“You can’t keep me here!”
“Nobody’s trying to, dear,” said Adelphine, who had just entered the room to check on her patient. “The door is open.”
“Where even am I?”
“You’re at the tavern. You came in and asked for Mirko, remember? And then you fainted from the fever.”
Zina had taken Jade straight to the kitchen witch, who had switched into healer mode instantly. Jade’s greenish pallor and the beads of sweat on her forehead, her skinny, shivering frame in that gigantic parka, the way she held on to the counter for dear life could mean only one thing: this girl needed help urgently.
Where to put her, though? Under no circumstances could Adelphine bring an outsider into the alley. Beyond the gate, it was hostel folk only.
The tavern, as the community’s only building open to the public, was the sole option. There were several rooms above the bar, mostly used by vampires on the staff as they alone didn’t mind noisy punters below – for work or for play, they were up all night anyway.
None of these rooms were free, but if this young woman was a friend, maybe Mirko would let her have his. Adelphine had sent Zina upstairs to drag him out of his bed.
Two days on, Jade’s fever had broken.
“You’ll be fine, but you still need to rest.”
“I can rest in my own bed,” Jade replied, attempting and failing to sit up on the soft mattress.
I doubt you have one, Adelphine thought. “Sure,” she replied. “But you’d have to make it out of this one first.”
“How do I know you haven’t drugged me?”
“You don’t, but I haven’t. I’ve just given you something for the fever, and we’ve fed you. You can thank me later.”
“Where’s Zina? And where’s Mirko?”
“Zina doesn’t like it up here; she’s downstairs with her pack. Mirko’s asleep – he worked a late shift. But I guess he’ll be round soon.”
“I’ll be gone,” Jade mumbled, eyes closed and already half asleep as she turned onto her side and pulled the duvet up to her ears. “I just need a few more minutes.”
“Well, before you leave, maybe pop round the kitchen first so I can give you your clothes. I’ve put them in the wash, but they should be dry by now.”
***
“Attends. Quoi?”
Cara didn’t comment, lost for words. The sparkly lashes in her outstretched palm weren’t saying much either.
“Ne me dis pas que tu les avais cachés dans le plafonnier?”
“Mais évidemment que non,” Cara replied. “Tu me vois grimper là-haut?”
Fair enough. Under other circumstances, the idea would have been hilarious.
“Des souris,” Zelda replied. “Je ne vois que ça.”
“Des souris qui grimpent dans un plafonnier pour y cacher une paire de faux cils – les deux, hein – et puis les font tomber tous les deux juste au bon moment dans la conversation, et tout ça sans qu’on les voie?”
“Ben, dit comme ça…”
“Cela dit, puisque tu prétends que c’était pas toi…”
“M’enfin arrêêêt-euh.” Zelda seemed genuinely aghast. “Peut-être que quelqu’un est entré?”
A moment passed while they stared at each other in silence, neither of them willing to acknowledge the single faint giggle that had met this remark.
If they had discussed it, they would probably have agreed that it had come from somewhere behind the clothes racks. But they didn’t, so it hadn’t, because of course it couldn’t have, so there.
***
Hiding away at the end of a busy day, Oakleaf was deeply immersed in Callimachus when the tree signalled an intruder. The ancient poet’s elegant songs – in their equally accomplished translations – had placed him well beyond the reach of reality, and it took him a while to notice the lime’s travails.
He acted quickly once he did, jumping up from his comfy armchair and donning his wire-rimmed glasses in one fluid motion. It was dark outside; there shouldn’t be anyone in the tree this late.
And there should never, ever be anyone straying from the designated paths that the tree had consented to grow. Decades of gentle persuasion had led it to produce just the right branches, at just the right angles, in just the perfect arrangements to form the stairs and the bridges by which visitors now accessed the garden’s upper tiers.
The rest was strictly off-limits. And yet, he had clearly noticed a pair of legs disappearing into the crown.
“Hey! Come down, now! You’re damaging the tree!”
“Sorry,” came the muffled response. A pair of soft-soled trainers followed nimbly, the bright white markings standing out against the trunk. The trespasser, as such, was barely visible in the dusk, but the outline seemed to move swiftly.
Eventually, the shoes landed beside him with a soft thud, close enough for Oakleaf to see the whole person.
“Oh. You’re the were-squirrel, right?”
“Ingrid.” The intruder held out a hand. “Apologies, again. I didn’t mean to alarm you.”
“You alarmed the tree, not me.”
“The tree actually talks to you?”
Well, obviously, Oakleaf thought testily; I am a wood elf.
“You’d better come in,” he said instead, opening the door.
Ingrid gasped as she walked through, discovering the trunk’s spacious interior. A polished wood floor, with two facing armchairs to either side of the fireplace; an Escher print over the mantle, slightly askew. A well-equipped kitchen corner on the far side of a spiral staircase that hinted at more room above. A table and four chairs set on a carpet made of thick cotton strips, in hues of lavender and blue. Potted plants everywhere.
And well-stocked bookcases along the four walls. They appeared to have grown from the trunk.
“How is there so much space? That’s impossible!”
“Elf magic,” Oakleaf replied, side-stepping the issue.
He knew from long experience that humans were not receptive to the underlying elf science. When he had first arrived among them, after his epic climb along the trunk of the Great Cosmic Tree, he had done his best to explain. How humankind’s three-dimensional home was just one of many similar fruits set on the boughs of this universe-plant, and how these fruits were merely extrusions from the swirl of furled dimensions that it sucked up through its roots.
No human had ever believed him, and in fairness he didn’t really get it himself. He was an explorer, not a theoretical physicist.
All he knew for sure was that his comfortable abode wasn’t actually located in the hollow trunk. It sat where the universe-tree exuded the three dimensions that shaped this particular world-fruit, in the exact spot where everything else that could have been still overlapped.
There was plenty of space, if you knew how to use it. And on the far side of this palace of potentialities, there was a passage to a whole set of other worlds, all born from the same endless well of possibility.
He had built his little home slightly to the side of this portal. If anyone else followed in his footsteps, he didn’t want them tracking mud all over his shiny floor.