It’s nearly dusk when Squint shows up again, bringing food and a bottle of cola. The food isn’t much — some scraggy veggies and undercooked potatoes — but I am truly amazed by the cola. I didn’t think the Potreros had any of the niceties of civilized life left. They’ve always seemed sort of down on technology. I used to think Lord E was just hogging it for himself, but it sure hasn’t seemed that way up till now.
Squint waves the bottle at me. “You rate bigtime, merlin,” he tells me. “This is from the Alcaldé’s private, personal and very secret stock. I don’t even get this stuff unless I done something mega.”
“Take a swig,” I offer, seeing another way to suck up.
He swigs quite adequately before passing me the bottle. Then he watches me while I eat and drink.
“So,” he says after a while of making my skin crawl, “so, you eat regular food.... How come you don’t eat fish emulsion and bone meal like your bro?”
“Appearances,” I fabricate. “I wanna maintain a people shape, I gotta eat people food. Otherwise, weird shit happens. It’s part of the magic.”
Squint is interested. “Weird shit, huh? Like what?”
“Like, you know, my hair goes green and spiky, my skin gets barky, my toes start wriggling around, looking for dirt.”
“Whoa,” says Squint.
“Pretty scary,” I agree.
“So, where’d you learn your stuff? Turning into people, etal.”
“Oh, uh...the Wiz.”
For the first time, he looks like he maybe doesn’t believe me. “How does a tree get into the Wiz? Somebody plant you in there?”
“Sort of. You see, the last merlin of Embarcadero was a normal guy. He had a Tree...me. When he came to the end of his long and illustrious career, he had no apprentices that suited him. So, he created himself an apprentice via transmogrification.”
It’s scary how easy this stuff comes out of me sometimes.
I can tell by Squint’s expression that I’ve lost him, but he doesn’t let on, really, just nods like, uh-huh, sure, I got it. “So,” he says, turning his nod to Doug, “he’s like your apprentice, then, huh? You gonna do the same thing with him, when you start creakin'?”
“Yeah,” I say, and take another swig of cola.
My eyes wander up over Squint’s head to the darkening skylight. A face is peering in at me through the grimy glass — Firescape’s face. I gulp, nearly choke myself, and hand Squint the bottle.
“Here, have some more,” I say, but it’s hard to hear myself over the racket my blood is making pounding around in my head.
While he’s swigging, eyes closed, I glance up again at Firescape. She makes a little sign. Get rid of him.
Yeah. Like I haven’t already considered this myself.
Squint hands me back the bottle — one swallow left. I kill it and give him the empty, though I don’t s’pose they recycle over here.
“Tell Lord E thanks for the special treatment.”
Squint actually grins at me. “You’re a special dude.” He doesn’t leave though. Just keeps grinning and squinting. “So, you get all your schtick from the Wiz, too, huh?”
Jeez. “Everybody gets their schtick from the Wiz...or one of the little Wizlets. Where else?”
“Everybody? Including Hismajesty?”
“Sure,” I say, and try not to sound testy. I can see Firescape hovering up there, waiting. “All the kids go there. They start off in the AV Shrine with Videoschool. Then they do books. When they’re old enough, they find their calling and go with it.”
“Calling?”
I twitch nervously. “You know — where they fit in. What they want to do. The Service, Firebrigade, teacher, butcher, baker, candle-maker, artist, merlin...court jester. Whatever.”
Squint frowns. “Those’re callings? You got people who just do that stuff? I mean, like a kid says, ‘I wanna paint pictures’ or ‘I wanna bake stuff’ and then they just do it?”
“Yeah, well, they get the inside on it from the Wiz and when they’re ready, they do it.”
“Why?”
Why? Duh. “‘Cause they like to do it and it needs to get done. Somebody’s got to do it, right?”
Squint scratches his head. “Hismajesty says, huh?”
“It needs to get done,” I repeat, not getting why this guy is so dense, “or Embarcadero don’t work.” I don’t feel quite so unworthy to call myself a merlin, all of a sudden. “Look, Merlin Squint, I’d love to jaw all night, but I’m really dragged and the TOD wishes to consult with me about some stuff.”
Squint’s left eye pops almost open. “He told you that?”
I nod.
“Just now?”
I nod.
“I didn’t hear nothin'.”
“He only speaks to one man,” I say, and point to my chest.
“I get it. You understand him ‘cause you’re a tree, too.”
I nod.
“Jeez. Can I watch?”
“No way. Communications between a merlin and his Tree are privileged.”
“Huh?”
“He’s shy.”
“Oh. Oh, yeah. Well, any guy who eats through his feet.” He shrugs. “S'cuse me.”
At last! I look up as Squint vacates and see Firescape giving me the thumbs up.
“Uh...one more thing, Merlin Taco,” Squint says from the doorway.
I gulp, jerk my head back down. “Uh, yeah?”
“Where’d you get your Tree?”
“The Farm.”
“The Farm. That’s that park across the Border, right? Where the old dude and dudette hang?”
I nod.
“Weird couple of ducks. Always digging around in the dirt — feeding the trees, I guess.” His eyes get real big and he points at Doug, all reverent. “Wow, like that one, huh?”
“Yeah, yeah, like that one.”
“Course, you can’t get the big ones out of the ground, I bet. I mean, they can’t, like, get up and move or nothin'.”
“No,” I agree, about to cry. “Not usually.”
He scratches his beard, nods. Stands there for another minute. I want to scream and Doug is quivering like, well, like a tree, I guess.
Squint squints one last time, then leaves.
By now little sparklies are swarming around inside my eyes. But I hear Firescape above me, tapping on the skylight and I look up. Through the swarm of sparklies she signs me to move back out of the way. I do, and the next thing I hear is the crunch of breaking glass.
In no appreciable time, Firescape is standing in front of me and I’m wondering if I should hug her. She doesn’t wait for me to decide. She takes things into her own hands — or arms, as the case may be.
“Taco Del, you lamebrain!” she murmurs lovingly (I hope). “You gotta screw loose, or what? I couldn’t believe-! When Geranium told me.... You yutz!”
She gives me this big, outrageous kiss, right on the lips. Hard. Then she socks my jaw. Also hard.
“I love you,” I say, which hurts, but who cares?
Her nose wrinkles. “And you tell me I gotta be careful. C’mon. Grab the TOD and let’s scramble.”
I look up along the rope that brought Firescape down to me.
“How’re we supposed to get Doug up there?”
She points up the rope. “I’ll go up first. You make a cradle around the pot. I’ll hoist him, then I’ll send the rope back down for you. By the way,” she adds, before ascending, “I love you too.”
Good plan. We do it. And, as I am floating on a cloud of love, everything goes pretty smooth. Not a drop of soil lost. Blood neither.
Out on the roof, though, we got a problem. We gotta slide the pot to the back edge without (1) making a hell of a racket and (2) accidentally rolling Doug off the sloping roof (also, coincidentally, making a hell of a racket). We finally link arms and pick up the pot so we are face to face on either side, looking at each other through the boughs. They tickle my nose. For a guy who’s just been starved for three days, Doug sure feels heavy.
“You just watered him, didn’t you?” Firescape whispers.
I nod and stifle a sneeze.
We have to crab-walk to the back edge of the roof. Our footsteps sound like thundering hordes and I slip twice and skid some inches toward the edge of the roof. Then I get the hang of it.
I also get a little cocky, and the very moment I think about already being through the Fence, I slip, I fall, I take a long, lonely skid on my furry tummy, right for the edge of the roof.
Suddenly, there is air under my feet and space opening its big yawp below me and a big, hairy scream building up in my throat. Then, a hand clamps on the back of my jacket and I just stop, legs swinging in the air, a rain-gutter crimping my ribs.
Firescape, clinging to a rope, puts her face next to mine and hisses, “Hold me.”
I’d like nothing better. I wrap my arms around her waist and dig my fingers under her belt. Together, we crawl back up the slope to where Doug waits, Firescape’s climbing hook sunk into the tiles behind his pot.
“Thank you,” I whisper, but Firescape merely detaches herself from me and says, “Thank me when we’re outta here.”
We start moving again; sidle-sidle, slip-slip, ouch-ouch. It seems to take forever, but at last we are at the back edge of the building and do the cradle thing again, this time going down.
Okay, I think, this is it. We’ve done it. But I’ve forgotten about the Fence. Now, I remember it. Which, I think, says something to me about the nature of reality. The Fence will not go away just ‘cause I need it to. Neither will the curls of truly wicked razorbarb across the top.
While I pause to reflect on this, Firescape hunkers down and disappears behind a bush. Before I can ask what she’s doing, the bush rolls clear over, showing a little hacked-off trunk and Firescape standing behind. She’s pulling on the wire which parts like, well, like cut wire.
She holds the edges apart and grins at me. “After you, Merlin Taco,” she says.
“After the Tree of Destiny,” I correct, and drag Doug over to the hole.
It takes both of us to hoist him through the hole, then I follow while Firescape covers us with her Magic Weapon. I’m just straightening on the other side of the Fence when I hear her say, “Shit,” in that tone of voice that can only mean one of two things: Shit, I have stepped in something unpleasant, or Shit, we have been discovered.
In this case, it is the latter.
“How,” I ask Firescape as we are herded along by five Big Ugly Dudes, “did they get the drop on you?”
She scowls ferociously. “I got caught in the damn Fence, coming through after you. Couldn’t even get the damn muzzle up.” She snorts, glancing to where her AK rests in the hands of one of the aforementioned Dudes. “Some Magic Weapon.”
Now, I am scared. I didn’t think old Squint had it in him to thwart the magic of an Embarcaderan Weapon. I have learned an important lesson: Never underestimate a fellow merlin, no matter how much like a court jester he is.
That merlin and his lord are grinning ear to ear when the Big Ugly Dudes bring us in. I notice the grins get even bigger when they gander Firescape. My insides get freezer burn.
“Bonus prize!” squeals Squint and Lord E says, “Merlin Taco, you’ve brought some really good stuff my way these days, but this takes the garbanzo. How’d you know I was down a lordette?”
And the two of them wink and yuk it up.
I realize suddenly that I have been had six ways from Sunday. I grip one of Doug’s little boughs tight enough to draw sap. A wave of perfume hits my schnozzle and makes its way to my weeny brain.
“Scrawl,” I say aloud. “You got Scrawl to say all that garbage about deadjim lordettes.”
“Not garbage, exactly,” says Lord E. “It's true, y’know. I really do go through lady-lords pretty fast. But, yeah, it didn’t hurt to have Scrawl mouthing off.”
“Yeah,” Squint guffaws. “That old hag is so hot to crumble your tortilla, she’d buy the Baybridge from a blue whale if it’d do the job. Passin' along Lord E’s sad, sad story was nothin'.”
“And the wall-scrawl? She did that herself, huh?”
“She’s got imagination,” says Lord E.
“Yeah, and a source of ethanol and fireworks,” I guess.
It comes clear, at last. The only thing I’m not sure of is what these two are really after. Huh — I mean, what I’ve helped them get besides, possibly, me and Doug and Firescape. I grab her hand and think real hard about what I’ve said.
Somewhere in the middle of all this thinking, it comes to me — where all Squint’s questions were headed — straight to the Wiz.