Page 5 of Backpacking through Bedlam

I climbed the jagged mound in the earth, careful of my footing, and peered into the opening. A wide tunnel seemed to lead to the surface, and judging by the sides, it had been dug out by the creature we’d seen before. “Sally? Did you see what was down here?”

“Ayuh. Big round pink thing with a bunch of tentacles coming out around the edges.”

“Uh-huh.” That matched what I was seeing, and I didn’t like it. I backed away from the hole, hands on my revolvers. “Thomas? We should be somewhere else now, if that’s cool by you. Don’t care whether it’s on top of a big rock or in the next dimension on the list, but I’m going to say this is not a good place for people to settle. Also going to say I have a decent idea why there isn’t any intelligent life around here.”

“And why is that, dear?” There was a hard edge on the last word. He was annoyed. Well, that was nothing new. Not after the last six months.

“Because that was a giant star-nosed mole, or the local equivalent, and I don’t think we want to be standing here when it burrows its way back,” I said. “Poking it in the snout surprised it enough to make it leave, but that doesn’t mean it’s staying gone. Moles are carnivores. The ones back home eat grubs and worms, and are about the size of my hand. The ones here—”

“Would happily eat us, I’m sure,” he concluded. He took a deep breath and pressed two fingers to the inside of his left wrist, as if he were taking his own pulse. Which maybe he was. I’m no sorcerer. Even after fifty years of playing hide-and-seek across dimensions, half of how it works is a mystery to me.

Not entirely because I didn’t try to learn. Naga wasn’t just taking my skin every time I came back to him for help: he was taking my memories, editing what I knew to make sure I’d keep being a good little dog and going where he wanted me. Eventually, I was sure, his pet Johrlac would have figured out a way to take Thomas and leave me running through the dimensions with no idea why. Johrlac are clever that way. There’s a reason nobody likes them.

“I can’t get us out of here just yet,” he said finally, dropping his hand. “I’ll need about another hour. Sally? Can you find us a route to the top of that rock?”

He gestured toward the low bluff I’d slammed into before. It was a semi-sheer rock face roughly eleven feet high—tall enough to keep us from attracting more moles, and also tall enough that half our party wouldn’t possibly be able to climb it, even if we’d had a way of securely anchoring our ropes to the top. Some of them were old, and about a third were children. Isn’t leading a group of interdimensional refugees to safety fun?

“I can do it,” I said, as Sally said, “On it, boss,” and took off running along the line of the rock, clearly scouting for a place where the climb would be easier. Her gait was uneven, unusually so, and after a beat, I realized she wasn’t hurt, she was doing that on purpose.

“She’s walking without rhythm so she won’t attract the worm,” I said, amused despite myself.

Thomas was approaching me, no longer winded, still clearly annoyed. I straightened, ignoring the twinge in my back.

“I could have found a way up,” I said. “I have a lot more experience with scouting runs in parallel dimensions than Sally does.” Sally was incredibly skilled at wilderness survival, even for a girl from small-town Maine, but then, she’d been stranded in a hostile bottle dimension full of people who wanted to kill her for the better part of a decade. I, on the other hand, was a bounty hunter feared across multiple dimensions and recognized in dozens more, who’d been skipping world to world for fifty years. There was no question which of us was better equipped to navigate unfamiliar terrain.

“Maybe so, but as she’s not the one who got slammed into the side of a cliff five minutes ago, I thought it was better if I sent her off while I took care of you.” He frowned, and I fought the urge to squirm. I always felt about two feet tall when he looked at me that way. “When are you going to learn that you’re not indestructible anymore?”

“I was never indestructible,” I protested. “I don’t act like I am.”

He didn’t say a word. Just looked at me, raised an eyebrow, and waited.

The silence stretched between us until it became unbearable, and I blurted, “Okay, so maybe I got a little careless when it came to my personal safety, but if I couldn’t patch myself up, Naga could do it for me, and anyway, it was all so I could keep looking for you.”

The refugees were keeping their distance. They were smart enough to know when they didn’t want to be in the middle of something. Hell, I was smart enough to know I didn’t want to be in the middle of this, and yet here I was, stuck in a happy ending that involved a really annoying amount of yelling.

“Considering that I didn’t ask you to come find me, I’d thank you to stop reminding me how much damage you did to yourself while you were trying!”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t ask you to sell your soul to the crossroads for my sake, so I guess we’re both going to be a little bit annoyed, okay?”

“Alice . . .” He sighed heavily. “I’m just asking you to please be careful. You can’t receive magical healing right now. You might never be able to again. That means any injuries you get will have to heal the traditional way, and I don’t want you to be hurt.”

“Be careful.”

“Yes. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”

“You’re asking me to be careful, and you don’t see anything wrong with that?”

Thomas hesitated for a moment. Then he grimaced, his own words finally catching up with him. “Alice, I didn’t mean—”

“I think I have a pretty decent idea of what you meant. Try to keep your people from moving around too much. We wouldn’t want to get another mole when Sally’s not here to chase it away.”

I turned and stalked in the opposite direction from Sally, hugging the rock wall as closely as I could without falling into a predictable gait. This time, I was the one who didn’t look back.

Two

“Nothing wrong with having a temper. Oh, it can be inconvenient at times, and it’s on you to learn how to manage it, but if you won’t fight for yourself in this world, who’s going to do the fighting for you?”

—Enid Healy