Wood Sprites(200)
Louise steeled herself against the fear that went through her. They had the upper hand; the elves couldn’t possibly guess the nature of their attack. “Find the signal repeaters; we’ll need them first.”
Louise cancelled the spell. The heat of the spell had singed the paper slightly. As she disconnected the power leads, the brittle and browned sections crumbled. She whispered a curse; they had a limited number of printouts for each spell.
“Joy, no!” Jillian cried.
Louise turned to see Joy fling open the cage door on the livestock carrier.
“Cage bad!” Joy cried. “Be free!”
The big birds spilled out and headed toward the twins.
The ostriches suddenly seemed a lot bigger as they headed toward her. Dealing with the small heads on the slender necks was much different from being surrounded by tall muscular legs and wicked-looking feet. The big bodies were at shoulder height to the twins while the birds looked down at them from another foot up.
“Eep!” Jillian backed up until she was pressed against Louise’s right side.
“They are friendly, right?” Nikola pressed against Louise’s left side.
“Probably.” Louise wished she felt surer of that. She moved in front of Tesla. The ostriches were probably hand-raised and gentle with humans but there was no telling how they’d react to the robotic dog. “I think they probably imprinted on the people that raised them. They’re looking for their ‘mother’ and we’re the only humans in sight.”
“Or they might kick us to death,” Jillian grumbled. “We shouldn’t have taken them in the first place.”
“We’re sorry!” Nikola cried. “We didn’t think we were going to let them out!”
“It’s okay.” Louise hadn’t factored ostriches into her attack plans. They didn’t have time, though, to mess around with the giant birds. Crow Boy brushed past the big birds to shove the first hogtied elf into the livestock cage. “Let’s just ignore them, and hopefully they’ll wonder off to graze. Make sure Joy stays out of sight of them though: they’re omnivores, they will eat small lizards.”
“At this point in time,” Jillian growled, “I’d be happy to feed her to them.”
Louise didn’t agree with the sentiment but was glad that Jillian sounded more angry than scared. “We need to move quickly. If the elves call for reinforcements, we’ll be caught between two groups.” She took the case that Jillian handed her. “Chuck, start the mice toward the gift shop. Nikola, keep Tesla with me.”
The visitor center for the caverns was perched on the first ridge of the Allegheny Mountains. Louise had only been vaguely aware of the fact when they’d climbed the driveway. As she headed toward the gift shop, the reality of the landscape hit Louise hard. They were a thousand feet or more above the rest of southwestern Pennsylvania. The land rolled out to the horizon, fifty or sixty miles in the clear morning sunlight. The ironwood forest transplanted from Elfhome loomed far in the distance, the curving edge of the Rim and the quarantine zone beyond it. As the crow flies, it looked miles away. Ten? Twenty? Louise couldn’t judge. When they crossed over to Elfhome, the rolling farmland would be replaced by virgin forest. No roads. No bridges. Man-eating plants, spiders the size of lapdogs, wolves the size of ponies, and a distant cousin to the T-Rex.
“Don’t think about it,” she whispered to herself. “All that will do is scare you. You’ve got to be the strong one.”
She forced herself to focus on the gift shop entrance. Glass double doors, just like pictures on the Internet. Unlocked.
“Nikola, keep Tesla at the door with me. Girls take in the mice and get me a feed of what’s inside the gift shop. Take down anyone inside but don’t move down into the caves.”
“Roger!” the three white mice beside her right foot squeaked.
Louise cracked the right door wide enough for the mice to pour through it. Once the flood was past, she let the door close and pulled out her phone. The screen flickered dozens of confusing images. “Just pick one.” The image fixated on a close up of a trilobite fossil. “No, of the whole room beyond the door!”
“It’s two hundred and fifty million years old!” Nikola said with awe.
The view changed to the dim interior of a gift shop. Light streamed in windows on the far side of the long room. The contrast between the dark foreground and brilliant background made it difficult to see what was in the room, but there didn’t appear to be anyone inside.
Where were all the elves? She had counted forty-three individuals between those at the mansion and the others scattered worldwide. They had to be the tip of the iceberg, as she suspected the far-flung operations had more than one elf.