“Now, now, Elena. As we discovered, oh, eleven months ago when you left, any job can be done quickly if we summon enough hands. I am now the regular employer of all those women we used to call in to make your ball gowns.” As Lady Ulma spoke she quickly and gracefully took Elena’s measurements — why do only one thing when you can do two at once? She glanced at her measuring tape. “Still exactly the same as when I last saw you. You must lead a very healthy life, Elena.”
Elena laughed. “Remember, for us it’s only been a few days.”
“Oh, yes.” Lady Ulma laughed, too, and Lakshmi, who was seated on a stool amusing the baby, made what Elena knew was one last appeal.
“I could go with you,” she said earnestly, looking at Elena. “I can do all sorts of helpful things. And I’m tough—”
“Lakshmi,” Lady Ulma said gently, but in a voice that wore the hat of authority.
“We’re already doubling the size of the wardrobe needed to accommodate Elena and Stefan. You wouldn’t want to take Elena’s place, would you?”
“Oh, no, no,” the young girl said hastily. “Oh, well,” she said, “I’ll take such good care of little Adara that she’s no bother to you while you supervise Elena’s and Stefan’s clothes.”
“Thank you, Lakshmi,” Elena said from her heart, noting that Adara now seemed to be the baby’s official name.
“Well, we can’t let out any of Bonnie’s things to fit you, but we can call in reinforcements and have a full set of garments ready for you and Stefan by the morning. It’s just a matter of leather and fur to keep you warm. We use the pelts of the animals up north.”
“They’re not nice, cuddly baby animals, either,” Bonnie said. “They’re vicious nasty things that are used for training, or they might come up from the dimension below and attack all the people on the northern fringes here. And when they finally get killed, the bounty hunters sell the leather and fur to Lady Ulma.”
“Oh, well…good,” Elena said, deciding not to make an animal rights speech just now. The truth was that she was still very shaken by her actions — her reactionstoward Damon. Why had she acted that way? Was it just to let off pressure? She still felt as if she could smack him a good one for taking poor Bonnie away, and then leaving her alone. And…and…for taking poor Bonnie — and not taking her!
Damon must hate her now, she thought, and suddenly the world developed a sickening, out-of-control motion, as if she were trying to balance on a seesaw. And Stefan — what else could he think but that she was a woman scorned, the kind that Hell had no fury like? How could he be so kind, so caring, when anyone in their right mind would know she’d gone mad with jealousy?
Bonnie didn’t understand either. Bonnie was a child, not a woman. Although, although, she’d grown somehow — in goodness, in understanding. She was willfully blind, like Stefan. But — didn’t that take maturity?
Could Bonnie be more of a woman than she, Elena, was?
“I’ll have a private supper sent up to your rooms,” Lady Ulma was saying, as she quickly and deftly used the measuring tape on Stefan. “You get a good night’s sleep; the thurgs — and your wardrobes — will be waiting tomorrow.” She beamed at all of them.
“Could I have — I mean, is there any Black Magic at all?” Elena stumbled. “The excitement…I’m going to sleep in my room alone. I want to get a good night’s rest.
We’re going on a quest, you know?” All the truth. All a lie.
“Of course, I’ll have a bottle sent to—” Lady Ulma hesitated and then quickly recovered. “To your room, but why don’t we all have a nightcap now? It looks just the same outside,” she added to Stefan, the newcomer, “but it’s really rather late.”
Elena drank her first glass in one draft. The attendant had to refill it immediately.
And again a moment later. After that her nerves seemed to relax a bit. But the seesaw feeling never entirely left, and though she slept alone in her room, Damon didn’t visit to quarrel with her, mock her, or kill her — and certainly not to kiss.
Thurgs, Elena discovered, were something like two elephants stitched together.
Each had two side-by-side trunks and four wicked-looking tusks. Each also had a high, wide, long ridged tail, like a reptile. Their small yellow eyes were placed all around their domelike heads, so that they could see 360 degrees around, looking for predators. Predators that could take down a thurg!
Elena imagined a sort of saber-toothed cat, enormous, with a milk-white pelt big enough to line several garments of hers and Stefan’s. She was pleased with her new outfits. Each one was essentially a tunic and breeches, soft, pliable, rainshedding leather on the outside; and warm, luxurious fur on the inside. But they wouldn’t be genuine Lady Ulma creations if that was all there were to them. The inner bodysuit of white fur was reversible and removable so you could change depending on the weather. There were triple-thick wind-around collars, which trailed behind or could be turned into scarves that wrapped a face up to the eyes. The white pelts spilled out of the leather at the wrists to make mittens you couldn’t lose.
The guys had straight leather tunics that just met at the breeches, and fastened with buttons. The girls’ tunics were longer and flared out a bit. They were neatly fringed, but not stained or dyed except for Damon’s, which, of course, were black with sable fur.
One thurg would carry the travelers and their baggage. A second, larger and wilder looking, would carry heating stones to help cook human food and all the food (it looked like red hay) that the two thurgs would eat on the way to the Nether World.
Pelat showed them how to move the giant creatures, with the lightest of taps of a very long stick, which could scratch a thurg behind its hippo-like ears or give it a ferocious tap at that sensitive spot, signaling it to hasten forward.
“Is it safe, having Biratz carry all the thurg food? I thought you said she was unpredictable,” Bonnie asked Pelat.
“Now, miss, I wouldn’t give her to you if she wasn’t safe. She’ll be roped to Dazar so all she has to do is follow,” Pelat replied.
“We ride these?” Stefan said, craning his neck to get a look at the small, enclosed palanquin on top of the very large animal.
“We have to,” Damon said flatly. “We can hardly walk all the way. We’re not allowed to use magic like that fancy Master Key you used to get here. No magic but telepathy works up at the very top of the Dark Dimension. These dimensions are flat like plates, and according to Bonnie, there’s a fracture, just at the far north of this one — not too far from here, in other words. The crack is small by dimensional standards, but big enough for us to get through. If we want to reach the Gatehouse of the Seven Treasures we start on thurgs.”
Stefan shrugged. “All right. We’re doing it your way.”
Pelat was putting a ladder up. Lady Ulma, Bonnie, and Elena were weeping and laughing over the baby together.
They were still laughing as they left on their way.
The first week or so was boring. They sat in the palanquin on the back of the thurg named Dazar, with a compass from Elena’s backpack dangling from the roof. They generally kept all the sides of the palanquin’s curtains rolled up, except the one facing west, where the bloated, bloody red sun — too bright to look at in the higher, cleaner air outside the city — constantly loomed on the horizon. The view all around them was dreadfully monotonous — mind-bendingly so, with few trees and many miles of dried brown grassy hills. Nothing interesting to a non-hunter ever showed up. The only thing that changed was as they traveled farther north, it got colder.
It was difficult for all of them, living in such close quarters. Damon and Elena had reached an equilibrium — or at least a pretense — of ignoring each other, something Elena would never have imagined could be possible. Damon made it easier by working on a different sleep cycle than the others — which helped to guard them as the thurgs trudged onward, day and night. If he was awake when Elena was, he would ride outside the palanquin, on the thurg’s enormous neck. They both had such stiff necks, Elena thought. Neither of them wanted to be the first to bend.
Meanwhile those inside the palanquin began to play little games, like picking the long dried grasses from the side of the road and trying to weave them into dolls, fly whisks, hats, whips. Stefan proved to be the one who made the tightest weave, and he made fly whisks and broad fans for each of them.
They also played various card games, using stiff little place cards (had Lady Ulma thought they might give a dinner party on the way?) as playing cards, after carefully marking them with the four suits. And of course, the vampires hunted.
Sometimes this took quite a long time, since game was scarce. The Black Magic Lady Ulma had stocked helped them stretch the time between hunts.
When Damon visited the palanquin, it was as if he were crashing a private party and thumbing his nose at the hosts.
Finally Elena couldn’t stand it any longer, and had Stefan float her up the side of the thurg (looking down or climbing up were definitely not options) while flying magic still worked. She sat down on the saddle beside Damon and gathered her courage.
“Damon, I know you have a right to be angry with me. But don’t take it out on the others. Especially Bonnie.”
“Another lecture?” Damon asked, giving her a look that would freeze a flame.
“No, just a — a request.” She couldn’t bring herself to say “a plea.”
When he didn’t answer and the silence became unbearable, she said, “Damon, for us — we’re not going on a quest for treasure out of greed or adventure or any normal reason. We’re going because we need to save our town.”
“From Midnight,” a voice just behind her said. “From the Last Midnight.”
Elena whirled to stare. She expected to see Stefan holding Bonnie clasped to him hard. But it was only Bonnie at her head level, hanging on to the thurg ladder.
Elena forgot she was afraid of heights. She stood up on the swaying thurg, ready to climb down on the sun side if there wasn’t enough room for Bonnie to sit down fast in the driver’s saddle.
But Bonnie had the slimmest hips in town and there was just room for all three of them.
“The Last Midnight is coming,” Bonnie repeated. Elena knew that monotonous voice, knew the chalk-white cheeks, the blank eyes. Bonnie was in trance — and moving. It must be urgent.