The Indigo King - James A. Owen [21]
Chaz set a pace that was swift, but not impossible to keep, even for the badgers. They were slowed only by bewilderment, remorse, and no small amount of fear. It wasn’t a scholar who had looked at them, but a predator. And it ran contrary to animal sense to follow a predator into its own lair.
A short distance farther on, John unconsciously checked the time on his watch, noted the fixed hands, then smiled ruefully and put it back in his pocket.
“Why don’t you carry one that works,” suggested Jack, “and keep that one in another pocket to show Priscilla when she asks about it?”
“I can’t quite manage the deception,” John admitted. “It seems like a small thing, to be sure—but when I tried it, I found myself fussing about with them and worrying about which one was draped on the waistcoat and which was hidden … and then I forgot, and Pris saw the other one, and the hurt in her eyes was excruciating. So it’s the Frog-in-a-Bonnet time or none at all, I’m afraid.”
“Perhaps you could ask Father Christmas to give her a good watch this Christmas, to be passed on to you,” Jack said, grinning.
“That’s not a half-bad idea,” John said. “I’ll have to ask him about it the next time we’re in the Archipelago.”
Jack turned his head, but not swiftly enough for John to catch the look of doubt that crossed his features. Bantering about home and family was one thing. But mentioning the Archipelago brought them both back to the present dilemma, and the creeping despair that was becoming impossible to push away.
It took longer for the companions to get to the small village where Chaz lived than it might have if John or Jack had been in the lead. The entire area seemed deserted, and the only other structures they saw were more of the odd stilt-houses that pockmarked the roads. But Chaz had insisted on taking a circuitous route that roamed back and forth across the entire countryside.
“It’s because of the Wicker Man,” he finally explained when the others pressed for his reasons. “He was out looking for you lot in partic’lar, and there’s no telling how many more are doing the same. Their Sweeps follow your scent, an’ so it’s best to leave a trail that’ll confuse ‘em before they finds you.”
“How many more what might be out looking?” asked Jack.
“Wicker Men,” Chaz replied without turning around, “and their Sweeps. That wasn’t the only one, you know. And there are other creatures too. Some better. Most worse.”
“We saw the giants,” John said. “Should we be talking aloud, with them lurking somewhere back there?”
“Oh, the giants is no worry,” Chaz said breezily. “They can’t be loosed until they been summoned, an’ …”
He stopped as if he’d said too much, then scowled at John. “Be that as it may, mayhap we shouldn’t ought t’ be talking aloud, anyroad.”
After another hour of Möbius loops, Chaz finally brought them to his strange abode. Unlike the dozen or so stilt-houses that clustered nearby, it was set into the side of a hill. It had a round door that was lightly camouflaged and heavily fortified. Through the doorway, they could see that the ceilings were low, but it seemed a good enough place, if not really one suited to guests.
The area itself was more intriguing to Jack. It was disconcertingly familiar. The trees, what remained of them, were bare, but the soil itself, the reddish hues, the texture … It was all the same, along with the spot nearby where the quarry should be.…
And then he knew.
It was the Kilns, Jack suddenly realized. Home. His home, at any rate. His and Warnie’s, and Jamie’s. Chaz had brought them to the one place Jack most wanted to be, except it wasn’t that place at all—it was a place that looked like home but was really in some hellish otherworld in which they were trapped, perhaps permanently.
“So how have you managed to survive on your own?” Jack asked.
“I makes do,” Chaz said after a moment. “I scavenge, mostly, and trade a little of this, a little of that. But I gets what