Page 22 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“Hoy, Odysseus!” called the taller satyr as they approached. “Broken your Penelope already? For shame. I expected you would be more careful, all things considered.”

“Thanks, Helen. You’re very sweet.” The other satyr laughed, kneeling in the grass next to Thomas. Watching a woman with the lower body of a goat kneel was a spectacle in and of itself. As a human, I find digitigrade anatomy unaccountably complicated. But they probably feel the same about my weird-ass knees, and so it all works out in the end.

I returned my attention to Helen as Phoebe unpacked the contents of her basket, narrowing my eyes. “Is this exhaustion? Because it looks like exhaustion to me, and I don’t think I’ll handle it very well if it’s anything else.”

“Peace, Odysseus.” Helen held up her hands, palms outward. “Give Phoebe the time to work. As it’s just the three of you, I’m assuming your long journey is well complete?”

“All the survivors of the bottle dimension have been settled, either in their original worlds or in compatible communities,” I said. “You need to update your maps. A few of those ‘suitable’ unoccupied dimensions turned out to have some pretty big inhabitants. Bats and moles large enough to eat people do not make for very good neighbors.”

“You asked for places without intelligent people,” said Helen. “You didn’t ask for worlds incapable of supporting life.”

Phoebe had produced a bottle of something pink and oddly sparkly, like it was laced with edible glitter, from inside her basket, and was tipping it against Thomas’s lips, clearly encouraging him to drink. I glanced over and bit my lip.

Helen put her hand on my arm. “Peace,” she said again. “Phoebe will help him to wake from this miscalculation, and you have no further travels from here, yes?”

“Only home,” I said. “We’re going home.”

“The pneuma of your world has continued to recover,” she said, approvingly. “I’ve taken glances at it when the connections were clear, and things are progressing in the right direction. Earth may be a healthy world again someday.”

“That’s cool,” I said. “We’re planning to stay there.”

“Yes, you promised,” said Helen.

Phoebe was still pressing her bottle to Thomas’s lips. Finally, he coughed and swallowed, then began to drink in earnest, all without apparently waking up. I blinked, stroking his hair, then looked back to Helen in silent question. She sighed.

“He is exhausted. Had you no way of seeing that?”

“I can’t see magic,” I said. “Neither can Sally. He wasn’t telling us how tired he was. He’s been trying to keep things moving along. We were safe enough in that last dimension. If he’d said anything, to either of us, we could have stopped for a few days, given him time to rest up. But we were so close to home, and I think he wanted to get to the end as much as I did, so he didn’t tell us anything was wrong. Is he going to be okay?”

The only acceptable answer was yes. Anything else and I was going to tear down the world to make it change. We’d come so far, fought for so long; this couldn’t be the point where my luck—where our luck—gave out.

Phoebe returned her bottle to the basket, giving me a cold look. “You will allow us to open the gateway between here and your ‘Earth,’” she said. “And you will allow us to give you a hamper to take with you, as I doubt your destination will be provisioned for your arrival.”

“I keep cans and shelf-stable foods on hand, but the house is rural enough that I don’t even trust the freezers when I’m going to be away for a long time,” I said. One trip where the power had gone out almost as soon as I left the dimension had been enough to teach me that stockpiling meat was only a good idea when you could be there to make sure it actually stayed frozen. Some smells do not bear repeating. “Oh, and Cynthia from the Red Angel drops off a cake every Thursday, for the mice. But that’s about it.”

“A hamper,” said Phoebe firmly. She stood, taking her basket with her. “And keep your handmaid close to you. She nearly trampled my cat’s brush when she came running to the house.”

Sally bristled at being called a handmaid, but I mustered a smile as I nodded to Phoebe, and said, “She’ll stay here with us, I promise.”

“He’ll be fine,” said Phoebe, taking pity. “No large workings for a fortnight, you understand? Anything that draws more pneuma than he can gather from the air stands the chance of doing him harm, and I feel you would prefer that not occur.”

“I’ll sit on him if I have to,” I said firmly.

“Good.” Phoebe leaned over to kiss Helen on the cheek. “Come to the house for the hamper, my leman, and set them on their way. I’ll see ourselves alone this evening.”

Sally blinked, looking surprised. Helen smiled a small, besotted smile after Phoebe as the other satyr walked away, then turned back to me.

Thomas was making little grumbling noises and shifting in my lap, although his eyes were still closed. I stroked his hair again, watching Helen.

“Well?” I asked. “Other than waiting for Thomas to wake up and Phoebe to deliver our lunch, is there anything else we need to do here?”

“Tell me, precisely, where you want your crossing to conclude,” she said.

I took a deep breath.

“Buckley Township is located in Michigan, on the continent of North America . . .”

Seven