Marla frowned. “Wait, if the spell is delayed, I’m doomed? That doesn’t make any sense! Delays are good, I’m desperate for her to be delayed!”
The witch waved her hand. “You’ll understand soon enough. Just be prepared for the possibility of utter failure.”
Marla nodded glumly.
“Mutex is like a bulldozer,” the Possible Witch said. “He doesn’t let himself be deflected, and his course is remarkably straight and true, he moves right along in many a world. He’s got the dedication of true religion. I know where he’ll be anyway.”
“I don’t suppose…is he right?” Marla asked. “About the old gods needing blood to keep the universe spinning?”
“If he succeeds in calling up his god, and growing it to full size, he’ll be right,” the witch said. “His faith and his magic will make him be right, and the other gods he believes in will follow the Frog, appearing as quickly as he can spill blood to kindle and feed them. Just be glad you’re in a world where he’s trying to call up the Frog, and not in a world where he called up the Jaguar, and that over a year ago. I’m dead in most of those worlds, and glad of it, because there’s only so much ugliness I’m happy to look upon.” She flickered, going translucent for a moment, then solidified. “Now, you should go. I’m being called to talk to another iteration of you, who didn’t move fast enough, who failed. I’ve got to give those yous some bad news about your miserable, nearly nonexistent prospects.”
“Okay,” Marla said, and grabbed B’s arm. When a power like this said go, you did it quickly.
“But what about your payment?” B said. “Don’t we have to pay you something?”
“You’ll pay,” the Possible Witch said, flickering. “You’ll pay with time, which is something you can scarcely spare. But that’s the way it is, when you talk to a real oracle. The payment is a lot more dear than a box of books or a cup of coffee.”
“Let’s go,” Marla said, and pulled B toward the door, and down the stairs.
As they made their way back along the corridor, B said, “What did she mean, we’ll pay with time? Is it like Rip Van Winkle, we’ll come out and it’ll be a hundred years later?”
“I doubt it,” Marla said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get to Golden Gate Park by tomorrow, would we?”
“So what does it mean?”
“I’m sure we’ll find out,” Marla said. “No use worrying about it yet.” At the end of the corridor, they came to a black velvet curtain.
“The cell is through there,” B said. “Ladies first.”
“You lead us in, I lead us out,” she said agreeably, and pushed the curtain aside.
Beyond the curtain, back inside Alcatraz, there was a prison riot going on, inmates running through brightly lit cell-blocks, guards shouting, and fires made of mattresses and sheets burning in the corridors.
“Shit,” Marla said. “I guess that’s what the Possible Witch meant about lost time.”
She stepped out into a world that wasn’t her own, and B followed.
16
The look-away Marla had cast earlier was still working, so they managed to avoid notice by the rioting prisoners or the guards. The patches on the guards’ shoulders read “Republica del Norte California,” and everyone around them was speaking Spanish. They slipped through the complex of gates by following close to guards, who were rushing in and out, trying to get the riot under control. She and B made their way outside, to the far side of a building, facing the Golden Gate Bridge. They sat together in the late-afternoon light, and watched sailboats ply the waters of the bay.
“Should we try to get off the island?” B said. “Get a boat, or something?”
“No,” Marla said. “The look-away I cast wouldn’t cover a whole boat anyway, so they’d probably shoot at us. Better to wait it out.”
“This is the time the Possible Witch was talking about,” B said. “Sitting here, in one of those other universes she mentioned, unable to do anything in our world. Right?”
“I assume so,” Marla said. “I hope so. Otherwise, we’re stranded in one of those other branch-universes, and I’d rather not face that possibility unless I have to.”
“Why would the witch demand such payment? What’s in it for her?”