Elise Runs and Dorothy Falls

Chapter 15

It was not Dorothy's first time breaking into a government installation. In her years with the Oods, the youth gang to which the Romas belonged, the local constabulary attempted to arrest her on numerous occasions because of burglaries committed. Naturally she'd never been caught.

"We would steal, yeah? And sometimes, ya know, if the coppers took what we got, we had to get it back."

In total cover of night now, Dorothy and Elise flew low across upwards-sloping scrubland. Elise wanted to ask more about these "Oods" and what Dorothy had done with them, but her sharp tongue got the best of her.

"Sure I get it, but did you ever break into a military base? We're going to have to be really careful. You might be amazing, but you're also very impulsive. You've also run out of spells for today, unless you think you're freshly up to four."

"What's your point?"

"Well, since I'm risking myself, too, I think it's only fair I have a say in what we do."

For a long while, the minty glow of the gostrium embedded on the end of Dorothy's bune wand had been their only light besides the stars. Now, white lights appeared ahead of them. Dorothy's thighs relaxed and she let her feet slip toward the ground, a sign that always foretold their landing.

"All right," the sorceress said as the whistles of wind faded from their ears. "If I do somethin' you don't like, just say so and I want no more. Fair?"Elise nodded.

"Good."

Dorothy alighted upon the ground. Squeezing the rough shape of her gostrium crystal, then, she muted its ghostly spark. Her jewelry did little to pierce the night.

"Where are we?" Elise asked, dismounting too. There was no cover on the prickly, pebble-crackled slope, but Elise knelt nevertheless. Tightening her ascot against the chill, Dorothy stepped forward and gazed up.

"The perimeter of the base is just up there. Can't you see it?"

"No. Shouldn't there be, I don't know, some kind of barricade?"

Laughter lit her dread thin lips. "Your kind are too arrogant for that. The only walls I've seen were the Great Ice Walls of Govget, and the walls of..."

Elise recalled her dream and that incredible fortress on the water. She dare not ask, but was it there she referred?

"Well let's go."

The terrain transitioned gradually into gravel stones and then finally, as the hillside leveled out, solid pavement. They reached the corner of a shallow and square concrete trench. Its two nearest sides (from which they came) were bare, while grey buildings obscured what lay beyond. In that opposite corner, between the buildings, rose a set of stairs deeper into the installation.

Sterile whiteness issued from a tall lamp. They heard only its hum.

Dorothy, followed by a Elise, slid into the trench-like square to join the lamppost and a single cast-iron bench. The witch slunk to boundary and signaled Elise to do the same, who did, and followed her up the steps on the other side. The young grimlock made so little sound. To Elise, it felt like following a shadow.After a brief hike across flat ground, they descended more steps but this time only half as far into another trench. This one had buildings on all sides and no windows, and five stairways out. 

"This is like a maze," whispered Elise. "How will we ever know which way to go? I think we ought to try again from above." For some reason she felt safer in the sky; she couldn't attribute it any special reason.

"If there's one place your people understand it's the sky," said Dorothy. Her strong stomach stilled; her diaphragm paused. "Listen closely."

Going quiet, too, and tuning her ears to the air, Elise tried to do as the witch instructed her. "I don't hear anything."

"They're up there. Your machines."

Elise noticed, again, Dorothy calling everything that wasn't hers Elise's instead. Annoyed, she wanted to tell her that these machines were no more hers than the ancient bullion buried under Elmul, but she didn't.

"I can tell when you're upset."

"Oh?" Elise's eyebrows strained and furrowed.

"It's your hair, like static electricity. I've never seen anythin' quite like it except with your cat. Are you sure you two aren't related?"

Hrmphing, Elise tried to flatten her hair, but knew it wouldn't do it any good. Her hair had a tendency to get unruly, particularly when she got angry. That's why she wore two hair ties at the base of her braids and a hair band, too. The witch laughed gently against the silence.

"I don't know what's funny," whispered a heated Elise. "We're lost without a prayer where to go or what to do."

Germón, who of course followed them dutifully, pawed at Dorothy's stocking. It was his wont.

"Sometimes, all I have left to do is laugh. But you're right. We're fucked."

Elise didn't like it when Dorothy cursed, but in this case the cold words made her shiver down her spine. For the first time since meeting her Elise saw not a witch, but a girl like her. Perhaps she had no right to feel upset when Dorothy thought of her as the other, because when push came to shove, she thought of Dorothy as the other, too.

From down one stony way they heard the sound of footsteps fast approaching.