Page 22 of Butterfly Effects

Thomas came back into the room. “Cynthia is fine to check on the house until we get back, and has requested we not get trapped in any bottle dimensions or other inconveniences,” he said. “She says she’s just getting used to us being here full-time, and would rather not adjust herself again. She’s also agreed to feed Greg until we return. She’ll keep him supplied in sheep, and bill us when we get back. I got the distinct feeling that if we stay gone longer than she feels is appropriate, she’ll start buying fancy sheep to run up the bill.”

“Come back quick to avoid bankruptcy, got it,” said Alice. “Mary?”

“Hello, Mary,” said Thomas, moving to stand next to his wife.

“Hey, Tommy,” said Mary, with a quick smile. They’d been friends since he first came to Buckley, and they were always glad to see each other.

“Yes, Alice, I’ll tell the rest of the family you’ve fucked off to another dimension again,” she said, returning her attention to my grandmother. “At least this time you’re doing it together, and I don’t have to worry about you running off to find him. Don’t get separated. Please. I don’t think my nerves can take that again. You ever seen a ghost have a nervous breakdown? It’s not pretty. None of us will enjoy it.”

“We’ll be back, Mary,” I said solemnly. “I give you my word.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said, and disappeared, throwing herself back into the ghost version of the world that existed outside the lands of the living. From there, she’d be able to quickly transport herself back to whichever of the children she was currently supposed to be taking care of.

If she could transport living people the way she moved herself around, we’d all be much happier. But alas, everyone has their limitations.

Thomas started for the door on the other side of the room, gesturing for the rest of us to follow. Sam untwined his tail from around my ankle and rose, offering me his hand. I took it and let him pull me after him, and Alice came after me, a small procession leaving the empty dining room behind as an almost-funereal silence fell over everything.

Thomas led us all down to the basement, where he bent and rolled back the rug that had been covering most of the floor. Below it was a complicated circle, the exterior made up of crisp geometric symbols. They hurt my eyes if I looked at them too hard, and I could almost understand what they said. I had seen some of those sigils in my fire, dancing inside the structure of the flames.

“Everyone inside the circle,” he said. “I’m driving this one.” He looked to Alice. “I know you still have a few crossing charms tattooed on you, and I’m ordering you to use them if you have to. Just don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “Yes, dear. At least you didn’t tell me to be careful.”

“Believe me, I would, if I thought you would listen.” He glanced to Sam, accurately identifying him as the one sympathetic person in this basement. “I swear those words cause her to become temporarily hard of hearing.”

“Annie, too,” said Sam.

Thomas sighed and opened the book he’d been carrying around since the dining room. He flipped past the page with the costume designs on it—convenient but not currently useful—and stopped, clearing his throat. Then he began to read aloud.

It began as a sequence of numbers, complex but not incomprehensible. Then it started getting strange. Letters and functions crept in, rapidly escalating to a point where he might as well have been speaking gibberish. Smooth, fast, fluent gibberish, made eldritch and fascinating by his British accent, but not a damn thing I could understand.

The symbols around the edges of the circle lit up one by one, glowing an unnerving blue-white shade that got brighter and brighter as he continued. Sam shifted closer to me inside the circle, wrapping his tail around my waist this time, and I leaned into him, grateful for the tether. At least if we were sucked through some incomprehensible portal into the abyss, we wouldn’t be separated in the process.

Alice stepped up behind me, putting one hand on my shoulder and another hand on Thomas’s shoulder, forming a line between the four of us.

And then, with a snapping sound, the entire circle lit up, bright as a supernova, so bright it made my eyes ache and water, and the basement was gone, and we were somewhere else.

Six

“If you ever want to truly understand where you came from, you have to leave. Distance grants perspective. Distance, and a good sniper scope.”

—Enid Healy

Well, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore

THE LIGHT WAS DAZZLING ENOUGH to leave me temporarily blinded. I rubbed my eyes, trying to clear them, and listened to the sounds around me, none of which corresponded easily to standing in a basement. I could hear what sounded like enormous insects buzzing, a drone like small aircraft taking off, and the rustling of leaves in the breeze. I could feel the breeze, too, soft against my skin, warm as a spring afternoon in San Diego. It smelled like unfamiliar flowers, spicy and sweet and strangely compelling, and honey, and water somewhere in the near distance. There was a hint of salt to it as well, which coated the back of my throat and made me want to sneeze.

Sam’s tail was still wrapped securely around my waist: wherever we were now, we hadn’t been separated. I nodded to myself and tried to focus on what else I could pick up about my surroundings.

The Daredevil model of “lose one sense and your other senses are heightened” doesn’t work exactly like that, but if you close your eyes and focus, you’ll often find you can pick up on things you might otherwise have overlooked. As I focused, I could tell that the buzzing was divided into at least three registers, like I was hearing cicadas, bees, and some sort of cricket all at the same time. There was no electrical hum. Wherever we were, it wasn’t near any power lines.

Little black spots were starting to appear in the burned-out white of my vision. I opened my eyes and blinked hard, and they got bigger, the world beginning to come clear in colorful blurs. I squinted my eyes shut again and rubbed at them as hard as I could, and when I opened them, I could finally see.

We were standing at the top of a low rise, surrounded by rolling hills like the English downs, but greener, as green as something out of a cartoon, and covered with patches of the most incredibly vibrant flowers I had ever seen. These were rainforest brilliant, hothouse bright, the kind of flowers that had no business growing in a climate as mild as the one around us, which felt more like Seattle or Vancouver than anything remotely tropical. Ahead of us, stretching out as far as I could see to either the left or right, was the bright flat disk of a lake, the waters so blue that they looked almost glacial. The far shore was visible, barely, a bristled line of trees against the distant mountains.

I couldn’t see any towns or cities, or anything that looked remotely like civilization as I would recognize it. Except for my companions, there weren’t even any people. I looked behind myself. There were trees in the distance, with twisting limbs and broad, waxy-looking leaves; they dripped with flowers and fruit, depending on the type of tree, and they looked entirely alluring.

“This is … a lot,” said Sam, sounding faintly strangled. I turned to blink at him. He was gawking at our surroundings like a child at their very first carnival, and I abruptly remembered that he’d never been off-world before; this was his first non-Earth dimension. What a fun starting point.