covering her skull, radiating down from the top of her head to the back of her neck. Seven days and nights in a limbo coop will do that to you—leave you unsure of everything you feel except hunger and helplessness. Alyss was staring at the young imaginationist she’d seen sitting on her father’s shoulders who reminded her of the Liddells. Huddled beneath the protective arm of her father, the girl was picking at a handful of dried squigberries, putting them in her mouth one at a time and sucking on them.
“What are you thinking?” Dodge asked.
Which was when Alyss realized what the prickling signified. Because Dodge couldn’t see them. The girl and her father were nowhere in sight. They were in a crowded flat while she was here, outside, in a refuse-strewn alley between two tenements.
She had been remote viewing, watching the pair in her imagination’s eye.
“It’s coming back,” she said.
Mr. Dumphy, who’d been dozing with his legs straight out in front of him, jerked awake and scrabbled to his feet as if to be of service in some capacity, any capacity.
“It is?” Dodge asked. “How do you know? Can you conjure?”
Conjurings of the second order, phantasms born of imagination, having enough reality to deceive the eye but not the touch. Alyss started with the smallest first. Amid the litter at her feet: A pillow appeared, shortly followed by a mound of greasy, slithering gwormmies.
“I’ve seen constructs before,” Mr. Dumphy breathed. “They were always ghostly, but these . . .”
He extended a hand toward the gwormmies, but they faded and a wooden chair took their place. He tried to lean on the back of the chair, but his hand passed through it and then he was faced with a gwynook, its wizened man’s face observing him from atop its penguin-like body. The gwynook morphed into Alyss, then into a smail-transport and, briefly, a jabberwock.
“Finally!” Dodge said, ripping open his jumpsuit and exposing the weaponry that could easily arm three guards-men. “Let’s get out of here!”
But Alyss wasn’t done. Her imagination didn’t feel as strong and clear as it used to; like an atrophied muscle, time and exercise would be needed for it to recover its former power.
Time is what we don’t have.
Conjurings of the first order were not phantasms but the genuine articles—objects in all their bruising, sharp-cornered reality. Alyss concentrated on the weapons in her mind, her talent an intuitive knowledge of their arcane mechanics as—
A crystal shooter came into existence, leaning against a tenement. Then another and another and another until she’d created enough to outfit a full deck of Heart soldiers. A rack of AD52s had begun to solidify when she said, “Mr. Dumphy, please relay a message to your friends that our release from this prison is imminent. They should be alert for my signal.”
The tinker bowed. “And what will that signal be, Your Highness?”
Alyss had finished with the AD52s, was imagining into actuality orb generators and cannonball spiders. “They’ll know it when they see it. Tell them to just be ready: The moment of our uprising is near.”
CHAPTER 20
I T WASN’T in Hatter’s nature to run, nor had his Millinery training instilled the impulse in him. He and Molly emerged from a looking glass in the Everlasting Forest and, despite knowing the importance of remaining inconspicuous, he couldn’t keep himself from battle. Heart and Spade soldiers were exchanging fire with mercenaries positioned on their front and left flanks, the enemy darting behind protesting trees after each trigger-pull of their AD52s. Suddenly, from the card soldiers’ right flank, an orb generator blazed through the forest.
Feeeeeeeeooooooshhhhkaaaghghgk!
The explosion took out two full hands of Hearts and Spades. The rest struggled to hold position and not let the mercenaries advance, but again from the right flank, the unexpected: mind riders stabbing through the air toward them,
“What are you thinking?” Dodge asked.
Which was when Alyss realized what the prickling signified. Because Dodge couldn’t see them. The girl and her father were nowhere in sight. They were in a crowded flat while she was here, outside, in a refuse-strewn alley between two tenements.
She had been remote viewing, watching the pair in her imagination’s eye.
“It’s coming back,” she said.
Mr. Dumphy, who’d been dozing with his legs straight out in front of him, jerked awake and scrabbled to his feet as if to be of service in some capacity, any capacity.
“It is?” Dodge asked. “How do you know? Can you conjure?”
Conjurings of the second order, phantasms born of imagination, having enough reality to deceive the eye but not the touch. Alyss started with the smallest first. Amid the litter at her feet: A pillow appeared, shortly followed by a mound of greasy, slithering gwormmies.
“I’ve seen constructs before,” Mr. Dumphy breathed. “They were always ghostly, but these . . .”
He extended a hand toward the gwormmies, but they faded and a wooden chair took their place. He tried to lean on the back of the chair, but his hand passed through it and then he was faced with a gwynook, its wizened man’s face observing him from atop its penguin-like body. The gwynook morphed into Alyss, then into a smail-transport and, briefly, a jabberwock.
“Finally!” Dodge said, ripping open his jumpsuit and exposing the weaponry that could easily arm three guards-men. “Let’s get out of here!”
But Alyss wasn’t done. Her imagination didn’t feel as strong and clear as it used to; like an atrophied muscle, time and exercise would be needed for it to recover its former power.
Time is what we don’t have.
Conjurings of the first order were not phantasms but the genuine articles—objects in all their bruising, sharp-cornered reality. Alyss concentrated on the weapons in her mind, her talent an intuitive knowledge of their arcane mechanics as—
A crystal shooter came into existence, leaning against a tenement. Then another and another and another until she’d created enough to outfit a full deck of Heart soldiers. A rack of AD52s had begun to solidify when she said, “Mr. Dumphy, please relay a message to your friends that our release from this prison is imminent. They should be alert for my signal.”
The tinker bowed. “And what will that signal be, Your Highness?”
Alyss had finished with the AD52s, was imagining into actuality orb generators and cannonball spiders. “They’ll know it when they see it. Tell them to just be ready: The moment of our uprising is near.”
CHAPTER 20
I T WASN’T in Hatter’s nature to run, nor had his Millinery training instilled the impulse in him. He and Molly emerged from a looking glass in the Everlasting Forest and, despite knowing the importance of remaining inconspicuous, he couldn’t keep himself from battle. Heart and Spade soldiers were exchanging fire with mercenaries positioned on their front and left flanks, the enemy darting behind protesting trees after each trigger-pull of their AD52s. Suddenly, from the card soldiers’ right flank, an orb generator blazed through the forest.
Feeeeeeeeooooooshhhhkaaaghghgk!
The explosion took out two full hands of Hearts and Spades. The rest struggled to hold position and not let the mercenaries advance, but again from the right flank, the unexpected: mind riders stabbing through the air toward them,
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