There was now a halo of spattered fruit outlining Tinker.
“I get the point! I get the point!” Tinker called up her shield. “See, shield! Happy?”
“Happy?” Stormsong snorted, picked an apple from the tree instead of the ground, and polished it against her black jeans until it gleamed with promise. “Here!” She tossed the apple in a lazy arc toward Tinker.
Tinker moved her hands to catch the apple and her shield vanished.
“You’re — too— trusting!”
The first apple hit Tinker in the shoulder in a painful splatter. The second and third were intercepted mid-air by other apples so that they exploded in front of her, spraying her with apple bits.
“Stop it.” Pony had another apple ready. Part of Tinker was impressed that he could knock apples out of the air — the other part wanted to know where the hell he was for the first volley. “She is the domi. She leads us.”
“She’s going to get herself killed!” Stormsong growled.
“What she says is true,” Pony said. “The dragon can not stay here. The truck is the only vehicle that will carry it. She and Oilcan are the only ones that know how to drive it — and he will be focused on keeping the creature calm. The fewer people we involve in moving the beast, the less likely the oni will learn that we have it.”
“How can you support this plan?”
“The domana’s self-centered creativity is why we chose to obey them. We need their drive. Trust her, she will make it work.”
“Or die trying.” Stormsong muttered. “This is insanity.”
“Is it? We have the scarecrow.” Pony pointed at Tinker and then tapped his chest. “The lion. The tin man.” He pointed at Oilcan’s metal sculpture. “And the apple trees.” He held up the apple in his hand. “And the apples being thrown at the scarecrow.”
Stormsong’s eyes went wide.
“There, see!” Tinker cried. “It’s crazy with a purpose.”
“And that is supposed to make me feel better?” Stormsong snarled. “What are you going to do with dragon now that you found him?”
Tinker held up her finger, indicating they were to wait, and pulled out her datapad. “Give me a few minutes. I’ve been keeping notes on the dreams. Off hand, I don’t remember anything. Wait — how about this — Esme said ‘he knows the paths, the twisted way, the garden path. You have to talk to him. He’ll tell you the way.’”
“The way? To where.”
“Obviously where I need to go.”
It was like having a very large, hyper-active five year old in her workshop. The dragon flowed in and out of the various rooms of the trailer, carrying on a running commentary in its rumbling voice, as it examined everything with its massive but manipulative paws. After rescuing her scanner, their radio base, and antique CD player, Tinker realized what happened to Oilcan’s answering machine and started to fear.
“Okay, okay, I think first thing in communicating would be — to — get a record of what it’s saying.” She snatched her camera from the dragon before he could dissemble it. She flipped out her tripod, snapped the camera to it, and caught Cloudwalker by the hand and dragged him to the camera. “Here, keep the dragon — the dragon’s image — in this little window.” Great, she was actually dealing with two groups of technology-challenged people. “And we’ll build a dictionary of his words.”
“I was trying to do that.” Oilcan distracted the dragon from her computer systems with a flashlight. “But usually it’s hard to tell where one word starts and another ends.”
“…mmmenananannaaaaaaapoooookaaaammmammamamyyyyyyaaanananammmmoooo….” The dragon rumbled while clicking the flashlight on and off, and then dissembled it and sniffed at the batteries.
“Yeah, I can hear that.” Tinker had microphones planted in the offices so she could trigger her computers without a headset. “Sparks, are you active?”
“Yes, boss.” Her office AI answered.
“Filter audio pick up into separate voice prints and put it up on the workshop screen.”
“Okay, boss.”
As she hoped Impatience’s ramblings easily divided out. “Sparks, record this track.” She tapped the bass rumbles of the dragon’s voice. “Convert to phonetics and indicate all pauses and breaks.”
Impatience stuffed the batteries back into the casing, screwed on the lid and tried the switch. When the flashlight didn’t light, the dragon took it back apart and eyed the pieces carefully. Apparently it had spotted the “this way up” diagram stamped on the plastic as it eyed the batteries closely, repacked them into the casing and turned it on. This time it was rewarded with a beam of light. “Huuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuu.”
One word down.
“Okay.” Tinker pulled up the recordings she had made of Turtle Creek and directed them to her largest monitor. “Since I don’t have a clue how I’m suppose to help my mother, let’s see what he has to say about my biggest problem: the Ghostlands.”
The great Westinghouse Bridge had fallen. The Ghostlands had lapped up against the center most support column and toppled it. Two of its four great arching spans now lay in ruins on the valley floor, slowly leeching to blue. The remaining two spans would soon follow.
Wolf gazed down at the ruin, trying to not to let dismay overtake him. “There’s nothing you can do?”
Jewel Tears glared at the valley as if it personally defied her. “Not in time. At the rate it’s expanding, it will involve the main river shortly.”
She meant the Monongahela River, which flowed past the mouth of the Turtle Creek.
“The creek froze solid,” Wolf said. “You don’t think river will freeze?”
“If I understand this correctly, the worlds are mirror images.” Jewel pointed out at the river. “Where there is a river here, there is one on Onihida?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t predict what will happen when the force of the river meets this, but what I fear is that the oni can make use of it. As they are now, the Ghostlands are a deathtrap. The forces are funneling downward, like the pit of ant lion. The river might allow the oni to pass unchecked through the Ghostlands.”
“How soon?”
“Only a few more days.” She turned away from the Ghostlands and him. “Something has to be done. They say your domi can work miracles. Since this is her fault, it would be good for her to fix her mistake.”
Yes, he needed to talk to Tinker. He had faith that once she was given opportunity to study the situation, she would find a solution. He brought a second Hand just so he could have one of the sekasha “baby” along to operate the walkie-talkie.
“Find out where domi is,” Wolf said to Wraith and turned back to Jewel Tears. “I want Stone Clan to keep their distance from my domi. After what happened with the black willow, I do not trust any of you near her.”
Jewel Tears looked away, giving a slight huff of indignation but didn’t deny the implication that they meant Tinker harm.
Wraith came back with unease clear on his face. Wolf bowed his leave taking and headed for his Rolls.
“What is it?” Wolf asked Wraith once they were out of the Stone Clan’s hearing.
“Domi is at the scrap yard. The dragon is there.”
Wolf’s heart leap at the news. “She’s fighting the dragon?”
“No. Apparently, she’s — talking — to it.”
“No, I’m not talking to it.” Tinker said with much disgust in her voice. She smelled of apples, butter and sugar, and her face had mysterious streaks of color paste on it — but otherwise she looked unharmed. “It’s giving me math lessons — and I think my head is going to explode.”