Windblowne

anyone across all the worlds!”

“But you’re killing the oaks,” Oliver pointed out. “And your grandnephew.”

Lord Gilbert waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, there are inefficiencies. I have to draw power from the oaks on my mountain to run my machine. Soon they’ll all be dead. But there are more oaks on other worlds. I’ll build conduits between those worlds and this one. The oaks are limitless.”

“But you’re not just killing the oaks on this mountain,” said Oliver. “You’re killing all the oaks on all the worlds.”

“Nonsense, boy,” chuckled Lord Gilbert. “Don’t argue with me about things you couldn’t possibly understand.”

“You didn’t know you were killing oaks on other worlds?” said Oliver. “Don’t you know the oaks are all connected? That they’re all the same oaks?”

Lord Gilbert sighed heavily. “Don’t expect me to try to explain these concepts to you. But what you describe is impossible.”

Oliver looked at him in disbelief. “You don’t even know how your own machine works, do you?”

“Of course I do,” huffed Lord Gilbert. “Phase resonance! Principles of quantum polyality!”

“You don’t know,” interrupted Oliver.

“I almost do,” said Lord Gilbert defensively.

“But Great-uncle Gilbert knows,” said Oliver with satisfaction. “And he wouldn’t tell you.”

Lord Gilbert gave a thin-lipped smile. “He’ll be willing to cooperate soon enough.”

“He’ll never cooperate with you,” said Oliver evenly.

“Two said that before, as well,” growled Lord Gilbert. “But look at him now.”

The argument was interrupted by a muffled explosion from outside. Lord Gilbert looked at the HM IV with alarm. “You!” He pointed at Two. “Train the other one. I’m needed outside.” He rushed from the laboratory.

Two and Oliver looked at each other. “Well,” said Two uncomfortably. “I suppose I should show you how the hunters work.”

He began repairing the damaged hunter with a screwdriver, providing detailed explanations as he went. Oliver did not understand a word. But he nodded and said, “Ah, I see!” anyway. Now that he knew what Lord Gilbert was capable of, he didn’t want the old man to discover that Oliver could be no use to him at all.

He nodded, and pretended, until he realized that Two was saying something about the brain and a thought occurred to him. “Wait,” he said. “Doesn’t traveling between worlds with that machine hurt the hunters, too?”

Two pursed his lips. “Yes. It hurts them. It even kills them, eventually. That’s why Lord Gilbert needs constant replacements. He’s trying to build a whole fleet of a hundred hunters to guard him once he’s able to travel to other worlds.”

Oliver looked at the folded hunters in their fifty-six hutches. “Why aren’t these … uh …”

“Activated?” said Two. “He’s using the oaks for power. The drain from so many hunters would kill the oaks within hours. Once he can get to other worlds, he’s going to build conduits that will add their power to his machine. Then he can activate them all.”

“But—” Oliver began, when suddenly Lord Gilbert’s voice crackled from Two’s handvane.

“Two!” ordered the scratchy voice. “The damage is worse than I feared! The machine could explode and destroy the entire mountain. I need your assistance at once!”

“That sounds serious,” said Oliver.

“It will be fine,” said Two. He looked around the laboratory, then grabbed a small metal can. “This is an oilcan. The joints on each hunter have to be oiled. Can you handle that?”

“Of course,” said Oliver, irate.

“Good. Get started.” Two thrust the can at Oliver and hurried from the laboratory.

The oilcan appeared to have a lever on top of it. Oliver gave it an experimental squeeze, and a squirt of black fluid shot onto the floor. Quickly, Oliver set the can on a workbench and pulled a rug over the dark stain.

He looked around the laboratory. He had no intention of helping Lord Gilbert, but he had no idea how to escape from this terrible situation without the crimson kite. He needed to come up with some kind of plan. Maybe he didn’t understand the equipment in the lab, but he might find something he could use among Two’s kitesmithing tools.

He went upstairs to find Two’s bedroom, which he guessed would double as his workshop, just like Oliver’s did.

There was no mistaking the room. Everything in it—the bed, the chest, the workbench—matched the furniture in his own room at home. But there was one large and dispiriting difference. Instead of the broken spars and misshapen sails and other kitesmithing monstrosities that had littered his bedroom at home, this room was full of beautiful kites—some on racks, some hanging from the ceiling. Oliver sighed.

He fell miserably into the chair in front of the workbench. He supposed that one of these kites belonged to him now. His gaze wandered over them. The experience was eerily like looking into a daydream. Each of the magnificent kites was exactly like one he had imagined making but had failed in every attempt to construct. He thought he ought to feel happy that he now owned one of these kites. He tried to rouse himself with the idea that he could use it in the Festival. After all, it was as if he had made it. But that was no good.

Two had all of the talent that Oliver lacked. “Your talents lie elsewhere,” Great-uncle Gilbert had said. Sure, thought Oliver. All that means is that I don’t have any talents at all.

He looked restlessly around the room. Two had probably built all of the other things that Oliver had imagined making, too.

He thought of his attempt at a secret drawer in his workbench. He looked carefully along one side of Two’s workbench. The wood appeared perfectly smooth, as though no door were there. But of course, Two had the talents that Oliver lacked. He would have built the drawer properly.

Oliver placed his fingers just where he had tried to put the hidden mechanism for opening his own drawer. And he pushed.

Click.

Triumph. With a satisfying hiss, a secret drawer slid out from the workbench. Oliver felt a moment of intense jealousy, then lifted the lid on the drawer and looked inside—

And realized he just might escape after all.

10

Oliver reached into the secret drawer. He withdrew a single oaken spar, still green and sticky and freshly cut. In the drawer remained a neat row of similar spars, all oak, whittled to various lengths. Oliver ran his fingers over their tacky surfaces. They felt as though they’d all been cut within the last few days.

He turned quickly to the kites and examined them one by one. None of them had spars of oak. No one used oak to make kite spars—no one except Great-uncle Gilbert. Yet Two had been crafting oaken spars and hiding them in a secret drawer in his workbench.

Oliver dropped onto the bed, thinking furiously. Two was a skilled kitesmith, and he must have noticed the odd oaken spars of the crimson kite right away. He must have decided to make his own kite, modeled after Great- uncle Gilbert’s. For some reason, he had hidden all of this from his guardian.

Oliver didn’t know why, but he did know this—whatever Two was scheming, it was not going to happen. Oliver had a much better plan for these oaken spars: he would use them himself, to repair the crimson kite, and escape from this Windblowne.

He wanted to try the repair right away, but he had to wait for night, when Lord Gilbert and Two would be sleeping. So, with impatient reluctance, he replaced the sticky spars exactly as he found them, closed the secret door with a snap, and lay back on the bed to formulate every detail of his new plan. This time, he vowed, no mistakes, nothing left to chance, and no improvising. This plan had to work, absolutely, with no excuses.…