“No, although I’ve learned how to recognize it.” I twisted so I was facing him. “I say we’re going home because we are, and because those other travelers Kenneth was talking about are ours. Sarah and Artie for sure, probably Annie and one of her friends. If Sarah’s doing dimension-hopper math, she’s gotten a lot more comfortable with herself since the last time I saw her. That’s a good thing. Poor kid ties herself in knots over absolutely everything.”

  “You use all these words like they’re supposed to mean something to me,” said Sally. “What’s dimensional calculus? And you used that word earlier—‘Johrlac.’ What does it mean?”

  “Those are really two halves of the same question,” said Thomas, letting go of me so he could turn to her. I managed, barely, not to glower. “The Johrlac are residents of a dimension called Johrlar. I’ve never been there. Alice?”

  “Nope, me neither,” I said. “They’re a little xenophobic on Johrlar. Something about not wanting outsiders to taint their perfect hive mind.”

  “Hive . . . mind?”

  “They’re telepaths,” said Thomas. “A true Johrlac lives in perfect harmony with their fellows, barely distinct from the minds around them.”

  “And if they’re not a true Johrlac—if they’re an individual or someone who likes to think for themselves—the rest of the hive doesn’t consider them a Johrlac at all. We call the members of the species who aren’t part of the hive ‘cuckoos,’ because they tend to infiltrate human spaces and change people’s memories to make it like they’ve always been there. Sarah is technically a cuckoo, although if she’s started doing Johrlac math, she may not be calling herself that anymore.”

  Sally blinked, clearly overwhelmed by the onslaught of information.

  Thomas picked up the thread again: “Johrlac and cuckoos are the same species, divided by a manner of thinking, and they can both do amazing things. Including crossing dimensional boundaries without sorcery or drawing on the local pneuma in any way I’ve ever been able to verify. They use complicated hyperdimensional math that can bridge the gaps without any magical support.”

  “And they’re not bound to linear distances the way we are,” I said. “We literally can’t jump straight from here to Earth. We have to go through at least one dimension that touches on both worlds. In this case, we’re planning to use Ithaca, because we promised Helen and Phoebe we’d tell them when we were heading home, and because we know they’re friendly there. But we could go in another direction if we wanted to, as long as we went somewhere that had a shared boundary with Earth. Johrlac don’t need to do that. They just fill in the equation for the world they want, and then they go. I mean, it costs, sometimes.”

  “Costs?”

  “I can’t open a gateway large enough or difficult enough to kill myself,” said Thomas. “Even if I wanted to, my magic would refuse the attempt. It’s why I was unable to open a pathway out of the killing jar before Alice arrived draped in pneuma and willing to play battery for my endeavor. If I had needed to pull that much out of myself, I wouldn’t have been able to. The spell would have fizzled before it killed me.”

  “Johrlac, though . . . they’re not pulling from themselves, they’re running math through themselves, and that works differently,” I said. “So they can have an equation that’s too big for the mathematician, and it can short out their brains. Sarah must have worked this spell correctly, or she’d be a corpse somewhere in the basement, and not gone along with whatever these nice folks mean by ‘masonry.’ And if she’s doing dimensional math powerful enough to relocate buildings, she’s doing pretty well.”

  “Sarah is the adopted granddaughter,” said Sally, carefully.

  “Adopted something or other,” I agreed. “She’s Kevin’s wife’s sister, but she’s the same age as the grandkids, so she’s functionally a granddaughter. I’d say you’re going to like her, but I can’t actually be sure about that. Sarah’s pretty shy. She doesn’t like most people, unless they’re secretly comic books. Are you secretly a comic book?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Sally. “I think I’d know if I were. Pretty sure I’m just a girl from Maine.”

  “About that,” said Thomas. “When I came over in the other room, the two of you seemed to be discussing what was going to happen when we got back to Earth. I think we all have some assumptions. It might be good to clear them up now.”

  “I know . . .” Sally began, then hesitated, looking at her feet as she tried to sort through her words. Finally, she looked back up, and said, “I know you think families should stay together, and you have this idea about finding my parents when we get back, see if I can’t go on home to them. But they’re not . . . they’re not like you. There’s no way I could explain everything to them. For them, I disappeared and I probably died, and coming back now would just rip open all those old wounds and convince them I was a liar. James was always more family to me than they were.”

  Thomas blinked, taken aback.

  “They acted like they couldn’t be racist because they adopted a Korean kid,” said Sally. “They never learned to speak Korean, or tried to make sure I kept any sort of connection to my heritage, or anything like that. It would have been work, and they’d already done all the work of adopting a needy foreign kid because their church told them it would be a good thing. They hated that I liked girls. Mom was in total denial. Said I’d get over it, and James and I would settle down and get married and have lots of happy babies. Dad said it was just a phase and everyone’s confused when they’re a kid. They didn’t beat me. They made sure I had food and shoes, and they paid for me to go to cheer camp and they didn’t get mad that my best friend was a boy, or when I went to senior prom with James. They were probably real upset when I disappeared. Only at least half of it was for show, because they knew they were supposed to be real upset when their only kid vanished. Either they’re enjoying being childless, or they have a new kid in my room by now. Hoping that this time, they’ll get a dutiful daughter instead of a screw-up.”

  I stepped away from Thomas. “You’re not a screw-up. You stayed alive in a place that wanted you dead, and you’re only the second person I’ve met who made their crossroads deal for a good reason. Thomas was the first.”

  He snorted. “Of course you’d think so.”

  “I mean, sure. If you hadn’t done it, I’d be dead, and while I might have come back as a ghost, I probably wouldn’t have, and the kids wouldn’t have existed. I like the kids. I like the grandkids, too. They’re a net benefit to the world. So yeah, I think your deal was made for a good reason. Sally, I don’t know yet if her deal was a net benefit to the world, but since the boy she made it for is running around with the grandkids, I’m willing to bank on ‘yes.’ You are both saints who didn’t deserve what the crossroads did to you, and when we get home, you can have cake.”

  “I miss cake,” said Sally.

  The mice, who had been riding quietly in my pack, cheered, ear-splittingly loud. We all winced.

  “Do you still maintain a colony in Michigan?” asked Thomas.

  I nodded. “I do.”

  “Very well, then. Sally, I shan’t ask you to look for your family, only tell you that you’re welcome to do so if you desire, and your penance for choosing to remain lost to them will be life with a full colony of Aeslin mice.”

  “The mice are pretty cool,” she said, with a sideways smile. “They keep making religious rituals out of things I say and shit, and that’s neat.”

  “It’s neat now, when you have one priest,” I said. “Once you have an entire clergy, you may think differently. Thomas? Does that mean you’re okay with going back to Michigan?”

  There were so many things we’d been putting off deciding, because we had so far to go before we’d be going home and needing to worry about them. Sally had always been something of a given, even if Thomas had believed there was some way she wouldn’t be; she was his kid, even if he hadn’t set out to adopt her, and I knew a familial bond when I saw one. And yeah, I might get frustrated sometimes, but I wasn’t frustrated enough to try to separate them. I don’t think I could ever be that frustrated.

  But where we wound up after we got back to Earth . . . that had been up in the air. On the one hand, there was Michigan. Buckley Township, where we had the house and the tailypo and the Red Angel, and all the other things that would be at least somewhat familiar to the both of us. On the other hand, there was Portland, Oregon, where both our adult children and the majority of our grandchildren could be found. Thomas was just as focused on the importance of family as I was—more, maybe, since he’d never voluntarily run away from them. He wanted to get to know the kids. That meant being near them.

  He smiled and reached out to push my hair back from one side of my face, tucking it behind my ear. “I want us to both be as comfortable as possible, and Sally, too. I want us to get accustomed to home. And if that means having some distance between you and the rest of the family, I’ll still be closer than I’ve been in fifty years.”

  “Get a room,” said Sally, rolling her eyes.

  “We did, you just came with it,” I snapped, and she laughed, and this was all falling together. Soon enough, this would all be over.

  Six

  “Children are mirrors of their parents. What they reflect is what you show them.”

  —Jonathan Healy

  Getting ready to leave Pteracercus for Ithaca

  TRUE TO WHAT I had guessed would happen when I saw our refugees with the locals, the ones I thought of as their leaders came to us in the morning, explaining their intent to stay in the halting, awkward manner of people who weren’t sure whether or not they were about to cause offense. In the end, Thomas hugged a man who’d been one of his closest advisors, wished them luck in this new world, and came back to me and Sally with a smile on his face and a new lightness in his step.

  After fifty years of keeping these people alive, he was responsible for no one but himself and his family, and most of his family was pretty self-sufficient. I slipped my hand into his, matching his smile with my own.

  “Well?” I asked. “Can we get to Ithaca from here, or do we need to go back to where we started? Because I’ll be honest, I could do without walking through the giant spider killing chute a second time.”

  Thomas responded by closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. When he opened them again, he sighed and pointed back the way we’d come. “I’m afraid the nearest crossing point is some distance that way. Perhaps we can request an escort?”

  “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.