The Others were following. Just out of sight, as we moved through trees. We reached a downhill slope and our progress slowed by half, my legs plunging knee-deep into snow.
“That happened to you too, huh?” I asked, to distract myself.
“Hm?
“Being six, getting lost in a crowded place.”
“Oh. Yeah. We do have some shared memories, huh?”
I nodded. “Apparently. Maybe because mom and dad were careless enough they had to screw up a few times before they started keeping better track of us?”
There was a pause.
“Once,” Rose said, quiet. “They only lost me the once.”
I gnawed on my lip for a moment. “Fuck them. They lost me three times. That I can remember.”
I could hear Rose laughing, on the other side of the mirror I wore. A kind of nervous laughter, or a laughter borne of relief.
Could she see them? The Others that were lurking in the very fringes? If she could only see what came through the mirror, they wouldn’t be in her field of view. Taller than most, moving effortlessly through the snow.
We reached a clearing. I thought I maybe recognized it from the vision I’d had.
The Briar Girl sat on a fallen tree with branches still sticking up from what had once been the upper end. Her feet were buried in snow, and she was sitting in snow, but she didn’t show the slightest sign of discomfort.
“Bad manners,” Briar Girl said, “Coming into someone’s space with a weapon drawn. Two weapons.”
“We’ll put our weapons away if you put yours away,” Rose said.
The Briar Girl let go of her rabbit to raise her hands, showing them empty. Her fingers were exposed in fingerless gloves. The rabbit remained in her lap.
Rose continued, “The homunculus, I recognize that word. Manufactured life. You made it. A lot of these Others are tools, aren’t they? Hand crafted Others? They’re weapons as much as that hatchet is.”
“Well said,” Briar Girl responded. “Fine. I’ll send my creations away if you put away your weapons.”
“With all due respect,” I said. “I’m not putting my weapons away until you’ve dismissed every Other here, creation or not, and you’re not about to do that. Can we skip the niceties and accept that you’re not being very hospitable, so I’m going to be a terrible guest?”
I could see the Briar Girl deliberating. She stroked her rabbit. Her familiar.
The thing was whispering. Not speaking, per se, but I could see it communicating, speaking a language only it and its master could understand.
The Others that had been flanking Rose and I while I trudged through the snow were drawing into the clearing, gathering around the Briar Girl, her court and congregation.
I heard a sound from Rose, as one collection of the Others arrived. Dressed in layered, bleached skins, each wearing an oversized bird skull atop its head. They stood in a neat row behind the Briar Girl, one shorter one perching on a larger branch of the fallen tree, legs bent.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“To offer you a deal. You want property.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t offer this to you. Not yet. It’s not mine.”
“I know this,” the Briar Girl said. “You’re useless to me.”
“I’m more useful to you than any of the ones who come after me are liable to be,” I said. “You want a share of this land, you can’t establish a demesne because it’s technically owned by another person. Can’t stake out the territory to even begin making the claim.”
“I know all this,” she responded.
“In a few years, I could give you a share of land.”
I bent down, drawing out a square, one and a half feet by one and a half feet. “I’ll give you that much land, for letting us leave alive, if I live that long.”
“You insult me.”
“No,” I said. “I’m opening negotiations. We’re going to work together. You’ll do favors for me, and I’ll give you parcels of land, so you can expand that square. I’ll do favors for you, and you’ll give me things I need.”
“I could kill you,” she said. “Kill the next one, and the next one, until your line ends, and nobody has claim.”
“Devils have claim,” I said. “If our line ends, lawyers could take it over, since the have partial or complete custody even now, and that means it probably passes into the hands of immortal Others. Devils could get a foothold into the world, and it’s a big foothold. You probably won’t even recognize this place.”
I saw her eyes narrow.
“This is your only option. Best deal you’ll get. Any chunk I give you is a chunk they can’t take.”
“And what do you want?” she asked. “To live?”
“Living is nice,” I said. “But right now, I want to utterly destroy the Behaim and Duchamp families.”
3.02