Wood Sprites

23: Shutdown

The alarm woke Louise. She lay in the darkness for a minute, confused. Then she remembered that it was Shutdown and Pittsburgh was back on Earth. They had gone to bed early so they could spend all night trying to reach Orville, assuming that he was the Wright listed in the phone book. Her eyes adjusted to the dimness and she made out Jillian sitting on her bed, sheets piled around her, face illuminated by the screen of her phone. A quiet voice said, “All circuits are busy, please try again later.” Jillian grunted as if hit, and her fingers moved on her phone’s keyboard.

“Go back to sleep,” Jillian said after her third attempt got the same error message. “I’ll wake you up if I get through.”

“I want to stay awake.”

“If I don’t get through before three, you’re going to have to take over trying to get through. We have to keep trying until midnight tomorrow.”

April had said that it was unlikely they would get through during the first few hours, but it was upsetting to think that three hours might go by without success.

It was still dark when Jillian woke Louise. “I didn’t get through. I never even got a connection.”

“April got to the border Saturday; she’ll get in,” Louise said with more confidence than she felt. She glanced at the clock. It was three-thirty. Jillian had let her sleep an extra half hour. They needed to be awake for school at five-thirty. Louise reset the alarm.

By failure number seven, Jillian was breathing deeply.

The world was strangely quiet as Louise sat dialing her phone. It seemed as if the whole world were holding its breath, just as afraid for her sister as she was.

At four twenty-three, the phone clicked instead of immediately giving Louise a recording. Her heart leaped up and then sunk down to her toes as it gave a standard busy signal. She hung up and redialed. It clicked, and after a moment of silence, gave a busy signal again. Her heart had done the same dizzying loop of up and down and back to rest.

“Oh, you do have a phone!” Iggy said when they met him at the subway platform shortly after eight. It had become a ritual at some point that Iggy walked with them to school from the subway station.

“Doh!” Jillian hit dial to try yet again. “Everyone has phones, even the Amish.”

“Isn’t that against their religion?” Iggy asked.

“I report it, not explain it,” Jillian stated.

Jillian’s phone suddenly connected, and a man spoke over her phone. “Hey, this is Oilcan. My life imploded, and I’m not going to be home until probably Wednesday. I ran over my headset. It’s in a zillion pieces that not even Tinker could fix. If you really, really need to talk to me, call Tinker. Be warned that she’s in full Godzilla mode. If you don’t have Tinker’s number, call Roach.”

They stared at Jillian’s phone for several heartbeats.

“Normally you leave a message after something like that.” Iggy pointed to the still connected phone.

“That’s not the right number.” Jillian disconnected the call.

“Ah, okay, I was wondering. Those sound like gang names. And headsets? Only bikers use those.”

Jillian glanced to Louise as she put her phone away. “I’ll have to look up the right number later.”

“So.” Iggy bounced in place. “Are you psyched?”

“Huh?” Louise said.

“Tomorrow you start flying!” Iggy meant for the play.

Jillian swore slightly as the twins traded glances. They had totally forgotten about the play again in the flood of other concerns. Because of the bombing, all the school activities had been pushed back a week, including the sixth-grade class play. They’d made up for lost time on stagecraft with after-school sessions. They hadn’t had access to the stage, however, until last week. It meant they spent the first few days moving pieces of the sets into place, assembling them, and testing their blocking.

Jillian and Iggy started to practice lines, which left Louise to consider Oilcan’s answering machine message. They still didn’t know if this man was their cousin, Orville. They’d scripted out a series of questions that they could have asked to establish his identity. If he wasn’t going to be home during the Shutdown window, then they could only leave a message. Should they without knowing if this was really Orville or not?

It was painful to feel exactly nine years old.

“We could just say ‘Alexander is in danger’ and not give any other information on her, not even her gender, and if it isn’t Orville, he’ll have no idea who we’re talking about.”

They’d hidden themselves in the girls’ restroom to discuss the problem before the homeroom bell rang.

“I don’t know. Two kids call and leave a message about elves kidnapping your cousin — who’s going to believe that? It’s going to sound like a joke.”

“We can have Tesla leave it.” Jillian dropped her pitch to the gravelly tone of Tesla’s original deep voice, before they changed it to sound like Christopher Robin. “Ohayougozaimasu, Orville-san.”

“That could work, but do we say who is going to kidnap Alexander? Sparrow is a double agent working inside the Wind Clan. We don’t know whom she’s working for or why. It isn’t Windwolf; he’s a target, too. And Sparrow probably isn’t going to carry out the kidnapping herself.”

“I know! I know!” Jillian cried. “Okay. We’ll call Lain.”

“What? Lain?”

“She’s Alexander’s aunt.”

“But she might not know that. Esme didn’t want April to tell her about Alexander.”

“While Esme was still on Earth.” Jillian wrapped her arms around Louise. “If I were leaving Earth like that, I would know that I was never coming back. And that I would never see you again. I would want the last time we’re together to be all good memories — and that certainly wouldn’t work if I dropped a shitload of crazy on you.”

Louise shuddered at the idea of losing Jillian. “So, you think that Esme would have left a note or something that Lain could read after they’d said good-bye?”

Jillian nodded. “I would. A big long sappy note of everything that hurt too much to say.”

“Like what?”

“You know. Like how I was going to miss waking up in the middle of the night from a nightmare and knowing that I wasn’t alone. And how scary everything was going to be without you with me. You’re the brave one. I couldn’t do half the things we do without you leading the way.”

“Me? Brave?”

“Yeah!” Jillian squeezed her hard and then let her go, embarrassed. “Anyhow, I’m betting Esme did tell Lain before she jumped.”

The homeroom bell rang, ending their moment of privacy.

“Okay,” Louise said. “We’ll call Lain.”

Mr. Howe was standing in the hallway with Miss Hamilton. They had Elle with them plus the two boys, Darius and Carlos, who were playing Wendy’s younger brothers. Darius had been picked for John because he was the best of all the fifth-grade boys at remembering lines after Iggy. Carlos was the smallest of the boys and thus had been picked to play Michael, the baby of the Darling family.

“Girls, there’s been a change in plan. The flying instructor is here. They’ve installed the wires for the play, and you’re going to be spending today learning how to use it.”

Jillian breathed out a curse that only Louise could hear.

“Today?” Louise asked fearfully.

A weird side effect of playing with the spells was that the residual magic seemed to be giving Louise horrible nightmares. One of the recurring ones was Jillian falling, and it had them both a little edgy about the flying.

“Yes, we were originally scheduled for last Wednesday but. .” She paused as the sentence led her to the bombing. The teachers seemed reluctant to discuss it, as if they had been repeatedly told not to bring it up.

“But I thought it was moved to tomorrow,” Louise said.

“There was a conflict in schedules, and we got bumped to today. Go down to the theater with Mr. Howe.”

He held up his hand to check them and stepped into 502. “Behave!” Mr. Howe growled at his class. “I’ll get a full report, so don’t think I won’t know.”

With that warning, he led them downstairs. The twins followed, exchanging glances that spoke volumes. The flying instruction was a full-day affair. Jillian was better at lying, but she was going to be strapped into a harness and suspended from the ceiling all day. Louise would have to be the one to call Lain.

The flying instructor was a giant. He towered over the twins and was nearly a foot taller than even Mr. Howe.

“I’m Rob Noble. I’m with Flights of New York. In the next two days I’ll teach you how to operate the equipment and help you choreograph the entire play. I’ve done hundreds of productions of Peter Pan, so I know the characters and I know the scenes. I can give you complete blocking instructions or I can just make suggestions. This is your production, not mine. Today we’ll get you comfortable at flying and then choreograph everything but the fight on the Jolly Roger.”

He held a harness that was a belt with wide suspenders and straps that looped through the legs. The reinforced back had one large ring. “We’ll be using these flying harnesses, and only them. Safety is very important, so never try to hook the wire to something like a belt or a piece of clothing and expect it to hold. The harness goes under a costume. It can’t be dyed or painted, because that might weaken the material. You’ll want a T-shirt on under it; you don’t want it up against your skin. Stage manager?”

Louise put up her hand when she realized he was asking who was acting in that position.

“Okay. Before any practice or performance, it’s your responsibility to check the harness for wear. If it looks like it’s fraying or breaking in any way, you have to tell your teachers that it can’t be used. I’m leaving lots of spare harnesses with your teachers, so don’t try to jury-rig something. Do you understand?”

Louise nodded.

“I will be double-checking the equipment, too,” Mr. Howe said.

“The more eyes on it, the better.” Mr. Noble pointed to a dangling rope. “Yesterday we installed the equipment and tested it. This here is called a flying wire.” He took out a flashlight and pointed it up to the ceiling to show where it connected and then followed its path down to a complex set of pulleys and cams. “It’s controlled by what we call a lift line. It used to be that for every flyer, you would need one or two humans on this line. We now have these robots that we will be programming in the choreography. It will be a little tedious, so you have to be patient, but once we have the movement entered, it’s actually easier and safer for the flyers.”

He tucked away the flashlight. “Who is Peter?”

“I am.” Jillian moved up to lean against Louise.

The instructor did a double take. “Oh! Twins! I think you’re going to be the smallest Peter I’ve worked with.”

Jillian put her hands on her hips, jerking Peter’s boldness up like a shield. “Size has nothing to do with talent!”

He grinned. “Of course not. Have you ever taken dance classes?”

“Yes.” The twins had taken a variety of dance classes at the YMCA.

“I take classes at the Dance Conservatory.” Elle stepped forward with ballet flourish. “I’m playing Wendy.”

“Good, good, that will help. Let’s get you into your harness.”

Louise took her place at the lighting board. She needed a stool to reach the array of monitors and switches. Mr. Noble had linked the lift operator robots to the stage’s computer. By design, the board was out of sight from anyone in the audience. Half-blinded by the lights on the stage, the teachers wouldn’t be able to see her if they stayed with the actors. Louise took out her phone and dialed Lain’s number. The call went through, but the line was busy. She hissed out a swear word. She wouldn’t be able to use an auto-dialer since she had to stay focused on the flyers while they were in the air. She couldn’t drop everything if the auto-dialer connected unexpectedly. She tucked her phone among the various buttons, switches, and slide controls. She hit disconnect and then redial.

She found a rhythm to her work. The action suggested a melody to her, so she would write a section of song, dial Lain’s number, program in the newest flight movements, check her phone’s screen, tweak the lighting, and disconnect from the busy signal. Carlos and Darius as Michael and John Darling were going to stay comic relief as they struggled with the flying. Jillian and Elle astounded Mr. Noble with the speed at which they learned the basics. He shifted them from the simple single harness that they started with into a three-point harness that would allow more complicated movements.

“Who designed your sets?” Mr. Noble asked as they started to program in the choreography of Peter’s secretive arrival at the Darling nursery.

“Louise did.” Mr. Howe’s focus was wholly on Jillian as she cartwheeled through the air, fifteen feet up. “In fifth grade, we turn everything over to the kids. Louise designed them and the class built them.”

“Really? Wow.” Mr. Noble gave a tip of a hat to Louise while keeping his eye on Jillian. “Your set is amazing for flying. Most productions forget about the three-dimensional aspects of the play and just do one level. And I really like the New York skyline twist. Never saw that before.”

Louise blushed. She’d considered possible flight movements when she designed the set, but it had been only a few minutes of thought, now lost in a flood of all the other considerations such as visual impact, ease of construction, cost, movability, and convertibility. The little loft area of Wendy’s bed was actually the flipside of the Jolly Roger’s poop deck, the ship’s railing hidden behind the princess bed. The two sets of steps joined together to make the Jolly Roger’s grand staircase. The long elevated landing between the steps turned to become the gun ports. She’d actually been feeling guilty that she’d designed something fairly plain considering some of the work she’d done on sets for their videos. Then again, those sets had been virtual and didn’t need to be moved down twelve stories when done.

Because the four actors were taking turns getting individual instructions, they didn’t take a break until the third-period bell.

“It’s been three hours!” Jillian cried after Louise updated her on the series of failures to connect with Lain. “Who the hell is she talking to?”

“Earth.”

“All of Earth?” Jillian flailed slightly on the stage floor, too tired to do more of a display of frustration.

“Everyone she knows only has one day a month to call her.”

“We’re running out of time. We only have until midnight and it’s almost eleven already. Half the day is gone.”

“We’ll just keep calling until we get through,” Louise said.

“Peter!” Mr. Noble called.

“Coming!” Jillian leapt up and bounded lightly onto stage as if she weren’t tired and struck a pose. “What need do you have of the great Peter Pan?”

Louise was still wondering why Jillian thought she was the brave one. She didn’t feel brave. Her heart jumped in her chest every time she hit redial. The only thing she’d done all morning was listen to busy signals. Jillian seemed fearless, leaping into the air, doing flips and cartwheels, sparring verbally with Mr. Noble while trading lines with Elle.

Did Jillian really think she was the one that led the way? Louise always thought of Jillian as the one who led. It was because Jillian wanted to be a movie director that they did the videos.

Distracted, she wasn’t prepared for the phone to actually ring and then be answered before it rang a second time.

“Dr. Shenske’s residence; can I help you?” a man’s voice snapped over the speaker. “Hello? Anyone there? Oh, freaking hell, stupid phones!”

“Hello? I’m here!” Louise cried before he could hang up. She dropped her voice to a lower, more adult pitch. She should have brought Tesla to act as a filter. “I–I need to talk to Lain Shenske.”

“Dr. Shenske is busy at the moment. She’s supervising loading the van with botanical specimens. There was a big twenty-car pileup on I-279, so the van is way behind schedule. It will be at least two hours until she can come to the phone. I’m fielding all calls from Earth.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Richard Hill. I’m a post-doc from Cornell; I’m doing research for Dr. Karen Purcell. I’m helping out now, but I’m going have to fly shortly if I want to go back to Earth today. Startup waits for no man.”

“I really need to talk to her. This is an emergency. Life and death.”

“Oh, geez, you interns are all the same. You’re the third to call this morning. Suck it up and learn how to deal with standard procedures. There’s no cutting corners in field research paperwork.” And he hung up on her.

Louise stared at the phone, dismayed. Should she call back? Try to explain before he hung up on her again? No, the man would hang up as soon as he recognized her voice. She should hook Tesla into the loop and use his filters to disguise her voice. Actually, she could get Tesla to do the calling and have him loop her into the conversation only if he actually got through to a human.

So the day went. The telephone number was busy every time Louise tried, except for one time when the connection went through and she heard someone shouting in the distance. “Watch! Watch! Don’t yank out the leads or the spell will collapse!” a woman cried and then they were disconnected.

Louise eyed the phone. If Pittsburgh was on Earth, how were they casting spells? Did Lain have a magic generator, too? Did this mean Lain knew Kensbock? Did Lain know where the M.I.T. student was?

“We have time for one more run. Can we give it a go?” Mr. Noble called.

Louise had been working on lighting and music to go with the action as she endlessly failed to talk to Lain. She waited until everyone was in their places and then dimmed all the lights except the nursery’s nightlights. She was aware that Mr. Noble and Mr. Howe had come to bracket her as she stood on a stool and worked the control boards. There were half a dozen monitors on the system. There were cameras that showed the audience and what was onstage. There was the screen that showed the programming for the lift-line robotic operators. The controls for the Tinker Bell projector. The sound mixing display. And her phone, cycling through dial, busy signal, disconnection.

This would be the worst possible moment for the phone call to actually go through.

Trying to ignore her phone, she cued in the gleaming figure inside a ball of light that represented Tinker Bell. She zoomed the gleaming circle about the nursery, leaving a contrail of glittering motes.

“Oh wow,” Mr. Noble breathed. “That is cool. I’ve never seen that before. What are you using?”

“A holographic pinpoint projector.” Louise moved the light about as “Tinker Bell” searched for Peter Pan’s lost shadow.

“Where’d you get it?” Mr. Noble whispered.

“I made it,” she admitted since Mr. Howe was standing right there. “I recorded a silhouette of my Barbie doll using stop-action for the wings’ flapping and then looped it.”

“Oh! Really?” It was impossible to judge if his whispered question was just surprise or disbelief.

“This is a school for the gifted, Mr. Noble,” Mr. Howe said.

Onstage, the window opened and Jillian peered in, impossibly high and half upside-down. Then she flew in and landed in a crouch. She was just in T-shirt and jeans, but she’d mussed her hair so she looked half feral.

“Tinker Bell,” Jillian gave a stage whisper as she slinked across the nursery like something wild. “Tink, are you there?”

“You two are scary good,” Mr. Noble whispered.

Louise caught the flash of light on the auditorium camera as someone opened the door and stepped into the darkened room. She didn’t catch who it was, but she had the sudden sense of impending doom. She glanced at her phone. It was dialing again. She made a big sweeping gesture with her right to cue up Tinker Bell’s gentle tinkle of bells that was J.M. Barrie’s “fairy language” and with her left quietly cancelled the phone call.

After Jillian did Peter’s joyous flight at finding his shadow, she shortcut through the scene to get to the flying. “I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back and then away we go.”

Carlos and Darius were still awkward, despite the day’s work, but luckily in a silly, laughable way. Elle was graceful and refined. Jillian managed to impart boyish swagger as she zoomed about the stage as if she had been born with wings.

As Jillian landed, crying “Now come!” and pointing out the open nursery window, Louise’s phone rang. Mr. Howe looked down at her phone as “Mom” displayed on the screen.

“Louise,” he chided.

“I was expecting my mom to call, so I had it out,” Louise lied. “Can I answer?”

The lone person in the audience clapped, distracting him.

He huffed. “Yes. Since it’s your mother.” And he stalked out to see who was on in the auditorium, applauding.

“Hello?” Louise tentatively answered her phone.

“Louise, I forgot all about the fact that you two need gowns for the gala.” Her mother sounded like she was juggling a hundred things at once. Death would fall on anyone that made her drop what she had in midair.

“Gowns?” Louise cautiously tried to weasel out of whatever her mother had planned.

“Gowns, like dresses, only fancier.”

Louise gasped as she realized who had to be in the dark auditorium. “You want Aunt Kitty to take us shopping?”

“I called the school and let them know that she was picking you up. I didn’t want you to miss her.”

Louise brought up the auditorium lights and verified her guess. “She’s here now.”

“Be good for your aunt. Love you.” And she hung up with no idea that she’d just thrown all their plans into ruin.

There was a conspiracy to put little girls in pink and yards of tulle. It was tempting to agree to the first dozen they saw, but since they’d failed to reach Lain for almost fifteen hours, they held their ground. On the fourth store, they found a black satin full-length dress that the twins loved at first sight. It had a ruched sleeveless bodice and empire waistline wrapped with a matching black pleated sash.

“Are you sure?” Aunt Kitty asked a dozen times. “It’s awfully grown-up.”

“It’s perfect.” Jillian turned in a circle to show it off to full effect.

Aunt Kitty took a video and sent it to their mother. “We’ll see what she thinks.”

A minute later a firm “No black, it’s not a funeral” text came back.

Two stores later, just shy of closing hours, they found two matching tea-length dresses of soft shimmering yellow with wide black belts. The dresses had poof skirts thanks to layers of crinoline but were fully lined, so the itchy material didn’t touch bare skin. With their mother’s texted approval, the dresses were bought and they headed home, exhausted.

They spent the last hour getting ready for bed with phones in hand, dialing, disconnecting at the first tone of the busy signal, redialing. The minutes ticked down and then Shutdown was over.

They stared numbly at the clock as it turned to midnight.

“What do we do?” Jillian asked.

Louise called April, who answered on the first ring.

“Hello?”

“Ugh!” Louise flopped back in bed. If April answered, she wasn’t on Elfhome.

“Hello?” April said again.

“It’s us,” Louise said.

“Oh.” It wasn’t a good sounding “oh” but a “but I’ve got bad news” kind of “oh.”

“What happened? Is it Alexander? Did something happen to her?”

“No, no, it’s that I didn’t get across the border.” April sounded tired, but not stressed, yet somehow Louise was sure that she had horrible news. “I’d gone to Cranberry to try and get across. Normally it’s the best bet. There was a shoot-out on Veterans Bridge, though, and things got all screwed up.”

“A shoot-out?” The post-doc had mentioned a twenty-car accident but nothing about a shoot-out.

“I’m not sure what happened — the details are really sketchy — but apparently there was a big pileup on Veterans Bridge. There was a heavily armed group of smugglers in one of the cars, and they tried to kill the cops that showed up to direct traffic. They shot at least one person, and they rigged a bomb to take out the bridge. The EIA bomb squad managed to defuse it. Then the rescue teams used Earth-based life-flight helicopters to fly out the wounded.”

All of which would have stopped traffic incoming from Cranberry completely.

“I did get through to my parents and cousins,” April continued. “At first they didn’t know whom I was talking about. I think my mom is going senile early; Old Man Bell saved my life, and she didn’t remember him at all. She was no help. I had more luck with my cousin, Ellen. It took ten minutes of describing the hotel on Neville Island, Old Man Bell, and his two grandchildren who build go-carts, for her to figure out who I meant. Apparently Alexander doesn’t use her real name.”

“What name does she use?” Dufae would be just as dangerous.

“Tinker.”

“Tinker?” Louise echoed, mystified.

“As in Tinker Bell?” Jillian cried. “Eewww.”

“She doesn’t seem to use a last name. I think she just goes by Tinker. And Orville is Oilcan. My cousin saw the two of them last week. They’re racing hoverbikes professionally.”

“Hoverbikes?”

“Alex invented them!” April sounded surprised and proud. “They use magic to hover, but they also have a gasoline engine. I’m not sure I understood that part completely. Racing them is a big sport event that everyone follows. Ellen says that she only knows it’s the same two kids because my folks lived down the street from them for years. She thinks that Sparrow’s people are going to have a hard time finding her if all they know is her real name.”

“How much did you tell your cousin?” Louise cried.

“Not everything.” April sighed. “Nothing about you two. But it was getting obvious that I wasn’t going to get through, and I didn’t want Ellen drawing attention to herself or Alexander by talking to the wrong person. I warned her that it’s not safe to talk to the EIA or the police or anyone else outside the family. I told her that this is a widespread conspiracy, and it being elves, their moles could have been put into place shortly after the first Startup. The first time I talked to her, she thought I was an utter loon.”

“And the second time?” Because it sounded like there was a second phone call that had gone totally differently than the first.

“She heard on the news that one of the sekasha had been killed, and Windwolf was missing.”

“Oh no! Which one?” Oh, please God, not Pony!

“I don’t know. It might make the Earth news tomorrow. I wasn’t thinking about the elves. I was worried about Alexander.”

Louise tried to take comfort knowing that at least Alexander was well hidden. But what if Sparrow’s trap succeeded? What if both Windwolf and Pony were dead? Tears started to burn in her eyes.

“Ellen promised me that she’ll find where Alexander lives and go see her and tell her about Sparrow. And she’ll tell her that I’m willing to have her come live with me in New York. I’m not sure if Alex will take me up on the offer. I would have at eighteen, but I always thought of Earth as my home, not Elfhome.”

Louise would jump at a chance to visit Elfhome, but to stay? To leave behind everyone she knew? No. If Alexander were anything like her and Jillian, she would never leave her grandfather and Orville.

“Ellen will warn her,” April repeated firmly. “You can stop worrying.”

They said good-bye and hung up, feeling raw and drained. April was right in that there was nothing they could do now until next Shutdown. In the meantime, they still had the babies to save.