I couldn’t see which moved first, her or it. They were just in the middle of the power circle together all at once, blue sparks flying from Annie’s sword an’ bits of blackness sticking to her skin where the sickness caught hold. Even from outside of Annie’s circle there was rage and hate coming off the stuff, but it kept not slowing my girl down. She just kept taking it, and fighting back, and holding her ground until the damned stuff started to falter.
Hester stepped in then, one quick smooth move that looked like they’d been planning it all along. I was used to seeing Jo’s blue healing magic at work, an’ it surprised the hell outta me to see Hester’s hands shine bright clear yellow when she raised ‘em up. The stuff faltered under that light, an’ for a couple breaths I thought everything was gonna be all right. The sickness shrank, getting less dangerous-looking and somehow more scared as Annie’s fighting skills and Hester’s healing magic came together.
I leaned forward, not breathing, just clenching my hands and teeth and praying, when the stuff gathered itself into an arrow and punched right outta the top of the power circle.
Hester dropped like somebody’d cut her strings. Annie staggered but stayed up, an’ then because she was the biggest-hearted woman in the world, she forgot about the turn-tail monster an’ knelt to tend to Hester. Me, I watched the stuff head skyward until it went invisible from distance. When I looked back at the women, Hester was sitting up and holding her head. Annie was clucking and making soothing noises, and Hes looked more prune-faced than before. I guessed she didn’t like that kinda fuss. “What happened there?”
“Backlash from it breaking my power circle. I think I’m lucky Mrs. Muldoon had weakened it. Where did it go?”
I pointed up. Annie and Hes both looked that way, and Hester’s face got tighter still. “We’ve released it. Damn.”
“There’s gotta be some way to catch it.” I didn’t know who I was trying to convince, but I wasn’t doing much good making myself believe it. Then I forgot about it for something more important: “Annie, how you doing?”
“Breathless!” She put a hand over her chest, smiling. “But breathless from exertion, not coughing. I feel younger here. Is that usual?”
“The spirit worlds reflect our perceptions of ourselves.” Hes was still frowning at the sky. “We need to return. I have to do what I can to mitigate this creature’s escape.”
A beanstalk curled up outta the ground and stretched for the yellow sky.
All three of us stood there staring at it a minute. Annie rocked back on her heels to get a better look as it shot up toward through blue clouds an’ reached toward the low red sun. It wasn’t green itself, kinda yellowish an’ ugly, but nothing had the right colors down here anyway, and it looked healthy other than being the wrong color. When we couldn’t hardly see the top anymore, Annie said, “Am I right in believing that this journey is essentially…well, all about me?”
Hes, gaping like a fish outta water, snapped her mouth shut and nodded, but her gaze went right back to the beanstalk.
Annie, all business-like, dusted her hands together, said, “Well, then, I believe this should be taken as a hint,” and started climbing the beanstalk. Hes and me scrambled after her. The ground fell away faster than it shoulda, partly ‘cause the beanstalk was still growing and partly ‘cause the world and distances were all stretched outta proportion. Then we broke through the sky and for half a second I got a glimpse of our world, but we were just passing through. We busted through that sky, too, straight into a place where the air was thinner an’ the sky a lighter shade of blue.
Cold wind wanted to knock us off the beanstalk, but Annie kept climbing, even when we shot past mountaintops. After what felt like about a day, we got to the top of the stalk, where it curled up and under an’ all around, with broad leaves big enough to hold us all. When Hes and me caught up, Annie was already sitting on one, knees tucked up and arms around ‘em as she looked out over the whole wide forever.
I guessed if the Lower World’s horizons were too close, the Upper World’s were too far away. It all bent out around us like we were on some other planet, somewhere bigger’n Earth and twice as old. The beanstalk had outgrown the mountains, an’ the mountains were taller than sense could make ‘em. There wasn’t much besides mountains poking up through thin clouds. There was blue below us, way below, but it looked like sky, not like water. Light didn’t bounce off it, just got softer the further away it fell. In some places the mountains just stopped, falling away into cliffs that disappeared into mist, too, and no matter which way I looked the sky was cool thin blue.
Way off in the distance there were things riding the updrafts. Birds, I guessed, though I couldn’t figure the size of ‘em if they were visible from so far away in a world this big. Joanne had seen a thunderbird here, even brought it back to the Middle World with her, but I’d been in the hospital and hadn’t seen the damned thing. She’d said it was big, though. Big enough to throw her around, and she wasn’t no featherweight.
A rush of bugs came up the beanstalk, about a thousand walking sticks that took my mind right off the birds. If they were hungry the beanstalk was gonna fall to ‘em, but they didn’t look interested. Instead they scrambled over Annie, who insteada shrieking like I expected, put her arms out and let ‘em run over her. They just about buried her, lining up side by side on her arms and in her hair, all of ‘em trying to get a look into her eyes. She just waited, until finally I got the idea they didn’t find what they were looking for, and left her alone.
Surprising thing was, they came to me. Did the same thing, too, climbed all over and stared at me until I started shivering. Then they all left but one, and it sat on my shoulder. Took me a minute to realize maybe that made sense, ‘cause Jo’s last name, her real last name, the one she didn’t use, was Walkingstick, not Walker. I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep from knocking the bug away, and took a look at Hester. She was big-eyed and looking as sweet as I’d seen her yet, like maybe there was some little bit of kid at Christmas left in her after all. I wanted to know what the devil was happening, but I was kinda afraid to ask.
The wind started taking on shapes, like clouds blowing in and making figures in the sky. I caught glimpses the same way I had in Annie’s spirit quest: a whole herd of horses came running at us, parting around Annie and thundering on across the sky. They scared up a flock of fat birds ‘bout the size of chickens, their wings clattering as they flew off. Some other critters were more distant, harder to name, but I saw the one that finally came to her clear as day. A big fella, a white-tailed stag that walked outta the sky as just a few wisps of cloud an’ walked right into Annie and never came out again. Took me that long to figure out we were on another spirit quest after all. I shot a look at my shoulder. The walking stick was gone.
“All right.” Annie’s voice was real loud and clear, a shock after hearing nothin but the wind for so long. She got up, the beanstalk leaf bobbing with her weight, and she flung her arms wide. “Come and get me, you son of a bitch.”
The goddamned sickness, the first dark thing I’d seen up there in the Upper World, came outta nowhere and slammed back into Annie’s chest.