'I can't,' he said as he hid behind a sip of coffee. 'Only a gargoyle can teach you how to listen to the lines, and none has the learning anymore.'
Listen? That was curious. 'You taught Bis in a day,' I prompted.
He didn't even look up from shoving food in his mouth. 'Bis is a gargoyle. If you could see ley lines in your mind, you could master it in a day as well.'
Stymied, I fiddled with my fork. 'Fine. I'll ask Bis the next time I see him.'
Alarm made Pierce tense. 'He's not skilled enough to teach you. He's a baby.'
'Nice of you to notice. That didn't seem to bother you when you used him to find me.'
Grimacing, Pierce set his fork down. 'I know how to jump, Rachel,' he said, a touch of irritation in his voice. 'Bis was safe with me. A very old gargoyle taught me before she made a die of it. I think she only taught me because she knew she wouldn't last the winter. And before you go climbing any steeples, demons killed every last free gargoyle who retained the knowledge of line jumping when the elves migrated to reality.'
'That's convenient,' I said, and his brow furrowed.
'No, that's a fact. The only reason the gargoyle who taught me survived was because they thought she was too young to know.'
He was starting to look angry, and I wedged a triangle of pancake free. They were too good to boycott. 'You could
Pierce glanced up and down, making a little huff of amusement. 'I'll allow you're smart as a steel trap, but it's not book learning, it's learning on one's own hook that gets you there and back. And for that, you need a gargoyle. An experienced one.'
Peeved, I stared at him, waiting. Pierce ate three forkfuls, each one getting a harder stab than the one before. My foot began to bob.
Making a rude noise, Pierce pushed his plate aside. 'It takes a body a year of line theory to even hope —'
'So give me the basics,' I interrupted. 'Something to chew on. Al won't object to that. I mean, you're not teaching me anything. Just talking shop.'
Taking a slow breath, Pierce brought his coffee into his hands, holding it to warm his fingers as he gathered his thoughts. 'I've heard it said that a body would do well to think of time much like a stream, and we are flotsam, buoyed along,' he finally said, and a surge of anticipation brought me straight up in my chair.
'Got it,' I said as I stuffed another triangle in my mouth. 'Next big idea,' I mumbled.
Pierce's eyebrows rose. 'Now you're being evil,' he accused, and when I smiled and shrugged, he took a last bite from his plate. 'The ever-after is said to have found its beginning when a considerable calamity struck across time, splashing a chance amount over the banks, as it were.' He hesitated; then as if I wouldn't believe him, he added, 'It's not really a bank, more like a straw, the insides held within it by the same fixative that holds the stars to the heavens.'
I scrunched my face up, trying to put that into modern terms. 'Uh, gravity?' I guessed, then added, 'What makes things fall down but keeps the moon up?'
His eyes going wide, Pierce blinked at me. 'To put it in a pie, yes. It's gravity, and a potency I'm constrained to call... sound?'
I licked corn syrup off my finger, wondering how sound had anything to do with gravity, space, or anything.
'Old sound?' Pierce tried again. 'The word of God, some say.'
'Explosions have naught to do with it,' he said quizzically, but I waved my fork at him.
'Some people think the universe started with a big explosion,' I said. 'And everything is still moving away from it. They say space is still ringing from the bang like a big bell, but we re so small we can't hear it. Like us not being able to hear all the sounds elephants make.'
He didn't look convinced. 'Do tell. Students of the arcane, ah, some people believe that such drops of time that are flung near enough slip back like water drops, leaving a body with the sensation of deja vu, but if they are large enough and are flung far enough apace, they're constrained to dry up and vanish, leaving unexplained lost civilizations.'
His eyes were alight. I'd seen that look on college students debating such ridiculous stuff as how the world would be today if Napoleon hadn't stirred that misaligned spell and won Waterloo, or if the Turn had never happened and we'd gone to the moon instead. 'Okay, I got that,' I said, and Pierce pushed from the table to take his plate to the sink.
'Are you sure?' he asked as he worked the taps and squirted soap into the empty batter bowl. He must have seen Ivy and me do it a hundred times.
'I saw a movie about it once,' I said, and he turned to me, eyebrows high.
'You are a clever woman, Rachel, but I'm not sure you comprehend the complexity,' he offered over the sound of running water. But at my frown, he cautiously took my empty plate as I extended it and continued. 'The ever-after is believed to have its origins in such a calamity,' he said as he rolled up his sleeves to show nicely muscled arms, darker than that spot of skin at his throat. 'It was orchestrated by the demons to kill the majority of the elven population during their yearly gathering. An almighty span of time was spelled from its course, landing it too far to rejoin yet being so considerable that it didn't vanish straight on, lingering enough such that the no- account makers of the curse could return full chisel to reality, leaving the elves to make a most horrible die of it.'
'Demons,' I said, and Pierce nodded. Demons and elves. Why did it always come back to them fighting their stupid war?
'Demons,' Pierce agreed. 'Upon banishing the elves, they flung themselves back to reality, their tracks scarring time and making ley lines.'
'Demons made the ley lines?' I interrupted, surprised, and he nodded.
'And such was their downfall, for not only did the lines continue to funnel potency, ah, energy, into the ever-after and keep it from vanishing, as they had schemed, but it also fixed the demons to the very place they sought to escape. I'll allow the elves must have rejoiced for their continuing lives, even banished as they were, until the sun rose and the same demons who'd cursed them were flung back, trapping all together in an almighty wrathy state.'
'Until the elves learned how to travel the lines and come home,' I said, my eyes rising to his. 'Witches learned to do it first, though.'
Pierce turned from me to wash the plates with careful attention. 'A reasonable truth when a body knows the secret of our origin,' he said, reminding me that he was one of the few people to know. 'Demons created the ever-after and are slung back to it when the sun rises.'
'Jenks can't stay in the ever-after after sunup,' I said, taking up my cup and warming my hands around it. 'He popped right out. And when I was in the ever-after, it felt like the lines were running from the ever-after to reality.'
Pierce set the rinsed plates in the dry sink. 'Perhaps because pixies are of such a small stature. I've not the learning, uh, I don't know. The lines flow like tides. When the sun is down, ever-after flows into reality, allowing demons to visit. When the sun is up, reality flows into the ever-after, pulling them back. It's the tides that make a caution of their realm.'
I thought about that, remembering the broken buildings. Standing, I started pulling drawers open to hunt for a drying towel. 'So ley lines are the paths the demons took to return to reality that first time, and they flow back and forth like tides, trashing the place.'
'You have it like a book!' Pierce said, clearly pleased. 'The entirety of the ever-after is pulled behind us like a man hanging behind a runaway horse, fixed fast by the ley lines.'
'So how do you travel them?' I asked as I dried a plate, remembering what all this history was supposed to lead up to. He hesitated, and I added, 'I want to know, even if it's just theory. I won't tell Al you told me. Give me some credit, will you?'
Hands dripping suds, he squinted as if in pain, and I added, 'I'm going to need something to think about in
