empty round glade filled with snow lay between us and the foot of the cliff. The cliff was up-slope and above us, a wall of icicle-dripping rock, atop which Colin and Quentin stood.
There was a cleft which cut the cliff into two cliffs, as if a giant with an axe had chopped it neatly in half. On the far side of the cleft was Vanity, alone on a little island-cliff of her own, with snow in her hair, and her garments mussed. She was standing, gazing back at the slope down which she had just toppled, as if trying to see a way back up the slope, across, over, and down to where Colin and Quentin were.
In the seaward direction, behind us, away from Quentin and Colin, was another sharp drop, this one not as tall, leading down to a rocky beach. The ship, gleaming silver-white, was clearly visible behind us, delicate as a cloud, pale as starlight. It seemed closer than the quarter-mile she had been before. The eyes on the prow seemed to be watching us.
Vanity shouted, “I can see a path down from here; there is a set of rock shelves, almost like steps, leading to the beach.”
Colin shouted, “We’re stuck here. Up-slope is too slippery, and I don’t see any way down left or right. Is the rope in your duffel bag? We could tie it off to the rock here and rappel down. Heck, we could practically jump it.”
Victor made a little trumpet out of his fingers and bellowed up at them, “Amelia and I will go back and get the rope, and throw it up to you. Vanity, you stay right where you are. Do not leave each other’s sight.” I could hear his voice making flat, metallic-ringing echoes from the cliff we faced.
Victor turned. I said, “I could go around the foot of the cliff to see if I can find the bottom step of Vanity’s staircase.”
“Let’s not split up,” he said. Again, I felt a strong urge, almost dreamlike, telling me to leave Victor and go off to find where Vanity would be going. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine or visualize the little dot of light in my own head, my own monad, snapping back into place the way I had done for Quentin, when his memory had been influenced. It did not seem to work. The tugging impulse would not go away.
I said, “Victor, something is trying to stop me. You’ll have to drag me.”
At this same time, I heard Quentin yelling something across to Vanity. I did not hear what it was, because I was distracted by the sensation of Victor putting his hand around my upper arm, pulling me after him. Victor is much stronger than the other two boys, much more swift, definite, and precise in his motions. Much stronger than me. I wondered what it would be like to have him pin me down, as Colin once had done.
I heard Vanity call out in a solemn voice: “Bran! I call upon our agreement! Let open the boundaries which hem us in! Let the Four Powers of the Four Worlds of Chaos come forth from their homes to this place!”
At once, I could see my monad, my noumenal self, hovering in the fourth dimension above and inside my nervous system. I could sense the pattern of energies rippling through them, and detect a disturbing force. I tilted the rotation of my monad, to bring the identity/meaning axis back into alignment. The disturbing forces blocking my proper nerve-path flows flickered and went down, but I could sense them changing, gathering forces, moving into another position to attempt to set up another nerve block. It was not the system Dr. Fell had used; this was not an infection of dark matter; it was different. It was self-correcting in nature, organic, perhaps self-aware.
I turned my head. From somewhere, Quentin had found his walking stick. He had not had it a moment ago. Now he did.
Colin was staring down at the snow below. He said something to Quentin. It was too far for me to hear the words, but it was something about the snow being deep enough to break his fall if he merely believed hard enough that it was. Quentin knelt, looking left and right nervously, and put his hand on Colin’s arm, and was urging him to crouch down and hide.
Victor looked up. I looked up, too, and saw nothing but heavy, gray clouds. He said, “Boggin. I recognize his magnetic signature.”
“He’s here?”
“I think the masquerade is over. They are going to reveal their powers.”
“What do we do?”
“Go get the rope for Colin and Quentin. If you make us both lighter will that let us go faster? I get the feeling we are not going to have much time.”
We made it back up through the pines in record time. Of the cluster of world-lines leading from our bodies and snaking through the trees, certain ones had higher potential, and occupied a smaller time-depth. These were the faster paths. I selected one for myself and Victor. For some reason, even though I did not tell him which trees to dodge around, or where the path I’d picked was, his feet found the path swiftly and without error.
There were little metal aglets holding the bag laces shut. Victor squinted at them, even while we were several paces away. The bag’s mouth opened of its own accord. I could see the dark-matter particles like little specks flying out of his forehead and applying magnetic force to the bag.
I got to the bag first. He turned around while I was grabbing the coil of brightly colored mountaineer’s rope from the mouth, and he was ahead of me as we raced back.
We pushed through the trees, and were once again in the little bowl of snow beneath the feet of the two cliffs. Atop one cliff was Quentin and Colin. The other cliff was bare.
Vanity was gone.
16
1.
Victor shouted up, in a voice of cold anger: “Where did she go?”
Colin gave a pantomime one-handed shrug (the axe was in his other hand), and shouted, “Since when can I control her?”
Quentin said, “She’s gone down the rock stairs to the White Ship. She said it was calling her.”
“Idiot!” Victor almost never lost his temper, but now he looked worried, angry.
“The curse is still fuddling her,” Quentin shouted.
“You’re a warlock! Can you stop the curse?” Victor called up.
“No such things as warlocks! But I can challenge the curse,” Quentin called down.
Meanwhile, during this exchange, I had taken the coil of rope and thrown it up toward Colin. It was an easy throw, and there was no way I could have missed it. I missed it. The coil spun through the air, clattered against the rocks some six feet below him, and fell lightly to the snow a dozen yards to my left.
Colin, helpful as always, called down to me: “Nice throw. Aim next time, Aim.”
I ran, picked up the coil, wound up, and threw again. Again, the rope coil fell short, bounced off the cliff side, fell back down to my level, and went spinning and bouncing another thirty or forty feet across the snow of the little glade. I ran after it again.
I was now about forty feet across the glade from the foot of the cliff where Colin and Quentin stood. I was at the top of the seaward cliff, the shorter one leading down to the rocky beach.
Around a shoulder in the rocks down below, I saw Vanity come into view. She was picking her way from boulder top to boulder top, while foam and spray from the waves fell around her feet. A larger wave sent spray reaching up past her head, and it fell like a shower around her. The water must have been cold, because she shrieked.
I shouted and motioned for her to go back, but she did not look up.
Looking back toward the cliff side, I saw Colin gesture toward me impatiently. Quentin was holding up his walking stick, and had his eyes closed. Victor was standing with his back to me, his arms akimbo.
I looked at the rope suspiciously. How could I miss two throws in a row? I have a good pitching arm. I closed my eyes and traced out the world-paths leading from the rope up to the cliff. The umbrella of possible paths spread
