It was impossible. But Oliver had grown used to the impossible.
Twillig’s Gorge was alive with motion. People moved across bridges and up ladders. Fishermen cast their lines out of cave mouths and sat on balconies awaiting a bite. There were a great many humans of varying race and origin-Lost Ones who had passed through the Veil at a place and time where it had worn momentarily thin and been trapped here. Perhaps two-thirds of the population looked ordinary enough.
Then there were the legendary. A crew of dwarves was excavating a section of the eastern gorge wall. On the western wall, two others, seemingly ignored by the main crew, were carving an enormous tableau, an image of mermaids sitting upon a rocky outcropping in the midst of the ocean. There was something about the image that chilled Oliver. The mermaids were elegant, but looked cruel. Sailors flailed in the water not far away, and the fragments of a shattered sailing ship thrust from the waves.
That was what gave it away. They weren’t mermaids at all. They were Sirens, luring men to their deaths. It was a warning, but he did not know if it had any significance beyond its artistic merit.
There were other legends as well. On either side of the river was rough terrain, perhaps thirty feet on the eastern bank but over one hundred on the western. Nothing should have grown there, but still there were crops, coming right up out of what seemed like gravel. A farmer drove an ox-drawn plow through solid rock, churning it up, ready to plant more seed. The ox was blue.
As Oliver and his companions waded past the field of wheat and corn and toward what appeared to be a boat landing up ahead, he scanned the bridges and ladders. A minotaur crossed a hanging rope bridge above and he flinched as it passed over them, the clop of its hooves making him feel certain the bridge would give way under its weight.
There were boggarts and sprites tossing one another about in what appeared to be a playful manner. Lithe figures that seemed made of water rose out of the river and watched them as they passed. Twillig’s Gorge also had dozens of varieties of animal-people. Oliver had come to group them all together, though he was sure those legends would have been deeply offended. Some had the heads of birds or jungle beasts, others the heads of men with the bodies of horses or apes or alligators. And those were only the ones he saw.
Oliver tried not to stare at the griffin that sat curled upon a rocky ledge on the eastern wall. He ignored the strangely ephemeral people, tall and thin and clad in gauzy colors, who seemed almost invisible unless he stared directly at them. Fairies, or something like them, he was sure.
What he could not ignore were their kin, the tiny little figures that darted all through the gorge like butterflies and dragonflies. Whatever they were-pixies, or peries like the ones he’d seen in the Oldwood shortly after first crossing the Veil-they were beautiful. And there were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. The pixies needed no caves or houses or bridges. They flitted through the air, alighting only for an eyeblink before setting off again, their colors like the petals of a million flowers cast into the air.
“Wow,” Oliver whispered.
Kitsune laughed in delight beside him. For a few moments, as he took this all in, he had forgotten she was there. Now she looped her arm through his and leaned against him, and he liked the warmth of her there.
A pair of men sat together on a high balcony, a hundred feet or more above the river, but they had bodies and limbs as thin as sticks and faces like anteaters, and their legs hung all the way down to the water, their feet curved as though they might hook an enemy, or simply prey, and bring them up to their cave.
Of all the things he had seen thus far, they were the only ones that frightened him.
At the river landing they climbed a set of stone stairs out of the water. Frost and Blue Jay waited for them there, but the two Borderkind were alone. Lost Ones went by without sparing them a glance. Humans on this side of the Veil had lost any sense of awe. Some of them were dressed in strange garments that he thought might be Aztec or Mayan, for he knew that those ancient peoples had ended up on this side of the Veil long ago.
No one stopped. Legends averted their eyes as they passed, not wanting to get involved. The Nagas had presumably returned to their sentry duties, leaving them to fend for themselves. A woman whose body was knotted wood and gnarled, cracked bark, and who had tiny leaves sprouting from her flesh, paused and smiled.
“Welcome,” she said, spreading her hands with their thin, spidery, branch fingers, and offering a small bow.
Frost and Blue Jay returned the bow.
“Our thanks,” Blue Jay said. “You seem the only one willing to make us welcome.”
“Strangers pass with the river. They’ll pay little attention to you unless you stay.” The woman, whose teeth were tiny thorns, smiled. “Are you staying, then?”
“No. Only passing through,” Frost said.
“Pity. But you’ll want the inn, then. Shouldn’t be any trouble getting a room. Very few visitors, these days.”
Oliver leaned in to whisper to Kitsune. “With their hospitality, it’s no wonder.”
Kitsune bumped him playfully. Frost thanked the tree-woman, some kind of forest spirit, Oliver assumed, and they started off along the landing, continuing southward. Oliver noticed that the cliff face on the eastern wall had been carefully carved, transformed so that it almost resembled the facades of old European rowhouses. It was not a city, but the illusion of one, and it chilled him.
There were shops in caves both natural and excavated, all along the landing. A butcher, a bakery, a market, and several little clothes boutiques. Of all the things he had seen in Twillig’s Gorge, that seemed strangest to him. Almost too civilized.
Atop the shops, and below the dwellings that were higher up on the gorge walls, there were stone figures carved and standing sentinel above the river. Gargoyles. Not one of them looked alike, but they were hideous, terrifying to look at. The demonic stone figures had also been placed atop some of the bridges, and one of the homes that spanned the river. It made Oliver think of Venice, in Italy, and some of the beautiful architecture that went into arched passages above the canals.
But some of these were not merely bridges. They went under two homes that had been built across the gorge, and then came in sight of a third structure-a thing of stone and wood that cast a long shadow upon the river and the walls below, with a row of strange peaks across the top, and a small bell tower to cap it all.
“The inn,” Blue Jay said.
To the right, a figure stepped away from the front of a little marionette shop, a wiry little man with matted brown hair, a long face, and crazy eyes.
“You always were pretty fast on the uptake, Jay,” he said.
Blue Jay laughed and stepped forward, pulling the man into a tight embrace.
“Cousin, it’s good to see you.”
The wiry man laughed as well, but his was cold and cynical. “Good to see you alive, Jay.”
Oliver glanced at Kitsune, whose jade eyes had hardened. Blue Jay began to introduce his cousin to Frost, but Oliver leaned in to Kitsune.
“What is it? Who is this guy?”
Kitsune spat on the ground that separated them from Blue Jay, Frost, and the other.
“Oliver Bascombe,” she said, voice rippling with disgust, “meet Coyote.”
The Jaculus flew low, skirting over treetops and the peaks of hills, never so low as to encounter travelers nor so high as to draw undue attention from other airborne predators. Or so he thought.