“This is more passive than I expected of you,” I said.
“I have my hands full, for one thing,” Ms. Lewis said. “And there are other reasons. Consider this a lesson. The first step is getting a bead on them. As we turn to enter the alley, you’ll have a glimpse of them. Look for the connection and hold on to it. Fixate on it without identifying yourself.”
“Sure,” I said. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It’s moving. A straight line. It’s also isolated. There are few cars on the road. It’s too early in the morning, and the city sees little traffic. It’s easier to spot a car alone than a car in the crowd, with your sight just as much as with your eyes.”
“Right.”
“Holding on is going to be harder than finding it. Now.”
We turned. The car passed behind me. I had only a glimpse of the electric blue sedan. Stuffed animals on the ledge by the rear-view window.
Sure enough, I found the connection, thin. Holding on… I wasn’t even sure how. I focused my attention on it.
“It’s turning, and turning again, going around the block,” she said.
“We stop?” I asked.
Ms. Lewis nodded.
We stopped in the middle of the alleyway.
I could see as the car slowed, then stopped. The connection became far less focused. Diffuse on one end, tighter on the other.
“There are options, now” Ms. Lewis said. “The first step would be identifying them. I’m not going to give you the answer. Find it yourself.”
I had only the clues to go by, the color and make of the car, the fact that it had been a bit dingy. Not new by any stretch of the imagination, the stuffed animals…
The wrong track. Not enough to put any name to it.
The connection itself… I examined it in more detail, as the end closest to me got more and more broken up. If I had a better eye for this sort of thing, I might have been able to see where they were focusing their attention.
That would be a useful tool. To know where your enemies senses were directed and to act elsewhere.
I wondered if the Others I’d seen darting out of sight of people had been doing the same.
The spirits that made up the connection took all sorts of shapes. I couldn’t focus enough to make them out. They seemed to dart out of my view when I tried to look at them, like the dust that settled on the surface of the eye.
“I’m not sure I can,” I said.
“You would have more focus if you hadn’t lied,” she said. “Be glad you were in the house and it wasn’t more severe. Try harder.”
I tried. Interpreting what the spirits were supposed to be was hard. They often had arms and legs, sometimes in vague human shapes, sometimes not, and most were transparent. The shape, the colors, the aesthetics, they all pointed to the ideas and elements these things supported.
I couldn’t decipher them before I felt something shift. The connection solidified on the one end. In a heartbeat, they had both focused on me.
Yet they hadn’t moved.
A second later, they were taking some sort of action, moving, and very deliberately, they scattered my perception of where they were. Disappearing somewhere. I could tell they had a bead on me, but I had no idea where they were.
They had deftly flipped the tables on me.
“Duchamps,” I said.
Ms. Lewis nodded. Her attention was on the hatchet, as she scratched at the metal with what looked like a needle. “Details?”
“Enchantresses,” I said. “A coven.”
“One of them is calling family,” she said. “She hasn’t gotten through, probably because it’s so early in the day. But she’s using an implement to focus the connection. She will get through, given another minute or two, and you’ll have more enemies to deal with. Very possibly the entire coven.”
“This is the point where the whole ‘escorting us safely there’ thing comes into play.”
“It is,” she said. She kept scratching at the hatchet. When she saw me looking, she said, “Oh. This will be another minute.”
“You’re not going to fight them? Or stop the call?”
“No. I’m not permitted.”
“I… what?”
“I can only make explicit use of my power while I’m working. As I said before, I’m nothing more than a teacher and an acquaintance while I’m taking this break.”
“You misled us,” Rose said.
“I was very clear. Don’t start crying now. We’ve made it this far. Now face them head-on. Can you see it? One coming right now.”
I looked, and I saw something.
A bird made its way into the alley. Not a hawk or anything like that, but one of the tiny ones that tended to bob up and down in the air more than it actually glided or flew. A chickadee or sparrow or some such.
It unfolded, feathers sweeping across a space five feet long, a momentary curtain.
Putting me face to face with a woman so beautiful she looked artificial. Her ears had a slight point to them, and she had an eerie sort of confidence to her step. Snow settled on platinum-colored hair and bare shoulders, exposed by clothing that seemed more ornamental than anything else. Something between a revealing variant on a Japanese yukata and a high-fashion dress I might expect to see on a runway in France or Italy, inspired by a flower in bloom. Any time I thought it might belong to one culture, some aspect of it dismissed the notion.
Her eyes were pale from corner to corner, the eyelashes long and dark in a way a makeup artist would struggle to achieve. When she smiled, she showed a bit of her teeth.
She drew a sword slowly, with second after second of the clean sound of the weapon leaving the scabbard. I wasn’t sure what kind of sword it was.
The damned weapon was easily twelve feet long. Her arms outstretched in front and behind her, she bent the metal until it bowed in a ‘u’. When it came free, it did so in a shower of sparks, the blade practically dancing as it recoiled, returning to its straight length. The sound of metal singing filled the air.
She held it pointing straight up until it stilled, then lowered it so the point was aimed straight at my heart, her position very much like a fencer’s. If I looked past the movement of the wind that made the length of thin metal sway, the blade didn’t shake or waver in the slightest.
Ms Lewis placed a hand on my shoulder, making me jump a little. When she spoke, it was a murmur in my ear. “Now, shoulders square, chin up. Take a deep breath. Get some oxygen to that brain of yours.”
“What- why are you saying that?” I asked.
“I’m going to walk you through this, and I’m going to hope that you follow my instructions to the letter. Now pay attention. The less guidance you demand from me, the faster I can hand this hatchet to you.”