though, were screaming that she had to act. Now. Quickly.

She dug through the printed-out spells. They had three force strikes printed out. The paper trembled as she held them, trying to decide if she should use them in combination or just take the time to ramp up the power of one.

Crow Boy returned with empty luggage mules. “I locked all the prisoners in the ostrich truck.”

“They can’t get out, can they?” Louise asked. “We could.”

He grinned. “Yes, you could, but I doubt they can. They’re not that clever. I also programmed the truck to take them to the Miami-Dade police department.”

“Miami?”

“It will take about a day to get there.”

Long enough to keep the elves out of their hair but short enough that the elves wouldn’t die from lack of water.

“I locked down the gift shop,” Crow Boy said. “They will have to break their way in.”

Louise nodded her understanding. “Okay, head to the pathway.”

Crow Boy surprised her by hugging her. “Be safe,” he murmured like a blessing.

44: The Unmaker

Louise considered the printed spells again. The slips of paper represented their only true attack spell. If she used all three, they would be helpless later on — unless of course she and Jillian could cast spells like Queen Soulful Ember. Dufae had stated that setting up a resonance with the Spell Stones was unreliable through the pathway and charted his attempts in the codex. His failure rate was so high that they’d kept to the surefire success of printed spells.

On Elfhome, things would be different. If they could cast spells like domana, then they wouldn’t need the preprinted spells.

She closed her eyes and tried for the calm knowing. One or three? Use or keep? Use. Quickly.

She pulled out a plastic painter’s drop cloth and unfolded it to spread out over the damp floor. She carefully taped the printed spells onto the sheet. There was a railing along the uneven path; she could drape the plastic over the railing to aim the force of the spell at the ceiling. Which would it be: a direct blow or glancing? If she made it too glancing, it wouldn’t shear off enough stone to fill the passage, but the impact of a straight-up blow might not be enough to bring down the roof even with the combined power of all three spells.