He looked at himself in the window one more time and almost started to cry. He was entitled to enjoy this feeling for a few moments more, wasn’t he? After all, he had waited so long!
At the end of the monorail line they departed their car and entered a tall building set among other tall buildings, the whole of it very imposing, almost overwhelming, and from there they followed stairs, some of them actually moving, to an underground station, where they boarded a bus. Questor didn’t know about buses, either, so Abernathy took a moment to explain how they worked and got it wrong. Elizabeth giggled and set them both straight. By now they were far enough removed from Bumbershoot that people were beginning to take notice of their somewhat odd clothing—Questor in his gray, patched robe with its brightly colored sashes and Abernathy in his crimson-lined, silver-trimmed riding cloak—but no one was rude enough to say anything. The bus took them underground for a ways, stopping twice, and then exited from a tunnel back into the sunshine of the late afternoon. They were on a roadway packed with other vehicles spread out in lanes that stretched away into the distance. No one was moving very fast. They sat at the back of the bus and stared out the windows, and for a time no one said much of anything.
“Are Ben Holiday and Willow well?” Elizabeth asked finally, speaking to Abernathy.
He said they were. He told her then about Mistaya. One thing led to another. When Questor didn’t give him a pointed look or offer a word of caution, he went on to tell her about Nightshade and the attack on the caravan that had been taking the little girl to stay with her grandfather. He kept his voice low so that no one sitting close could hear. Not that there was much chance of that happening, what with all the noise the bus made. He told her how they had thought themselves finished once Nightshade had summoned her formidable magic but then had inexplicably found themselves in the High Lord’s old world, in Seattle, at Bumbershoot. She was aware of the rest.
“It’s all very strange,” she said when he was done. “I wonder why you ended up back here.”
“Indeed,” Questor Thews said without looking over.
“I would like to live in your world,” she offered suddenly. “There’s always so much happening.”
Abernathy looked at her in surprise, then looked quickly away.
They rode the bus to a stop in Woodinville, then got off and walked rather a long way out into the country. Houses and traffic faded away, the day cooled, and the sun dropped toward the mountains that framed the horizon. The land was forested and rolling about them, filled with pungent smells and birdsong. The road they followed ran straight and unhindered into the distance, empty of life.
“I should tell you about Mrs. Ambaum,” Elizabeth said after a while. She had her face scrunched up, the way she always did when she was addressing a doubtful subject. “She’s the housekeeper. She lives with us. Dad’s away a lot, and she looks after me while he’s gone. She’s pretty nice, but she thinks all kids—that’s me and anyone else under twenty-five or so—can’t stay out of trouble. It’s not that she thinks we go looking for it; it’s that she thinks we can’t avoid it. So she spends a lot of time trying to keep me tucked safely away in the house. She had a fit when I told her I was going by bus to Bumbershoot, but Dad had told her it was all right, so there wasn’t much she could do. Anyway, we had better come up with a story that will satisfy her about where you came from or there will be trouble for sure.”
“The truth wouldn’t work, I suppose?” Questor asked.
Elizabeth grinned. “The truth would blow her mind.”
“We could stay somewhere else if we are going to be too much trouble,” Abernathy offered.
“Yes, we could stay in a barn or out in a field, perhaps,” Questor declared, giving him a reproachful glance. “Really, Abernathy.”
“No, no, you have to stay with me,” Elizabeth insisted quickly. “We have plenty of space. But we need a story for Mrs. Ambaum. How about this? Abernathy, you can be my uncle, visiting from Chicago. And Questor Thews is your friend, a professor of… geology. You’re fossil hunting. No, you’re participating in a forum on extinct species at the university, and you dropped by to see Dad, not knowing he was out of town, so I asked you to stay with us. There, that should work.”