"We must bend to circumstances," said Mauritane. "But answer the question."
"Have any of you trained in the magical arts?" he asked.
"I have," said Silverdun, the hood finally pushed back, his hair flowing. "I studied Elements at Queensbridge."
"Ah," said Hereg, rocking forward and back on his knees. "A man of the Elements. Just so, just so. You are, perhaps, aware of the Unseelie master of Spatial Thaumatics, Beozho? His Works?"
"I know of it," said Silverdun.
"Beozho teaches that the spaces between spaces may be enlarged and contracted. He describes the four axes of spatial harmony and gives manipulation keys for each." Hereg rocked forward and drew in the dirt with his finger, making a crude picture of a cube. "Using a premonitive resonator," he said, "the frequency of the space within a space may be tuned to achieve sufficient stability for passage, creating a doorway." He drew lines placing the cube upon a planar surface, then rubbed them out and altered the perspective with new lines. Depending on how Mauritane looked at the cube, it appeared to be either extended away from the plane or sinking into it.
"I cast runes to find one who is premonitively gifted," said Hereg, looking from Silverdun, to Mauritane, to Raieve, to Gray Mave. His eyes stopped on Mave and he pointed. "He is the one. He is to be my resonator."
"What does all this mean?" said Mauritane.
"I know what it means," said Silverdun. "He wants to use Gray Mave as a crowbar. Except instead of a packing crate, he's going to open a space between two worlds."
Chapter 28
Night fell. Hereg continued to speak, sometimes veering into heavily accented High Fae that Satterly could not decipher. Eventually, he gave up listening and wandered to the edge of the enclosure. As much as he hated to admit it, none of it made sense to him. The nuts and bolts of Fae magic sounded more like an alien differential calculus than the storybook finger twiddling he'd once imagined. And it always came back to the equally alien concept of re, the magical essence, or sense, or power, or whatever it was that let the Fae do what they did. Trying to understand how Fae magic worked without being able to sense re was like trying to understand music theory without being able to hear.
It was unspoken among his fellows, but obvious, that the presence of iron in the bars was beginning to affect them unfavorably. It was bad luck even to speak of iron, so no one said it, but no one needed to. The mere proximity of it seemed to act as a depressant, dulling even Mauritane's reactions almost to the point of stupor.
Satterly stood at the edge of the cage and looked at the guard. He was a young man, no more than thirty, his long greasy hair tied back into a ponytail. He was so tall he had a tendency to hunch forward; his head was permanently angled outward like a turtle's. He leaned against the back of one of the huts, a shotgun within easy reach.
"How'd you get mixed up with them?" the man asked, out of nowhere.
"Me?" said Satterly, surprised. "Oh, well, it's a long story. My name's Brian Satterly."
"So y'all are all together? Like, you're friendly?"
Satterly puffed out his cheeks in thought. "Well, we're not enemies, but I wouldn't go as far as to call us friends, either. Let's say we're joined by circumstance."
"Joined by circumstance," the man repeated, enunciating each word. "Huh."
Satterly frowned and changed the subject. "So, uh, what are all you people doing here? How did you get to this world?"
The man laughed. "We drove," he said.
The woman named Linda skirted around the huts and joined the guard at his post. Back near the fire, some of the children peered in their direction, but most of the adults looked studiously away, as though trying to ignore them. Linda whispered quietly with the guard for a few seconds, pointing and gesturing.
She stuffed her hands in the pockets of a pair of threadbare jeans and approached the cage. "You," she said, pointing at Satterly. "What's your name?"
"Brian Satterly," he said. "I just went through this with your friend."
"My name is Linda Grossman," she said. "I want to apologize for all of this."
"I'd feel better about that if I knew what `all of this' was," said Satterly.
"Come on out," she said. "Just you, none of the others. We'll talk."
Satterly glanced back at Mauritane, who'd noticed Linda's approach and now was staring hard in her direction. "She says she wants me to go with her," said Satterly.
Mauritane's face was cold. "Go, find out what you can," he said. "We're having a bad time of it. I don't know how Hereg has survived so long in this cell."
Satterly nodded.
"Just reach around and undo the latch," Linda said, backing up. She turned to the young man. "Give me the Browning," she said. He scowled but reached into his coat and handed her a pistol without protest.
Satterly reached around and unhooked the latch, stepping carefully into the open clearing. Moonlight dyed the night a pale blue; it reflected from the snow at the forest's edge and caught in Linda's dark eyes.
"Come on," she said. "Let's talk."
She led him past the huts and continued walking, past the clearing and into the forest.
"See that hill over there?" she pointed.
Satterly nodded.
"That's where we're headed."
They walked in silence for a few seconds. Despite his confusion, Satterly felt comforted by Linda's presence. She was normal. She was a bridge back to the world he assumed he'd never see again. He imagined that if he were to lean in and smell her neck, he might begin to cry.
"I was elected to talk to you," she said, walking with her hands in the pockets of a too-large brown cloak. The butt of the pistol protruded alongside her right wrist. "I need you to understand a few things, and I want to know some things about you."
"Okay," Satterly said.
"Mainly, I want you to understand that we don't mean you any harm, not really. All we want is to get home. No one's going to get hurt if I have anything to say about it."
"That's fine, depending on how much say you have."
"I have almost enough." She scowled. "I need to know if you're willing to help us."
"I might be under different circumstances," Satterly said. "I don't appreciate being held prisoner. And my friends aren't doing so well in that cage of yours."
"We didn't… well, I didn't mean for that to happen. So, they are your friends then?"
"Why does everyone keep asking me that?"
"You're human, and you speak their language. We could use you to help us get back, and in return we'd be willing to take you with us. We just want to know what side you're on."
Satterly stopped short. "So you really have a way out of here?"
"Yes."
"I… I don't know. Most of the time I'm not even sure what I'm doing with those guys. I mean, I've been through a lot already with them, but… I don't know. Sometimes I don't even think they want me around."
"So you'll help us?"
Satterly thought. "I have to think. I said I'd go with them; we're on a mission, sort of."
"I can't tell you what to do," said Linda. "But we're leaving this place tomorrow, one way or the other. Like I said, I just don't want anyone to get hurt. If you help us, you can do whatever you want. Come with us, ride off with your Fae friends. I don't care. But I do know this: if you don't cooperate, Jim will force you. And I can't control him."
"I have a question," said Satterly. "Why didn't you just ask? Maybe we would have helped anyway. I don't understand why I would even need to choose sides."
"I guess Hereg hasn't explained the spell to you yet."
"No, not to me."
"The way I understand it, in order to create the way out, he needs the full premonition essence from a catalyst Fae. I have no idea what that means, but whatever it is, it's apparently quite painful."