TWENTY

Inside, I began to put Gina down, and she caught herself, and stood instead. She sat heavily on a schoolroom desk, and began slow, deep breathing, focusing. Ray held onto her shoulders, recognizing the meditative practice, and started to walk through it with her. I took a moment to look around.

It was a schoolroom, desks, chalkboard, the works, with a few kids here and there, busily engaging in various tasks...

"Kitty!"

...Or not. Ulla bore their attention with grace, and was variously dandled and scratched, as she was passed from child to child. Gina, meanwhile, was recovered; wounds closed over, khakhi shirt and jeans restored.

"Yeah, I can still feel them, as twinges. Bet you I'm going to wake up with some crazy bruises." Gina said, and smiled as she said it.

Ray came back with "Out there - What the hell was that?"

"The elder tongue. It's a language.... Sort of. A technical shorthand, might be more accurate. For describing things. It's got a few hundred phenomes, and some vicious bastard figuring after that to assemble words, but it's all a kind of system."

We just looked at her blankly, and she rolled her eyes.

"The hieroglyphs on those pages where the recipe was? That's one way of writing the elder tongue. It's a dead language, but all the stuff that got me - us - to here comes from people that used it. I've been studying it since forever; never thought I'd get to use it for anything outside of colorful cussing and useless rituals. But it looks like it's got a little more jazz going on down here."

We nodded, shrugged, and did a quick performance of the usual moves in the dance of accepting something really damned odd; we were getting quite good at them. Then we got back to the business of the classroom. Ulla had singled out a child she seemed to like; the same one that Ray had been standing in the doorways with. Ulla was sitting in her arms, being rocked like a baby and accepting gentle tummy-scratches, while looking at me.

Yes, this one, Benjamin. She will make a good guide.

I nudged Ray, and bobbed my chin at the kid. He stepped over, crouched down, and "Hey. We're here because of the bad things outside. We want to help send them away; we're looking for people who can fight them. Can you help us?"

"Trisha's Uncle Harry fights the bad things, sometimes. Do you want to meet uncle Harry?"

"Yes, I do."

The girl led us into the school, up stairs and down corridors. As we walked, Gina asked Ray "So, who's the girl?"

"Not sure. I think the pillar belongs to Patricia Malkin, but that isn't her. One of her tribe, probably. Schoolmate, friend, something like that."

"So, Patricia's hasn't shown up?"

"Nope. But Edith didn't put in an appearance at her pillar, either, remember? Might be something about being comatose, or just about being not-dreaming. Or it might be about the Nightkind. Or... Hell, I dunno."

We walked on, looking at the walls, floor, everything around us. All memories have a slightly fantastical quality to them; they seem not-quite-real. Patricias pillar was a stronger case than usual, though. Everything was either simplified, or set just so that if you looked at it without focusing, your attention would slide very quickly to motion and color. Taking the time to focus on details, though, it was clear what kinds of things Patricia didn't care about - signs, room numbers in the school and in an apartment building we wandered through, the ceiling lines of many rooms, were all blurred and indistinct. I found it slightly unsettling, but maintained my cool fairly easily.

Our point of arrival was a large window, the front facing of a Gym. The girl crouched down to look through the window, and a car door swung open on the pale wall behind her. I could almost hear a parent saying "Wait in the car while I talk to Harry", in the scene.

Gina gave me the head-bob for 'come over here', and we both crouched down with the girl, and watched as Ray went in. He talked at the room, for a moment, and then to a man in a red USMC hoodie and sweatpants. They gestured, and nodded; the man walked out of sight, and then reappeared in desert camouflage. Ray pointed to his sidearm, which got drawn and handed over.

The world blinked; I don't have a better way of describing it. When it was done, Ray was standing back in the hallway with us, holstering a Desert Eagle (even I knew that one). The gym window was gone, and everyone was standing. Ray looked at the girl, winked, and said in a voice that wasn't quite his own "Let's go back down, kiddo. Uncle Harry has some work to do."

As we walked, I figured it out "So, this isn't just about visiting your patients. You're also looking to collect more like Abe?"

"I'd like to take those things down a few pegs, you know? You've got kitty, there, and your guns. Gina has.... Well, I was gonna say that I haven't been able to dream up a car, yet, despite trying, but. Yeah. I need a trick or two. You figured I could handle Abraham, and it seems like that's so - at least, he's not giving me any troubles. We'll see how Harry fits in, and any other heroic types I can find tonight. If they give me trouble, I can bring them back, right? And if we keep this up, in a few pillars, I'll have something serious to throw around."

It was a pretty good plan, I had to admit.