“That looks only five feet to me.” Tinker fingered the mark, wondering if someone might have added slashes after they left.
“Barely five.” Pony pointed at the next tree along the edge of the blue.
The tree was marked with seven slashes but the blue came almost to its roots.
“This is bad.” Tinker murmured.
“Domi.” Pony had moved on ahead and pointed now at a tree inside the effect.
She joined him at the edge of the blue; there were four slashes in bark of the ghostly tree. “Shit, the discontinuity has grown. How is that possible?” She motioned to the sekasha that they were leaving.
“Now what?” Stormsong asked.
“I’m going to need some equipment, then we’re coming back.”
Tinker scanned her camera with an infrared attachment over the valley, watching the screen on her workpad instead of looking through the eyepiece. In one window, the video feed showed the thermal picture, and in other windows, programs reduced the images into mathematical models. At the center of the Ghostlands, she spotted a familiar circle.
“Something wrong, domi?” Pony asked.
She realized that she had gasped at her discovery. “Oh — this here — this looks like our gate. See, here is the ironwood ring and here is the ramp over the threshold.”
“It is lying on its side?”
“Yes. The current probably toppled it, though I’m not sure what is causing the current. It might be simple” — her Elvish failed her. Did they have a word for convection? “Heat rises and cold falls. Basic science. It’s what makes the winds blow. I think this is the same thing on a micro-scale — like a pot boiling.”
“Why not like a pond freezing?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because there’s a pool of magic below this, heating the bottom, but it’s losing massive amounts of energy before it hits the surface — thus the reason for the cold.”
“Ah.” Pony nodded like he understood.
“Do you see this point here? Right where the gate is lying. Can you shoot this arrow to that point?”
“With the line and weight attached?”
“Yes.”
Pony considered for a moment. “Stormsong would be better.”
Among the sekasha, Pony was considered the better archer. Her surprise must have shown as Pony waved over Stormsong and explained what Tinker wanted.
“When I have to make a shot, I do it with my eyes closed,” Stormsong said. “I see where the arrow needs to be.”
“Ooookay.” Tinker handed her the end of the line.
Stormsong attached the line to an arrow, nocked it in her compound bow, pulled taut the string and closed her eyes. For a moment she stood there, aiming blind, and then let loose the bowstring. The arrow soared straight and true as if it had nothing weighing it down, nor trailing behind. The reel whizzed as the line snaked out after the arrow, the numbers on the meter blurring as they counted up the feet. Near the point Tinker wanted, but not exactly, the arrow shot into the ghost ground of the discontinuity. It appeared on Tinker’s screen as a dot of red heat compared to the artic cold of the land, too far to the right. The reel fell quiet and the line ran taut out into the discontinuity.
Tinker sighed. “Close enough for horseshoes and discontinuities.”
“It’s where it has to be,” Stormsong defended her shot.
“I’m trying to see how deep the discontinuity runs. I figure it is deepest at the gate — it’s close enough for that.”
Tinker clicked on her mouse and meter fed its number into the computer: 100 yards. Already the arrow chilled to blue, blending into the rest of chilled landscape.
“Why does it matter how deep it is?” Pony asked as the reel started to click out as the arrow sank.
Tinker shrugged. “Because I don’t know what else to do at the moment. I’m just fiddling around, poking at it until something comes to me.”
“Will not the current effect this measurement?” Pony asked.
“Oh, damn.” She muttered in English, and then dropped back to low Elvish. “Yes, it will.” He was right. There was no way to know what was drift and what was the weighted end sinking. “I’ll have to measure the drift and correct the measurements.”
At least it gave her an excuse to reel in the arrow and try again to thread it through the heart of the gate. She flipped on the winch. The slack reeled in quickly but then the line went taut, and the winch slowed.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Tinker said.
“What is it, domi?” Pony asked.
“The arrow hit something.”
“The arrow went where it was needed.” Stormsong repeated.
There was times Tinker really hated Elfhome — magic screwed with everything. “I didn’t think anything would be solid enough to catch on the line.”
“The line is solid.”
“Yes, it is.” She gasped as implications dawned on her. “Pony, you’re a genius. The line is solid.”
“I can not be that smart, domi, because I do not understand why that excites you.”
“Well, it is an important observation. An object from this reality stays in this reality even after sinking into the discontinuity.”
“How is this important?”
“I do not know, but it is something I did not know before.”
“Ah. I see.”
The object appeared on the thermal scan, an oddly shaped mass of slightly lighter blue. By the naked eye, she could make out a boil of disturbance beyond the where the line cut into the earth, creating a sharp v-shaped wake.
“It is big, whatever it is,” Tinker said.
Pony unsheathed his sword.
“I doubt if it is anything living.” Tinker backed up regardless. Gods knows what she was dragging in from between realities. “It is at — at…” she had to teach Pony English or learn more Elvish. What was Elvish for absolute zero? “It is frozen.”
The thing hit shore. For a moment she thought it was a large turtle, and then line kept reeling, rolling it. Long fingered webbed hands and a vaguely human-looking face heaved out of the earth, rimmed with frost.
“Oh gods!” Tinker leapt back and the other sekasha drew their swords. The reel protested the sudden heavy load as the frozen body hit solid earth, the line vibrating. She killed the power before the line could snap. “Don’t touch it!”
“I think it is dead.” Pony had his sword at its throat just in case.
“The cold itself is dangerous. Don’t touch it directly, but get it out.”
Tinker kept her distance. The sekasha looped straps carefully around the outstretched limbs and hauled the thing out of the liquid earth. The creature was half Tinker’s height, had turtle shell but long scaly limbs, webbed feet and hands. Long straight black hair fringed a bare, depressed spot on a human-like head, and its face was a weird cross of a chubby monkey and a turtle. It wore a harness of leather with various pointy things that could be weapons attached to it.
Pony pricked the creature with his sword, eyed the wound. “It does not bleed. It is indeed frozen.”
“Ooookay,” Tinker said. “It is probably safe to assume that it will stay dead, even if it thaws out.”
“An elf would.” Pony sheathed his sword.
“What do you think it is?” Tinker asked.
“It’s a kappa.” A voice called from above them.
Tinker and her Hand turned, looking upwards. Riki perched on branches of an ironwood, high overhead. He ducked back, behind the trunk, as the sekasha pulled out their pistols.
“Wait, don’t fire.” Tinker ordered. “Riki! Riki! What the hell is this?”
“I told you.” He peered out around the trunk. “It’s a kappa. Ugly little brats aren’t they? In Japan, it’s believed that they get their great strength from water in that brain depression and if you can trick them into bowing and spilling out the water, they have to return to the water realm to regain their strength.”