Miriam nodded, wordlessly.
“I figured that was what it was,” Paulie said softly. “You want him whether or not he’s messed up with the shits who’re trying to kill you or disinherit you, is that right?”
“I think he’s probably got his reasons,” Miriam said reluctantly.
“Whatever he’s doing. And I don’t think he’s working for them. But—”
“Listen, no one is worth what those fuckers want to do to you. Understand?”
“But if he isn’t—” it came out as more of a whine than Miriam intended. She shook her head.
“Then it will all sort itself out, won’t it?” said Paulette. “Eventually.”
“Maybe.”
They broke off as the noise of the door opening downstairs reached them. Two pairs of eyes went to the camera. It was Brill, coming in from the cold: She’d been out shopping on foot, increasingly sure-footed in the social basics of day-to-day life in the twenty-first century. “I look at her, and I think she’ll be like you when she’s done some growing up,” Paulette commented quietly.
“Maybe.” Miriam stood up. “What’ve you got?” she called down the stairwell.
“Food for the trip.” Brill grinned. Then her smile turned thoughtfuclass="underline"
“Do you have a spare gun?” she asked.
“Huh? Why?”
“There are wild animals in the hills near Hasleholm,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Oops.” Miriam frowned. “Do you really think it’s a problem?”
“Yes.” Brill nodded. “But I can shoot. He is very conservative, my father, and insisted I learn the feminine virtues—deportment, dancing, embroidery, and marksmanship. There are wolves, and I’d rather have a long gun for dealing with them.”
Paulette rolled her eyes.
“Okay. Then I guess we’ll have to look into getting you a hunting rifle as soon as possible. In the meantime, there’s the pistol I took from the courier. Where did you stash it?”
“Back at Paulette’s home. But I really could use something bigger in case of wolves or bears,” Brill said seriously. She shoved her hair back out of the way and sniffed. “At least a pistol will protect me from human problems.”
“Deep joy. Try not to shoot any Clan couriers, huh?”
“I’m not stupid.” Brill sniffed again.
“I know: I just don’t want you taking any risks,” Miriam added. “Okay, kids, it’s time to move. And I’m not taking you through just yet, Brill.” She reached for her heavy hiking jacket, pulled it on, and patted the right pocket to check her own gun was in place. “Wish me luck,” she said, as she walked toward the back door and the yard beyond.
Cleaning The Air
Miriam snapped into awareness teetering on the edge of an abyss. She flung herself sideways instinctively, grabbing for a tree branch—caught it, took two desperate strides as the ground under her feet crumbled, then felt her boots grip solid ground that didn’t crumble under her feet.
“Shit.” She glanced to her left. A large patch of muddy soil lay exposed in the middle of the snowscape, exposed on the crest of a steep drop to a half-frozen streambed ten feet below and twenty feet beyond what would be the side of the yard. “Oh shit.” She gasped for breath, icy terror forcing her to inhale the bitterly cold air. Horrified, she looked down into the stream. If we’d rented the next unit over, or if I’d carried Brill over—a ducking in this sort of weather could prove fatal. Or could I have come through at all? She glanced up. She’d been lucky with the tree, a young elm that grew straight and tall for the first six feet. The forest hereabouts was thin. I need to ask Brill what else she hasn’t thought to tell me about world-walking, she realized. Perhaps her mother was right about her being over-confident. A vague memory floated up from somewhere, something about much of Boston being built on landfill reclaimed from the bay. What if I’d tried this somewhere out at sea? she thought, and leaned against the tree for a minute or two to catch her breath. Suddenly, visions of coming through with her feet embedded in a wall or hovering ten feet above a lake didn’t seem comical at all.
She closed her locket and carefully pocketed it, then looked around. “It’ll do,” she muttered to herself. “As long as I avoid that drop.” She stared at it carefully. “Hmm.” She’d gone through about a foot away from the left-hand wall of their yard: The drop-off was steepest under the wall. The yard was about twelve feet wide, which meant—
“Right here.” She took out her knife and carved a blaze on the tree around head height. Then she dropped her backpack and turned around, slowly, trying to take in the landscape.
The stream ran downhill toward the river a quarter of a mile away, but it was next to invisible through the woods, even with the barren winter branches blocking less of the view than the summer’s profusion of green. In the other direction trees stretched away as far as she could see. “I could walk for miles in this, going in circles,” Miriam told herself. “Hmm.”
She carved another blaze on a tree, then began cautiously probing into the woods, marking trees as she went. After an hour she’d established that there was no sudden change in the landscape for a couple of hundred yards in two directions away from her little backyard. Sheer random chance had brought her through in nearly the worst possible place.
“Okay,” she told herself, squeezing her forehead as if she could cram the headache back inside the bones of her skull. “Here goes.” And this time, she pulled down her left sleeve and looked at the chilly skin on the inside of her wrist—pale and almost blue with cold, save for the dark green-and-brown design stippled in dye below the pulse point.
It worked.
That night, Miriam didn’t sleep well. She had a splitting headache and felt sick to her stomach, an unfamiliar nausea for one who didn’t suffer migraines. But she’d managed a second trip after dark, only four hours after the first, and returned after barely an hour with aching back and arms (from lifting the heavy shooting hide and a basic toolkit) and a bad case of the shivers.
Brilliana fussed over her, feeding her moussaka and grilled octopus from a Greek take-out she’d discovered somewhere—Brill had taken to exploring strange cuisines with the glee of a suddenly liberated gastronome—and readied her next consignment. “I feel like a Goddamn mule,” Miriam complained over a bottle of wine. “If only there were two of us!”
“I’d do it if I could,” Brill commented, stung. “You know I would!”
“Yes, yes…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just—I can carry eighty pounds on my back, just. A hundred and twenty? I can’t even pick it up. I wish I could take more. I should take up weight lifting…”
“That’s what the couriers all do. Why don’t you use a walking frame?” asked Brill.
“A walking—is this something the Clan does that I don’t know about?”
Brill shook her head. “I’m not sure,” she said, “I never saw how they operate the post service. But surely—if we get a very heavy pack ready, and lift it so you can walk into it backwards then just lock your knees, wouldn’t that work?”
“It might.” Miriam pulled a face. “I might also twist an ankle. Which would be bad, in the middle of nowhere.”
“What happens if you try to go through with something on the ground?” Brill asked.
“I don’t.” Miriam refilled her glass. “It was one of the first things I tried. If you jump on my back I can just about carry you for thirty seconds or so before I fall over—that’s long enough. But I tried with a sofa a while ago. All that happened was, I got a splitting headache and threw up in the toilet. I don’t know how I managed it the first time, sitting in a swivel chair, except maybe it was something to do with its wheels—there wasn’t much contact with the floor.”