Wood Sprites(190)

“The meter is still running on the taxi.” Helen pointed a key fob at the car seat and it unfolded into a stroller.

“I know!” Brian snapped. “I think the doorman did something to it when he put it in. I couldn’t get it to move.”

“Did you flip the thingy?” Helen mimed flipping something with one finger while still holding onto Jayne’s leash.

Brian glanced at her, eyebrow cocked. “What thingy?”

“The thingy! The thingy! Oh, Jayne, please!” This was with a slight tug on the leash of the screaming three-year-old. “The thingy that locks the wheels!”

The luggage mule whined and stepped out of the taxi hatch and lowered its wheels. Brian trotted to the front and thumbed the release pad that had been flashing red. All the doors thumped shut and the taxi rolled away.

Claiming Alleyne, Brian put the infant into the stroller. As the family hurried away, Alleyne leaned out to watch Team Mischief follow slowly.

The Johnsons weren’t frequent travelers; they needed to stop at the check-in kiosk to pick up tap cards. Afterwards they took the escalators down to the tracks where the train waited. The engines were idling with a deep throbbing growl.

“Look! Look! It’s a train!” Brian cried for the boys’ sake.

The family ground to a halt in a spasm of train love. Team Mischief veered out of the path of people coming down the escalator and the twins’ party killed time consulting Jillian’s tablet on things that arguably were more interesting to tweens than the big engine at the head of the line of cars.

“No, no, Malcolm, don’t put that into your mouth. It was on the ground.” Helen pinned Jayne’s leash to the ground so she could use both hands to keep the five-year-old from eating his discovery.

“Nine hours.” Brian murmured with mild reproach.

“I’m not flying to an area that has a city popping in and out of existence.” Helen sang in the manner adults used when not wanting to frighten children overhearing them. “I want to keep feet on the ground. Besides, the boys will love the chance to ride on a real train!”

The last sentence was addressed more directly to the boys, who leapt up and down and cried “Yay trains!”

After a few minutes, Helen steered the boys to the steps with “Let’s go see what’s inside the coaches!”

There was a conductor waiting with a reader. Brian fumbled through the cards, accidently feeding one through twice before getting the four tapped correctly into the reader. (The baby apparently rode for free.) They did a small circus act to get the three children and the stroller up the steps. As a closing act, the luggage mule picked up two dropped toys and then negotiated the steep stairs with surprising grace. While everyone was suitably distracted, Team Mischief slid into position. Normally the twins would use a phone app instead of tap cards but they wanted to match themselves to the Johnsons.

The conductor noticed them standing waiting with tap cards in hand. He glanced past the children, obviously looking for accompanying adults. “Where’s your parents?”

“They just got on.” Louise pointed up the steps where the Johnson family had just vanished out of sight.

“Mom and Dad said we could do our own cards and luggage since they had the babies to take care of.” Jillian turned slightly to show that she had a full backpack as well as a large rolling carryon. It worked as an excuse as to why “their parents” weren’t expecting “the older kids” to help juggle babies and luggage.

“We take the seven train every day to school.” Louise made a show of shifting her backpack as if it was nearly too heavy for her to carry.

“You just checked our parents in.” Crow Boy glared at the man. “Brian and Helen Johnson.” He pointed at the reader in the conductor’s hand. “Can’t you call their names up on your machine?”

The conductor tapped on his console, checked their names against the Johnson family and then nodded, “Ah, I see. Okay, you can go.”

The real Johnsons were mid-coach, still settling into a row of seats, two on either side of the aisle. Team Mischief claimed the next row. Crow Boy lifted the twins’ luggage into overheads as Tesla took the window seat on the left. Jillian and Louise took the seats on the right.

It had worked. They were on their way to Monroeville. They had nine hours of relative safety. Louise didn’t even want to think of what lay beyond then.

* * *

“Where are your parents?” Helen Johnson asked when she passed them the second time on her way to the bathroom with one of the boys.

Louise had been focused on ordering supplies for the rescue mission. Beside her Jillian was working with the babies to find out where Yves might be holding the tengu children. Assuming that they found and saved the nestlings, they would still need to figure out how to reunite the children with their families. Crow Boy had never been to the tengu village; he couldn’t give them clear directions beyond “someplace north of the city, flying to the point of near exhaustion.” There were safe resting sites, “coves” he called them, but they were tree houses high above the ground and none of the tengu children would be able to fly. They would be blindly stumbling through an endless virgin forest. Except for one horrible trip to Vermont, the twins had never been outside the New York Metropolitan area. Central Park was the limit of their exposure to “nature.”