Page 20 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“If you’re willing to ride, we can carry you as far as you have need,” said Kenneth, looming up behind us in a way that was probably designed to be unnerving. It might have been, if I hadn’t been aware that he was lurking back there. He wasn’t as quiet as he thought he was. I guess you don’t have to be, when you’re the patriarch and no one argues with you about whether or not something is a good idea.

“Ride a giant praying mantis?” asked Sally, and perked right up, suddenly enthusiastic. “Sounds great! And like something I’ve never done before, which makes it awesome. Can we?”

It wasn’t clear which of us she was asking. Thomas stepped in, saying, “If the offer is extended to all of us, then yes, of course we can. It’s faster than walking, if nothing else. Alice?”

“I know how to ride,” I said, trying to push aside the flicker of anxiety that said no, riding a giant flying bug was not the same thing as riding a horse, not the same thing at all. If Thomas was game, I could handle it. Besides, how bad could it actually be?

Bad. It could be very, very bad, as riding a mantis was nothing like riding a horse. There was no warning of motion before the giant insect was in the air, wings generating a backdraft almost strong enough to sweep us all off the saddle. I clung to the ropes securing me to the saddle as tightly as I could, trying to look like this wasn’t the most upsetting thing I’d voluntarily subjected myself to in ages.

Sally whooped with delight behind me, thrusting one arm into the air as she held onto the anchor ropes with the other, and Thomas watched us both, looking mildly interested in the entire situation. Apparently, I was the only one who remembered the existence of gravity and its tendency to pop mammals like water balloons when we fall a far-enough distance. I glared at them both and kept hanging on.

Sally laughed at the look on my face, the wind whipping the sound away, if not quickly enough to keep me from hearing it. I glared at her. She laughed again, leaning in closer.

“So there’s something that actually frightens the great Alice Price?” she asked. “That’s good. I was starting to be afraid you were some sort of sophisticated robot or something, and now I think you might be a real person.”

I glared harder. She grinned at me and leaned back in her rope harness, going back to punching the sky. At least one of us was having fun.

Thomas shot me a more sympathetic look, which I answered with a sickly smile. One of our grandkids, Verity, thinks gravity is a toy. She likes to play with it, push the boundaries and see just how much she can get away with, and generally give me heart attacks for her own amusement. I am a little more sensible than she is, which is a terrifying thought and makes me wonder how she’s managed to survive to adulthood, given that gravity is the only thing I’m remotely sensible about. I fell out of a lot of trees when I was a kid, and broke more than a few bones. It left me with an exaggerated sense of caution.

Everyone else seemed to think this was safe enough, and so I forced myself, bit by bit, to unkink my shoulders. The ground zipped by beneath us at an incredible speed. The mantis couldn’t be flying as fast as a commercial jet, but we were so exposed it felt faster.

Not that I’ve ever actually been on a plane, but I have to assume they have something a little more sophisticated than a rope harness to keep from losing passengers.

The mantis began gliding downward as we approached what looked like a demolition site, or the crater left by a large explosion. The trunks of crushed, shattered trees littered the ground, and the earth itself was torn up, like something large had been dropped from a great height. I blinked at the local who was steering our ride.

“What the hell happened here?”

“This is where our other visitors arrived,” he said, bringing the mantis in for a landing. It landed without even a thump, beginning to wash its scythe-like forearms. The local twisted in his own harness, looking back at me. “We told you they brought their masonry with them. This is where it landed.”

“So you’re telling me they went full Dorothy and brought a house?” I began untying my harness. “Damn, Sarah, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

He blinked. “My name is not Sarah,” he said, politely. “They call me Ciferol.”

“Sounds pharmaceutical,” I said. “Sally, Thomas, you ready to get off the big bug?”

“Can’t we go for another ride first?” asked Sally plaintively. I turned to glare at her, and she laughed. “Yeah, I’m good to go.”

“The channels feel cleaner here,” said Thomas. “I should be able to open us a doorway to Ithaca with the pneuma I’ve already accumulated.”

“Then we’re good to go. Ciferol, thank you for your help. Can you drop the ropes so we can get down to the ground level?”

“Of course,” he said, politely, and unhooked a bundle of knotted ropes from behind his position, tossing them so they dangled to the ground. More opportunities to fall a nice, long distance. Goodie. Falling is my favorite thing.

Falling is no one sensible’s favorite thing, which means it’s probably Verity’s favorite thing, and sometimes I think passing my genes on did no one any favors, even if I continue to hold up my descendants as proof that Thomas did the right thing by keeping me alive. I grabbed the rope, squirming into position to begin my descent.

“Tell your leader that you were of great help to us, and we appreciate it immensely,” said Thomas. “We hope our people will be happy here with you.”

“And if they’re not, we’ll be seeing you soon,” said Sally, in an ominous tone. Ciferol shrank back in his rope harness. I laughed but didn’t contradict her.

We weren’t coming back here for a long, long time, if we ever did. Dimensional travel isn’t meant to be undertaken with the sort of frequency that we’d been demonstrating since we left the bottle dimension. This was a special case. There was every chance, if we were lucky, that the three of us would never be leaving Earth again.

Well, maybe the occasional visit to Ithaca, to check in with Helen and Phoebe, but that wasn’t travel, that was . . . being a good neighbor. More importantly, that was only one hop.

Helen thought that with the crossroads gone, Earth’s pneuma would begin to recover from the damage that had been done to it, and sorcerers like Thomas would find themselves getting stronger. Opening a door as far as Ithaca wouldn’t seem so unreasonable. If she was right, we could keep in touch with relative ease, and I truly hoped she was right. Thomas had gone from starvation in the bottle dimension to a constantly renewing supply of pneuma from a dozen dimensions, and I was suddenly worried that Earth would seem like a return to famine, rather than the feast it was.

Honestly, I was worried about a lot of things. Thinking about the future has never been my area of expertise. Hell, thinking beyond what I was going to do tomorrow has never been my strong suit. Reacting is my primary way of dealing with the world. Planning is for people who have more complex needs than “figure out what’s for dinner,” “kill the thing that’s been killing Missus Norton’s chickens,” or “find your husband and bring him home while he still knows who you are.”

Okay, so maybe my problems get sort of complex sometimes, but it’s rarely the sort of complex that demands a lot of long-term planning. I shimmied down the rope, resolutely not looking down until my feet were firmly under me, then looked up to watch Thomas and Sally make their descent.