Besides you, all I need is Mozart, Rachmaninoff, a little Mahler, and a couple of Stephen King books. And some good sour-mash whiskey.”
“You don’t need much. Are those your favorite things?”
“Well, romantic Rachmaninoff relieves classical Mozart, and Mahler makes you sober up after listening to Mozart and Rachmaninoff. You could also do a Beethoven-Chopin-Stravinsky thing. And Stephen King is always good for a yuck in the middle of the night.”
“Well, King is fun, but I don’t know much about classical music,” Sheila said. “Maybe we’re not so compatible. I’m more at home with, you know, Billy Joel.”
“He’s okay, too,” Trent said. “Besides, who needs compatibility when you have great sex.”
She laughed, then stretched dreamily. “You know, you were talking in your sleep last night. You woke me up.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
She giggled. “Then who were you talking to?”
“Incarnadine.”
Sheila sat up quickly. “What?”
“I think.”
“You think? Well, were you? Can he —?”
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up I think it was Incarnadine trying to contact me. Something prevented it, I don’t know what. Some sort of interference. I told him our predicament. I have a feeling I didn’t get through.”
Sheila looked deflated. “We’ll never get out of here.”
“Don’t despair. Something’s obviously going on. When it’s over, he’ll get us out.”
“But we’re on the other side of a wild portal. How will he even know where to look?”
“There are ways. He could get a fix on us, then drive a tunnel through to this universe, pick us right up.”
“He can do that?”
Trent sat down in the sand, picked up a shell. “Anything’s possible in the castle. He could teleport us back to the castle. Summon us, conjure us.”
Sheila was amazed. “No kidding? I was always under the impression that there was no way to travel between universes except by using the castle’s portals.”
“Well, for the most part, that’s true. But with virtually unlimited energy, which the castle has, anything’s possible. Like conjuring. I know Incarnadine can reach out and snatch things from other universes. Fetch them. He has all kinds of junk that he’s filched. Strange artifacts, gizmos, art pieces, books, you name it. There’s no reason he couldn’t snatch a person — or two.” Trent considered it. “Unless there’s some technical barrier. Maybe the spell doesn’t work with live organisms.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. But as I said, anything’s possible.”
“That makes me feel better,” Sheila said.
“Incarnadine has any number of tricks up his sleeve. He’s very creative, magically speaking. So is … was my sister Ferne.”
“Did you like her?”
“Respected her, yes. Liked her?” Trent let a cascade of sand fall from the shell. “Hard to say. Beautiful she was. But infinitely crafty. And clever. The thing was, she was reckless. She’d try anything. I don’t know how many spells she tried that could have blown up in her face. Some of them did. Once she tried tapping interstitial etherium.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s energy that’s stuffed into the ‘space’ between the various universes. Acts as a buffer, keeps them from bumping into each other. Hard concept to grasp, really, because it’s really negative energy, which suddenly reverses polarity when you — well, never mind about that. Anyway, all I know is Ferne tried it, and something hit her and knocked her across the room. Out cold.”
Sheila grimaced. “Sounds dangerous.”
“It was. It is. But she survived. She always does —”
Trent stared off abstractedly for a long moment.
Sheila let him brood. Presently he came back.
“Yeah. She could do a lot of things. I don’t know about traveling, but she could cast spells in one universe and have them work in another.”
Sheila was impressed. “That’s real magic.”
“She was in a league all her own. I don’t know that she was as good as Incarnadine. I don’t know that anyone is.” Trent threw the seashell away. “Except maybe me.”
Sheila smiled. “I believe it.”
“Thanks. Actually, at the risk of sounding immodest, when you get into — well, when you start talking about magic at this level, our level — the family’s — it’s more a matter of style than anything. Each magician brings a certain unique talent to his work. For instance, I can tell Incarnadine’s hand by a certain feeling I get when one of his spells is brewing. It’s like a smell, or may be even a taste. But it’s unmistakable. His spells have his signature stamped all over them.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Same with Ferne. Same with you, for that matter, or anyone who practices the recondite arts. Every artist has his own style.”
“I’ve never thought of myself as an artist.”
“You’re a damned good one, if a little inexperienced. But you were coming along very nicely.”
“Until I hit this place.”
Trent looked at the sky, the sea, and the sand. “Yes.” He sighed. “Right. This world is very problematical. It’s flat, magically speaking. No spark in the air. No vibes. Nothing.”
“Maybe it’s more subtle than we realize.”
“Very subtle. All worlds have magic.”
“Do they really?”
“Yes, to some extent. Some more than others. This one has it, make no mistake. But they must be keeping it in cookie jars.”
Sheila laughed, leaned over and kissed him.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“A little.”
“Tell you what. We’ll have lunch at our favorite restaurant —”
“The breadfruit tree.”
“Right, and afterward we’ll go for a stroll. It’s about time we circumnavigated this island, see what’s on the other side.”
“Maybe there’s a lagoon. Wouldn’t that be romantic?”
“Great for fishing. But this looks like a volcanic island. Lagoons usually happen in coral formations.”
“You know a lot about a lot of things.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve had a subscription to
Trent’s guess was right. Coming around the curving shore, they were greeted by the sight of a huge volcano rising from an island that lay just on the horizon. Ash-gray and forbidding, the cone topped off at two thousand feet, as nearly as Trent could estimate.
“Extinct, maybe?” Sheila asked.
“Dormant. I dunno. I can’t see any vegetation on that island. That worries me.”
“It looks dead.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way.”
Access inland was better here, grassy slopes rising gradually from the beach to an eroded peak in the center of the island. They even discovered a cave. It was full of bats and not fit for habitation.
But there was a lagoon, after all, rather a cove, a rock-rimmed pocket of calm water, good for swimming and, very likely, fishing, if some sort of tackle could be improvised.
“Or a net,” Trent mused.
“That’d be hard.”
“You braid vines, strips of sapling, make rope. Then you make a net. Hard? You bet, but South Sea islanders
