The otter put up both paws defensively. “All right, mate. I can see that you lot don’t share me favorite topic o’ conversation. You’ll just ‘ave to suffer along for the rest o’ the evenin’ without ‘earin’ about me glorious exploits concernin’—oop, forgot. I ain’t supposed to talk about that.”
A sudden thought made Jon-Tom sit up straight. “Hey, if Colin can see into tomorrow, I wonder if he can predict if I’ll ever get home or not?”
Clothahump shrugged as best he could without shoulders. “Anything is possible, my boy. It might be worthwhile to find out.”
“It’d be a damned sight more than worthwhile.” He let his gaze wander around the campsite. Dormas was sleeping soundly off to one side. Talea lay curled up next to him, her face a portrait of false innocence, the outline of her body a delicious sine curve against the ground. Mudge sat nearby, his paws behind his head and his cap pulled down over his eyes.
But where was their rune-reader? Come to think of it, where was Sorbl? He rose, nervously surveyed the encroaching night, and murmured to Clothahump. “Braglob? You think he’s been tracking us after all?”
“No, no, my boy. It is most unlikely. In any case, he would have been detected by now. The wolverine scent is a strong one, and there are sensitive noses among us.” He climbed to his feet and joined Jon-Tom hi scanning the forest. “But your concern is not misplaced. I, too, wonder where our friend and my apprentice have taken themselves. Sorbl! You good-for-nothing famulus, where are you?”
Jon-Tom cupped his hands to his mouth. “Colin! Colin, answer us!”
“Now wot? I can’t talk about love an’ now I can’t sleep.” The otter jumped up. “The people I get mixed up with!”
They spread out but didn’t have to search far. The two missing members of their party lay beneath the great spreading branches of a cocklegreen tree. They were singing softly to each other of their contentment and of life’s disappointments. The almost-empty bottle that Sorbl was clutching in one flexible wingtip provided an explanation both for their disappearance as well as the impromptu concert.
Clothahump wrenched it from his apprentice’s grasp and held it upside down. A few golden drops tumbled from the mouth. He shook it at the thoroughly inebriated owl.
“You useless bag of feathers, we accomplished what we set out to do! You were supposed to stop drinking. That was our agreement. Whatever was left was to be conserved for medicinal purposes only!”
“Thash whet”—the owl swallowed and appeared to having some difficulty speaking—”thash whet it was ushed for, Mashter.” He promptly fell over backward. “You don’t have to hit me, Mashter.”
“Disgusting.” Clothahump threw the empty bottle into the bushes. “And that wants to become a wizard.” He turned and marched angrily back toward the camp.
“I’ll say ‘tis disgustin’. It bloody well stinks.” Mudge leaned close to me owl’s face. “Why didn’t you come and get me if you were goin’ to ‘ave yourselves a bleedin’ party?”
“Didn’t—didn’t want to dishturb you.”
“And, besides,” Colin said, his words grave and slow, “there really wasn’t enough for three.”
Mudge glared over at the koala. “An’ you call yourself a friend?” He rose and stalked off in the wizard’s wake, leaving Jon-Tom alone with the two revelers. He rose and walked over to kneel next to the koala.
“Colin?”
“Who?”
“Hey, that’s my line,” chortled Sorbl. He and Colin started cackling hysterically.
Jon-Tom waited a minute or two before putting a hand on the koala’s shoulder and shaking him. “Colin, listen to me. This is serious. I need to know if you can read my future. I need to find out if I’ll ever be able to go home again, back to my own world.”
“Well, I might be able to,” the koala replied with enforced solemnity. “I just might. Except for one thing.”
“What one thing?” A hand came down on his shoulder, and he looked up into Talea’s moonlit face. She was smiling down hopefully at him.
Colin raised himself up until his lips were close to Jon-Tom’s ear. “I can’t read runes tonight.”
“You can’t? But you’ve read them at night before.”
“I know. But I can’t read them tonight.”
“Why not?”
The koala put a thick finger to his lips, leaned close again. “Because Mudge and I threw them in that river we passed this afternoon.” His face contorted, and he and Sorbl fell to laughing uncontrollably again.
Jon-Tom gaped at him. “You did what!”
“Threw ‘em in the river. Never did much care for rune-reading, anyways. Folks always bothering you, asking you the damnedest things, never leaving you alone. The hell with it. I’m going home and into my brother-in-law’s eucalyptus-leaf pressing business, like my sister always wanted me to. That’s a nice, sensible, respectable occupation.”
“You couldn’t have waited one more day, could you?” He sat heavily back on his heels. “I don’t suppose you can read the future without runes?”
“What d’you think I am, some kind of magician?” The koala was rapidly falling asleep.
Talea reached over to run a hand through Jon-Tom’s hair. Her presence made him feel very much better. “Hush and don’t take it to heart, Jonny-Tom. For some of us the future is not to know.” She put her lips to his ear. “But I can predict some very good things coming to you in the near future.” Her voice dropped even lower, and Jon-Tom couldn’t help but grin as she continued whispering to him.
He was still upset, though, and told Colin so. The koala frowned, struggling to retain consciousness.
“As a matter of fact, I did read the runes one last time before we cast ‘em into the current of fate, so to speak. Sort of a farewell prediction.”
Jon-Tom bent forward. “Whose future did you read? Not mine, or you would’ve said so already. Mudge’s? Talea’s?”
“Nope.”
“Clothahump’s?” The koala shook his head. “Sorbl’s, then?”
“Nope. None of those. I was interested in where the perambulator was off to, after listening to you and the old one going on and on about how it can go anywhere and everywhere. I got curious, wondered if maybe it was going to come back to our world and start up the troubles all over again.”
Jon-Tom shook his head. “That’s nothing to worry about, unless by some unbelievable coincidence it lands in Braglob’s vicinity again. Though since he isn’t crazy anymore, even that isn’t very threatening. We don’t have anything to worry about anymore on that score.”
“Maybe most of us don?t, but you might.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because it’s on its way to your world. It’s going to stick around there for a while and do its dance. Things there are going to go a little crazy, maybe for a few years instead of a few months. I couldn’t see a time line clearly. Why, it’s probably there already, right now, even as we’re sitting here talking about it. And I’m afraid it’s gone and gotten itself stuck. That’s what the runes said, anyway.” He let his head back down on his hands, rolled over. “Now go away and let me sleep. All of a sudden I’m kind of tired.”
“No, wait!” Jon-Tom shook him again. “I’ve got to know in case I do get back. Maybe it’s stuck someplace where it can’t do any real harm. You’ve got to tell me where it’s going to go!”
Colin murmured something under his breath, blinked sleepily up at the insistent Jon-Tom. “Where? Oh, some little town called Columbia, in a district or state called Washington.”
Jon-Tom let out a relieved sigh. “That sounds pretty harmless. Way up in the north woods somewhere.”
“Or,” Colin mumbled uncertainly as he drifted back to sleep, “was it someplace called Washington, in the district of Columbia?”
“Colin? Colin?” Jon-Tom finally stopped shaking the erstwhile rune-reader. He was sound asleep and snoring loudly. “I wish I knew which was right. It may be there already, undetected and unseen, twisting and turning, working its mischief.”