Wood Sprites(166)

Jillian squinted at her, apparently still half-sleep, stepping through the logic. “Videos?”

“Of Tinker and Oilcan!” Chunk Norris squeaked.

“Racing!” Red Gingham Jawbreaker cried.

“But we can’t get to Elfhome now!” Nikola cried. “It’s twenty-five days to Shutdown. We haven’t moved all the money yet…”

“…And we don’t have all the mice!” the girls chorused with Nikola.

“I know.” Louise waved them all to be calm, even though fear skittered about inside her. “Everything can go as planned—just someplace else—not here—as far away from here as possible.”

The babies rapid-fired questions in excited squeaks. “Where are we going? How are we going to get there? Can we make the mini-hoverbikes first? We can use the magic generators. Oh, we’ll need to make more generators to make one for each of us. We’re taking the mice too, aren’t we? What are we taking with us?”

“Holy hell!” Jillian cried. “Where did the mice come from?”

Louise let the babies explained in a confusing four-part narrative. She could only think of all the things tucked into the back of the walk-in closet. Their favorite Christmas ornaments. The family tree that had hung over the fireplace in living room. Their mom’s wedding rings. Everything so precious that it hurt to look at them. Too painful for Jillian to even deal with. Were they going to have to abandon it all?

If we can rob a museum without getting caught, we can sneak back later and get our stuff.

Even as she tried to comfort herself, she knew it wasn’t true. The future that was hurtling toward them was dark and full of pain and there would be no coming back.

“We have to leave today,” Louise made herself say while trying to think of what they had to take. Other than the babies and Joy, what did they really need? Their tablets and phones and the flash drive of the Codex. Louise found her backpack and set it down in the middle of the floor.

They had money. Lots of money. In theory they could buy anything they needed. In truth, kids normally didn’t buy anything alone. Not real food like frozen vegetables and raw fish. Not real clothes like underwear and jeans. Children always followed behind their parents who pushed carts in supermarkets. They were supposed to stand quietly behind the adult paying the cashier at department stores. And children never checked into hotels alone.

We’ll figure it out, Louise thought firmly to hold back the fear. They probably should take a change of clothes until they did work out basic life necessities. One shirt, a pair of jeans, and a single set of clean underwear, however, took up most of her backpack. They probably should take all of their socks and underwear, not just one set. Louise raided their underwear drawer and struggled to pack it all into the space remaining in her backpack. Nothing else would fit, even if they desperately needed it. Should she take the blue jeans out?

Panic surged up through Louise, like a shout that wanted to be let out. She covered mouth, trying to keep it all in. How much can someone take before they broke?

“We may not have to wait,” Jillian said.

Louise stared at her for a minute. She’d lost track of what they were talking about. She never said anything about waiting, did she? “What?”

“We might not have to wait for Shutdown to get to Pittsburgh.” Jillian ducked into the secret room. Her muffled voice came through the open door. “Remember that in the Codex, Dufae talked about the pathways between Elfhome and Earth.”

“Yes, but after his wife died, he tried to take his son back to Elfhome and all the pathways had been deliberately destroyed. He didn’t find one that was still intact.”

“In Europe he couldn’t find one intact!” Jillian came back out carrying an armful of papers that she spilled out onto the card table. “Dufae died in 1791. Windwolf was the first elf to land on the Westernlands in 1910. In the 1700s, North America was still largely unexplored. Even if Windwolf had access to the maps created by the humans, most of the cave systems wouldn’t have been marked. There are only a few thousand elves in the Westernlands even now, so they couldn’t have checked out all the cave systems.”

The papers were dozens of cave maps. Some of them were real geological surveys and others were brochures by tour companies that owned the cavern. Jillian sorted through the papers. The babies climbed up the table’s wooden legs and complicated the process by trying to study the maps themselves.

“Ming married Anna before the first Startup,” Jillian said. “If he was relying on the pathways in Europe to get to Elfhome, and they were destroyed, he would have had to search out a new way.”