Windblowne (19 page)

“Let go!” yelped Oliver, struggling. Great-uncle Gilbert was as deceptively strong as ever. Oliver thrust the kite into his great-uncle’s face. “It’s right here! See?”

Great-uncle Gilbert waved his hand dismissively. “That’s not my kite. My kite is one of the most beautiful
creations that has ever come from human hands. It is a soaring masterwork.”

It was true that the kite was worse for wear. It might have been shot from the same cannon as Oliver. “Well, this is it,” Oliver said. “It’s been through a lot. All to rescue you, I might add.”

Great-uncle Gilbert’s eyebrows arched upward. He bent down to examine the kite. For a moment, he was perfectly still.

“My kite!” he finally screeched. “My poor kite! What has he done to you?” He snatched the kite from Oliver. “He broke you, didn’t he! How dare he!”

“I didn’t break it!” said Oliver, hurt.

Great-uncle Gilbert shook his head. “Not you.
Him!
The evil me!”

“I’m sorry,” said Oliver, trying to keep his voice from trembling. “I tried to stop him.”

“I’m sure you did,” Great-uncle Gilbert said, patting Oliver absently on the shoulder. “But what could you have done? Even I was fooled at first! And if he fooled
me
, then what chance could
you
have possibly had?”

“Hey,” said Oliver crossly, “I—”

But Great-uncle Gilbert was trotting away, muttering “Tried to warn him … did my best to keep him safe … and do I get a word of thanks?” His feet sent up clouds of dust that swirled away in the breeze.

Oliver rushed after him. He could barely keep up with the old man as he strode rapidly along, twisting and turning expertly through the desert scrub. “Can you fix the kite?” he asked anxiously.

“Can I fix the kite?” Great-uncle Gilbert replied haughtily. “My dear boy! My kitesmithing skills are unparalleled! I—”

“Well, can you?” interrupted Oliver.

“No.”

Great-uncle Gilbert halted suddenly. He held the kite close to his face. His expert fingers danced, tenderly, across every inch of silk. When he came to Two’s makeshift spine, he snarled, “Amateur!”

Oliver felt unexpectedly defensive. “He didn’t have much time!”

“Time?” said Great-uncle Gilbert. “Time is just a construct!”

“What?”

“Never mind.” The old man set off again. “I can’t fix the kite.”

“But why not?” panted Oliver, jogging after him.

The old man sighed. “Insufficient materials!”

“But what about the riven oak?” said Oliver. “It must have an equivalent in this world. You could use bits from it to fix the kite!”

His great-uncle stopped short. “Why, yes,” he said, surprised. “How do you know about that?”

“Oh, I’ve learned a thing or two the last few days,” said Oliver smugly.

“Perhaps you have,” Great-uncle Gilbert said. “Yes, in my talented hands, the kite can be repaired with a spar from its home oak. But you see, wonderful as these trees are, they are too small to fashion spars of suitable length.” He started off again in a swirl of purple robe, leaving Oliver in a cloud of dust.

Coughing, Oliver reached for his pack. “Wait!” he shouted. Oliver removed one of the branches he had collected in the last Windblowne and caught up to his great-uncle. The kite began to shake in his great-uncle’s grasp. The old man jolted to a stop, gaping at the kite. Oliver stuck the branch in his face. “Here!”

Great-uncle Gilbert’s eyes widened, then narrowed, then widened. “Astonishing!” he cried. He tossed his walking stick to the ground and yanked the branch out of Oliver’s hands. He sniffed it all along its length. He gave it a shake. Finally he snorted and looked away.

“Well?” asked Oliver.

“Remarkable,” said Great-uncle Gilbert with a sniff.

“Never have I seen such a potent specimen of oak.” This admission seemed pulled from him with great difficulty.

“I have more,” said Oliver. “I got them from a world where the oaks were twice as high—”

But the old man was in motion again. The branch had disappeared somewhere within his robes, and he and his walking stick were barreling through the desert.

Oliver caught up and panted alongside his great-uncle. Great-uncle Gilbert seemed to know exactly where he was going, but Oliver felt as lost as he had when he landed on the world with only one moon. He turned around and around until the twisted little oaks snapped into place like the majestic trees of the other Windblownes. It wasn’t easy, but soon he had a map of his own Windblowne. He knew where they were and where they were heading—to his great-uncle’s oak,
or rather, the oak that held his treehouse in the other Windblownes.

“So you’ve got the branches. Now you can fix the kite, right?”

“Only partly,” huffed Great-uncle Gilbert. His voice did not sound quite so rude. “Nothing can be done about the rips in its sails. I have no silk.”

“Wait,” said Oliver. This time his great-uncle waited. Oliver rummaged again. He produced the silken half-tail that Ilia had given him. He had promised Ilia that he would give it to her Oliver, but this was a special situation.

Great-uncle Gilbert accepted the tail without snatching or yanking. He appraised it carefully. He coughed and puffed for a minute, then patted Oliver on the head. “Well done,” he said, and the tail went away somewhere in his robes, too.

“So—you can fix the kite?” Oliver demanded for the third time.

“Possibly,” said Great-uncle Gilbert, taking off again. “There is a sickness that infects these samples.” He twirled a finger in his hair. “Still, there
may
be a way around that problem.”

Oliver had the impression that his great-uncle had not fully considered the implications of repairing the kite. The old man had the mildest expression on his face, as though he were simply enjoying a midsummer dash. Meanwhile, a thousand miles of howling hell-world loomed emptily in all directions. Oliver reminded himself that his great-uncle was mad.

Gently, he said, “So Lord Gilbert trapped you here. But we can escape once the kite is fixed.”

Oliver seemed to have earned a little grudging respect, for his great-uncle answered in a way that suggested normal conversation.

“Unfortunately for you,” he said with a smile as they wound their way across the rocky slope, “even if I can repair my dear little kite, it will not be able to fly you out. The night winds on this world are not strong enough. There’s no leaving here!”

Not only did Great-uncle Gilbert not seem upset about the prospect of being trapped in the hell-world, he seemed oddly cheerful about it. Oliver started to feel less gentle and more irate. “Aren’t you worried about spending the rest of your life imprisoned in a hell-world?”

Great-uncle Gilbert cackled. “A hell-world? I suppose that old fool did see it that way. But my dear boy, I am not imprisoned. I like it here!”

Oliver looked around. He saw desert landscape, endless sand, and distant dust devils roaring across the parched landscape. “How could you like it? Don’t you miss the oaks?”

“Miss them?” cried Great-uncle Gilbert. “Why ever would I! They’re all around!” He waved his hand vaguely around his head.

“Yes, but … look at them. They’re stunted. They’re not really oaks at all.”

Great-uncle Gilbert chuckled. “They’re not? Lad, these are the finest oaks I have ever seen! Look closer!”

Oliver sidled over skeptically and peered at the nearest little tree. He looked at the wide-spreading branches, tough bark, and roots snaking out in all directions. He looked at the spiny little protrusions—you could hardly call them leaves—and realized with surprise that these oaks still had them. After the surge that had wiped out the leaves in the last Windblowne, he’d thought every oak in all the worlds must be entirely bare. Yet here they were. Oliver tugged on a spiky leaf. It refused to come
off. He looked closer. This leaf was tiny and hard to read, like the script in an ancient book, but he could see that, in another world, this was a sentinel oak.

Oliver looked at the dry sand and cracked rock from which the oaks grew. He looked up at the cloudless orange sky. These snaking roots must grow that way in order to seek out water wherever it could be found. He stroked his hand along the oak’s tough bark. This hard skin would be needed to hold in the little water the roots collected. And the tree’s small size was the most efficient way to grow in desert conditions. The tenacious oaks had found a way to survive in a harsh and unforgiving environment.

“I see,” said Oliver simply.

Great-uncle Gilbert beamed. “Well done, then.”

“One of our world’s oaks couldn’t survive here at all, could it?” said Oliver. “These oaks really are stronger.”

“Indeed,” replied his great-uncle. “You know, Oliver, at first I assumed you were as impossibly stupid as the rest of them, but now I see that I was not completely right!”

Oliver decided to take that as a compliment. “The rest of them?”

“Yes! The rest of the fools in Windblowne! I told them of the old legends—that the oaks of our mountain are linked with oaks in the others, and that the night winds blow across them all—but they wouldn’t listen. Banned me from the Festival. Fools! It’s really that they didn’t like losing every year, you know. It was all pure professional jealousy!”

Oliver sensed that Great-uncle Gilbert was headed off into another rant. “How many worlds are there, anyway?” he asked, trying to divert him.

Great-uncle Gilbert shook his head. “I don’t know. Thousands. Millions. Billions!”

“Then I got really lucky,” said Oliver, “finding you among all of them.”

Great-uncle Gilbert gave him a blank stare. “Lucky? No, I’d call it exceedingly clever of you to have realized that I designed that handvane to guide me home.”

“Oh … yes,” said Oliver. “Clever of me. Exceedingly.” He looked doubtfully at the desert expanse. Though it didn’t seem as barren and dead as it had before, it was definitely not home.

“Actually,” he went on after a thoughtful pause, “it was really Ilia who—”

“Never got a chance to try it out myself, of course,” his great-uncle interrupted. “Can’t take off with the kite. Too fat!” He patted his enormous stomach happily. “Appreciate your testing it out for me, lad. You do have your uses!”

“Any time,” replied Oliver.

A chill breeze rose, and Oliver shivered. Though his great-uncle might like it here, he was nevertheless a prisoner of Lord Gilbert. And the hunters were doubtless on their way.

If Great-uncle Gilbert was worried about that, he certainly didn’t show it. He pushed on, busily pointing out various features of the landscape. There was a hidden spring that sent a stream of clear water trickling over the rocks, and strange prickly bushes with edible fruit. “Delicious roots, too,” said Great-uncle Gilbert.

Oliver could not imagine eating a root, but he supposed he would have to get used to it. Or at least he would have, if the clock were not ticking toward doom for thousands, millions, or billions of worlds. He made several attempts to point out the danger.

“So, you see,” he said after describing the world of
giant oaks, “the entire forest lost its leaves at once. Lord Gilbert has activated the rest of the hunters. He—”

“Look!” cried Great-uncle Gilbert. “A snake! Marvelous!” He attempted to chase after it, but the startled snake slithered off in a blink.

Oliver sighed and followed his great-uncle. Soon they burst into a small clearing.

“Home,” announced Great-uncle Gilbert with an imperial sweep of his hand.

Oliver stared, amazed. His great-uncle had built the beginnings of a new treehouse. Not a house up in the tree, because these oaks were too small for that, but a small hut with a low roof formed from the spreading branches of a little oak. Walls were constructed with branches bound together. Large rocks served as furniture. Great-uncle Gilbert hadn’t wasted any time.

“You’ve made a house!” said Oliver, surprised.

“Brilliantly observed,” said Great-uncle Gilbert. “What else would I do? Got to live in something!”

“But don’t you want to go back home to Windblowne?” asked Oliver.

Great-uncle Gilbert snorted and sprawled on a
couchlike rock. “Why would I? I’ve got my privacy at last! Delightful. If only I could find some chickens, life would be perfect!”

“What do you mean? You had plenty of privacy in Windblowne!”

But his great-uncle was staring into space, muttering, “Chickens … chickens … where to find some chickens?”

Home
, thought Oliver. Great-uncle Gilbert’s handvane had known all along. The crazy old man had set up shop in the hell-world without thinking twice.

Oliver grabbed his great-uncle’s arm and shook it. This was no time for the old man’s eccentricities. “Great-uncle Gilbert!”

“Eh, what? Oliver!” His great-uncle seemed newly startled by Oliver’s presence. Oliver repeated his question.

“Privacy in Windblowne? Hardly! Too many presumptuous boys prowling around, zapping me off to other worlds!”

“You mean Two, right?” said Oliver.

Great-uncle Gilbert waved his hand airily. “Is that what you call him? Yes. Atrociously behaved. No surprise,
considering the appalling savagery of his caretaker!” He leapt up and darted about, searching for something. “At first the boy wanted to know about kites. Admirable! Happy to oblige such a talented lad, of course—”

Oliver winced.

“—but they couldn’t fool me for long! Not with a barrage of letters from
him
, demanding to know all my secrets! The old fool wanted to control the paths between worlds for his own ends and was willing to employ the most brutal means to do it. You must have seen those black strings—”

“Wires,” corrected Oliver importantly.

“Strings everywhere, sucking life from the oaks!” cried Great-uncle Gilbert. “And the old madman wanted
me
to work for
him!
Can you imagine that?” He broke into an insane giggle. Then his eyes widened, and he thrust a hand into his robe. His face brightened, and he pulled a carving knife from a pocket. “There you are!” he said, wagging a finger at the knife. “Hiding in my pocket all along. Now, let’s have a look at the oak.”

Oliver’s heart fell when he saw the riven oak. The little tree was nearly dead. Most of its spiny leaves had fallen, and its branches drooped against the ground.
Oliver knelt beside it and stroked the withered branches. Though afraid of what he would see, he turned to look at the kite, hoping there was enough strength left in the oak to—