“Wouldn’t it be a better world if we all looked out for each other?”
“Well, yeah,” Miki replied. “Except it’d also mean that we were on Mars or something.”
He gave her a thin smile. Putting the pickup into gear, he started it on its forward crawl once more.
“I think this storm is a good thing,” he said. “It reminds us that we don’t have to live in a faceless city, where we are all strangers. We are a collection of communities. To get by, we need to count on each other.”
“Until someone stabs you in the back.”
“I live over on the East Side,” he told her.
Miki nodded to show she was listening, though she didn’t understand the context of what he was telling her. There was a regular barrio there in amongst the projects, separate from, yet a part of the cheap housing the city had put up for those in need of shelter. The buildings had all been filled up and fallen into disrepair almost before they’d been erected.
“Today,” her Good Samaritan went on, “I saw known drug dealers and gang members helping neighborhood widows clear ice from their roofs, pick up groceries, move their families to the shelters when they lost their power.”
“And the point being?”
He shrugged. “We are working together for a change. I find myself wishing this community spirit was something that would last beyond the storm.”
Miki nodded. She helped herself to a Kleenex tissue from the box on the dash, then poured herself a cup of the coffee. All she needed now was a cigarette.
“So why are you going to the Beaches?” she asked.
“I work on one of the Estates,” he said. “At a place called Kellygnow. Their phone is out and I’m worried about how they are doing. I would not have come but Maria Elena—my wife—could see how I was worrying, so after I took her to stay with a neighbor who still has electricity, she told me to go.” He glanced at Miki. “I would not have left her otherwise.”
Miki felt about two inches tall.
“I thought you were a looter,” she said.
“Why? Because I’m Latino?”
“God, no. Because of the truck. I mean, can you see the rich hoity-toits up there driving something like this?”
“And now?” he asked.
“I feel like a bloody eejit.”
He smiled and took a hand from the wheel, offering it to her. “I am Salvador Flores.”
“Miki Greer,” she said, shaking.
“Should that not be Minnie?”
“What… ? Oh, right. Ha ha. Big Disney fan, then?”
“So where are you going?” he asked.
“Same place as you—Kellygnow.”
“I’ve not seen you there before.”
“I’ve never been there before,” she told him. “But I think my brother’s gone up there to cause some trouble and I want to stop him before he does.”
Salvador frowned. “Trouble? What sort of trouble?”
“I wish I knew. He’s fallen in with a rough crowd. Do you know anything about the Gentry?”
He shook his head. When Miki went on to describe the hard men, he added, “I’ve seen no one like that on the grounds.”
“Then maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re not at Kellygnow.”
“I hope they’re not. We don’t need more trouble. The weather’s enough.”
“Nobody needs trouble,” Miki said.
She sunk lower in her seat and finished off her coffee. She was warmer, but that only made her wet clothes that much more clammy and uncomfortable. Her throat was feeling worse by the minute.
“You are not a happy woman,” Salvador said after a few moments.
Wet and bedraggled as she was, who would be? But she knew that wasn’t what he meant.
“There hasn’t been a lot of good going on in my life these days,” she said. “Too many disappointments, I guess.”
“Because of your brother?”
Miki shook her head. “Not really. I’m more disappointed in myself.”
“That’s not so good,” Salvador said. “In the end, all you have is yourself.”
And when that’s shite? Miki wondered. Great. That made her feel just bloody wonderful. But he was right. If you couldn’t like yourself, how could you expect anybody else to like you?
“Do you mind if I have a smoke?” she asked.
He shook his head. “But we’ve arrived.”
She looked up through the windshield as he pulled over towards the curb. The pickup slid to a stop against the sidewalk. Salvador shifted into neutral and put on the hand brake.
“Or at least we’ve come as far as the truck will take us.”
No kidding, Miki thought. Handfast Road was one solid sheet of ice going up the hill. There was no way the pickup could make it up that slippery grade. She didn’t think anyone could even walk up it.
“Perhaps you should stay in the truck,” he added. “There’s plenty of gas and you can warm up while you wait.”
“No,” Miki told him. “This is something I’ve got to do.”
Salvador shrugged. Reaching behind the seat again, he pulled out a yellow rain slicker to match the one he was wearing.
“Put this on,” he said. “It’s Maria Elena’s, but she won’t mind.”
“Thanks.”
He waited for her on the pavement while she struggled to put the rain slicker on. Outside she lost her balance, but he plucked her up as she was falling and set her on her feet. He was strong, she thought.
“We can’t use the road,” he said, nodding towards it with his chin.
Miki took in the ice-slick slope of the street once more and sighed. Lighting a cigarette, she let him lead the way around behind the houses where they crunched a path through the crust of snow that covered the lawns in back.
3
After all he’d experienced in the past twenty-four hours, Hunter felt he shouldn’t have been surprised by anything at this point. He’d already learned the hard way that the world held far more in its familiar boundaries than he could ever have imagined. It was all so astonishing, from the mean-spirited threat of the Gentry to the quiet awe of the native manitou, never mind the business of avoiding the ice storm by moving through some between place where the foul weather couldn’t touch them. But nothing could have prepared him for that moment when they stepped from winter into autumn.
The otherworld forest reared about them like some fairy-tale wood. There was nothing New World about it. Any time Hunter had been in the bush around Newford it was all undergrowth, the spaces between the trees choked with new growth, fallen trees, weeds, saplings, brambles. This forest was like something out of the Brothers Grimm. The trees were the size of redwoods, rearing up to impossible heights, except they were oaks and ashes, chestnuts and beech, trees that had no business being this big. The ground between them was covered with ferns and a carpet of moss and fallen leaves that was springy and soft underfoot.
“So there really is a wood beyond the world,” Ellie said, her voice holding the same astonishment and awe he was feeling.
He turned to look at her. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just this book I read when I was a teenager. I fell in love with the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, so I thought I’d try one of William Morris’s novels.”
“I thought he designed furniture and wallpaper patterns and that kind of stuff.”
She nodded. “He did. He also painted and drew, had his own printing press and designed books, wrote essays and poetry, and still found the time to invent the fantasy novel while he was at it.”
“How very interesting,” Aunt Nancy said. “And how will this help us with the Glasduine?”
They both started, having forgotten her presence. Hunter turned to face the older woman’s frowning features.