The plane leveled out in a sudden lurch, as if it had suddenly hit a patch of glass-smooth air. No turbulence, not even the slightest bounce. I opened my eyes, blinked at Yves, and he raised his eyebrows and gave a Gallic shrug.
"Bathroom," I said, and unfastened my seat belt, climbed over his knees and hustled for the tiny, cramped stall. It was unoccupied, thank God, and I lunged inside, clicked the latch shut, and leaned over to splash cold water on my face. The urge to vomit was passing. I dampened a paper towel and used it to blot sweat from my face and neck, then leaned over to splash my face again, since it had felt so good the first time.
When I straightened up, there was fog coming out of the air vent over my head. I blinked at it, thinking wildly about James Bond movies and knockout gas, but I didn't smell anything, and I didn't feel any more light-headed than normal.
It continued drifting down from the vent in thick, cloudy streamers, twisting lazily in the air, tangling together into a denser mist as it fell. I stretched out my hand and felt cool moisture on it.
Even though I didn't fly much, I was pretty sure this didn't qualify as normal.
In seconds, the mist had formed a shape, and that definitelywasn't normal. Not even on an airplane full of Wardens.
I felt the hard edge of the sink cabinet digging into my butt, and realized that I was staring when I ought to be fleeing. I reached for the latch on the door—
—and it instantly froze up, covered with ice crystals. When my skin touched it, it burned like liquid nitrogen, and I yelped and flinched backward.
The shape in the fog wasn't male, and it wasn't female. It wasn't anything, really. Soft edges, curves, a genderless oval of face, no features on it.
As I watched, the whole door glittered and glistened with forming ice. No way was I going out that way.
Which was the only way, unless I was brave enough to rip out the chemical toilet and go that direction.
Which I wasn't.
I backed away as far as the tiny bathroom would allow, overbalanced, and sat down hard on the toilet's lid. The fog-shape leaned toward me, and the air around me began to move and breathe in subtle motions, whispering over my skin and combing through my hair, sliding under my clothes to touch me in places where, well, wind just didn't usually go. I controlled the impulse to self-defense. So far, nothing that had happened was life-threatening, just—weird.
"Um—hi?" I ventured. The air around me stirred up, moving faster, ruffling my hair and fluttering my shirt. There was no sense of heat or cold to it; everything was exactly room temperature, passionless and sensation-free. "Who are you?"
The figure wrapped in fog bent closer, and suddenly I couldn't breathe. No air. Okay, no problem, I was a Weather Warden, I'd dealt with this before…
Only I couldn't. I couldn't get a grip on the air at all. Whatever was facing me had absolute control over my native elements.
As soon as I realized it, the air flooded back in, and I took a grateful gasping breath. "Right," I said. "Oracle. There was a Fire Oracle, so you'd be… Air and Water."
I hadn't even thought about it, but of course Oracles would come in threes—Fire, Weather, Earth. Collect the whole set… Well, at least it was another opportunity for me to communicate.
Maybe. So far, this one hadn't said a word.
"I'm—I'm supposed to talk to the Mother," I said. It'd be nice to dress my mission up in fancy talk, but I didn't think that would come naturally to me under stress, and I didn't think that I'd have the time, either. "Can you help me with that?"
No answer. Even the subtle currents of air that had been stroking my skin came to a halt. I hoped that wasn't a rude question.
"I'm a Weather Warden," I said. "I'm—in a way I'm part of you—"
Mistake. The wind came back, a steady, crushing pressure all over me, pinning me in place. I'd never experienced real g-forces, but this reminded me of the films I'd seen. It was painful in ways I'd never imagined, stressing every muscle and bone to the limit.
Then it stopped. I overcompensated, pitching forward almost to the floor, and sawed in ragged breaths that tasted of blood.
The Oracle didn't like being compared to humans; that much was obvious. I could understand that. We were imperfect creatures, constantly being born and dying. Tied to the earth and sea by gravity, hunger, a thousand invisible strings. The Earth herself saw us as a nuisance. The Oracle hadn't seen anything to change its mind.
"I saved him," I said, and looked up at the faceless creature floating in the air above me. "I saved the Fire Oracle. The Demon Mark would have destroyed him, and once it was past him, it would have been in the Mother's blood. So a little respect might be in order here."
No answer. Man, this was frustrating, not to mention scary. I cast a longing look at the ice-covered bathroom door.
"I saved the life of an Oracle, and I need you to help me now. Just help me talk to the Mother."
There was a sudden sensation in the air, as if everything in the world had shivered. The Oracle, wreathed in fog, leaned closer. As it did, streamers of milk-white mist wrapped around me to lick me like tongues. I shuddered, and as the Oracle's face came closer to mine, I saw its eyes.
Just for a split second, because I turned my face away and closed my eyelids and prayed, prayednever to see such a thing again. I remembered that I'd thought Jonathan's eyes had been scary—and they had been, depthless and terrifying—but at least they'd reminded me of something I understood. Something inside my experience.
These were the eyes of eternity itself.
"Help me," I said. "Please."
The air shivered again, more violently this time, with a sound like a million silver bells falling out of a dump truck. Deafening. Was that a voice? Was I supposed to understand it? I didn't. I couldn't. Even the Fire Oracle's screams had made more sense.
"I can't understand you!" I said, and immediately knew that was a mistake. One doesn't correct gods, even minor ones, and if the Djinn bowed to these creatures, that was good enough to qualify them for the name. The air around me curdled and thickened, pressing on me again. Squeezing. I couldn't breathe. Spots danced bright in front of my bulging eyes, and I pitched to my knees on the tiny bathroom floor with the Oracle, bent at some impossibly inhuman angle, following me down. Boring into me with those eyes.
I was starting to wish that I was any kind of Warden other than a Weather Warden. If this was my patron saint, I was in real trouble, because I had the sense that it was playing with me. Enjoying my pain. Interested in my panic.
Just when I thought it would crush me like a grape, the air stilled again, completely dead of intention or life. The Oracle hadn't moved away. When I breathed, I was breathing in mist that flowed off its genderless, featureless face.
I avoided looking at it directly.
"I'm not quitting," I said. "If you won't help me, I'll go to the Earth Oracle."
It had a mouth, after all, and teeth made of ice, and it showed them to me. I whimpered, I think, waiting for it to destroy me, and mist wrapped around my neck in a thick, choking rope to pull me closer.
My skin stung with a sudden ice-cold chill.
I focused past the teeth, on the terrifying eyes of the thing, and said, "I'm not giving up. If I have to give my life to get this done, then I will. Kill me, or let me talk to the Mother."