Wood Sprites(196)

Crow Boy made a small hurt sound. “I had family on the Minghe Hao.”

“Maybe Esme saved them.” Louise offered what little comfort she could. “The colony ships are massive. We’re looking at only a small section of the Minghe Hao.”

It was enough, though, to wreak havoc on Earth. The television was showing complete panic as the pieces rained down. No one else had yet identified the debris. The news was still calling it “the gate.” The Minghe Hao’s missing engines had aimed the ship at American’s heartland prior to being sheared off. Remains of the water treatment system struck the town of Bellbrook, Ohio with such force that the reporters were stating “possible nuclear weapon” to describe the destruction.

“The gate is gone!” Jillian tossed her tablet aside and began to pace around the room in long, man-length strides. She was fleeing into the character of Captain Hilts as fast as she could. “Even if the gate wasn’t what fell, it’s not in Earth space anymore. It’s probably wherever the rest of the Minghe Hao is, and that can’t be a good thing. The Minghe Hao hit something!”

Jillian was desperately trying to be strong. Now that Louise knew the signs, it was all so clear. Her twin was trying to press her lips into Hilts’ thin, confident sneer but they kept trembling. She threw herself onto the couch, trying for the soldier’s seemingly carefree slouch. “We’re not talking rush hour on the George Washington Bridge here. There’s not a lot of shit to hit in space.”

All completely true.

Statistically, whatever accident shattered the Minghe Hao most likely had also claimed the gate. The structure had been built in space, spiderweb-delicate and carefully balanced. It hadn’t been designed to take a hard blow and recover. The gate had small positioning-correction thrusters but it wouldn’t be able to save itself if it had been smashed out of its orbit.

If something had gone horribly wrong over Elfhome—and all evidence pointed that way—the gate had been lost. Without it, the magic that linked the two worlds was broken. The great ironwood forest would forever be on Earth and Pittsburgh was lost.

It was frighteningly huge and Louise didn’t know what they could do. All her hopes had been pinned on the idea that they would find the tengu children, free them, fly over the quarantine zone next shutdown in hovercarts, and in short order be with Alexander and Windwolf. She had found a great deal of comfort thinking that powerful, unflappable Prince Yardstick would be protecting them. All they had to do was to get to his side and all would be over.

Now she had no idea what they should do.

But Louise did know that they couldn’t do nothing. They were standing out in the middle of a freeway. They had to move or be mowed down by everything hurtling at them with murderous speed.

Or more correctly, Louise had to do something.

At the mansion, right after their parents had died, Jillian had been too broken to pretend anything. She’d pasted all her broken bits back together, but the cracks were all still there. The promise of escape to Elfhome was the only glue that was keeping Jillian in one piece.

With that promise gone, the cracks were coming undone.

Jillian covered her mouth to hide the betraying tremble of lips and stood back up. The hurt lost look was filling her eyes as her control crumbled more. “Where—Where’s my ball?”

Crow Boy staggered back to the window like someone had hit him with a sledgehammer. Super ninja or not, he was still just a fourteen-year-old boy, stranded on a world full of enemies. “What are we going to do?”

“We fall back to Plan B,” Louise stated as calmly as she could.

“We have a Plan B?” Crow Boy asked.

“We don’t, but the elves will have one. They probably knew that the gate could be damaged in an accident at any time—or the Chinese might be forced to actually abandon the colony program—or Queen Soulful Ember might figure out what they were doing and somehow blast the gate out of orbit. Yves told Feng years ago what to do in case of emergency. They have plans. Long-thought-out plans.”

“Okay.” Jillian breathed like she was willing to grab hold of any lifeline thrown to her.

“Yves is finding out right now that Shutdown isn’t going to happen.” Louise ignored the fact that Jillian whimpered and Crow Boy gasped as if she’d hit him. “He’ll switch to Plan B and that involves getting to Elfhome another way.”

“No, no, no!” Jillian cried, her voice breaking. She covered her face with her hands, hiding her weakness as logic tore away hope. “If they had another way, they wouldn’t be trying to kidnap Alexander.”