CHAPTER 3: Unexpected

"Hey Raz."

"Hm?"

"What's the scale on this map?"

The two of them had been levitating through the mountains for almost an hour, periodically checking the map to make sure they were headed the right direction. In that hour, however, the sun had been getting closer and closer to the horizon, and eventually they'd had to dig a penlight out of Lili's purse. Almost a whole day since his father had left in pursuit of the thief. Raz was trying his hardest not to think about it.

Instead he answered Lili's question. "It should be in the upper-lefthand corner."

"Yeah," said Lili, "see, that's what I was afraid of."

Uh-oh. "Why?"

"We'd better land."

He followed her descent to the ground and touched down right on the edge of a clearing in the woods. In front of them were some vaguely rolling hills, with trees here and there across them but nothing substantial.

"Why do I already not like the sounds of this?" Raz groaned, and when Lili shoved the map and the flashlight underneath his nose, he groaned some more.

"Yep. Here we are. Scenic Jeremiah Fields. A stretch of land that only goes on for, oh, about ten miles in either direction."

"What are we gonna do?"

"It's getting dark, and we're kind of on a time crunch," said Lili.

Raz took a deep breath and bit the bullet. "Maybe we should - "

"No!"

"What?"

"Don't say it," Lili insisted. Raz raised one eyebrow at her and she continued. "Basic horror movie logic: the person that suggests it in the first place is the person that ends up getting the most screwed over. If you don't actually say it - "

"But you agree that we should?"

"Oh...I guess," said Lili, though she looked nervous. "I just - I mean, I don't want you to - we only have one flashlight!"

"I'll be fine," he assured her, answering her unspoken fears. He kicked at a toppled log that was sitting next to him on the ground, dislodging a thicker branch from its side, and then picked it up and concentrated firmly on the other end of it until it burst into flames. "Pyrokinesis is pretty much in my genes."

"If either of us finds this guy, we call each other," said Lili.

"Right," Raz agreed. "I'm gonna go east."

"I'll go kinda northwest then," she said.

"Right."

"Right."

But neither one of them moved for a moment or so. Raz stood looking at her, torch crackling in one hand, the other one fidgeting by his side. Lili tugged a little on her braid and clutched the map a little too hard. Their eye contact was tinged with just a little desperation.

They leaned in and kissed, and then took off in separate directions before either of them could take it back.

-xxx-

About twenty minutes later, the sun had set completely. Out in the middle of the civilization-less mountains, Raz's burning torch was pretty much the only light to be seen for as far as his eyes would go in the dark. Lili had taken the map, so for all he knew he could have wandered away from Jeremiah Fields and ended up in Jebidiah Swamp, or something. But he had yet to hit seriously thick forest, so he was at least assuming he was on the right track. He just tried to stay scanning either the horizon (or at least where he figured the horizon was) or the ground.

Every time he looked at the torch in his hand, he was reminded why they were in this mess.

His thoughts flashed to images of his father, out at sea on a tiny boat, his flexible form wrapped almost twice around the mast clinging for dear life. It was raining - storming, with thunder and lightning, of course, in his overactive imagination - and the vessel was getting tossed around in turquoise-grey waves that were twice its size. Any sail the boat might once have had was tattered and gone, and the hull was slowly filling up with water, and his father was soaked through to the bone, teeth chattering in the wet and cold...

Raz shook his head to clear it. There was no way that was happening. First of all, it was too tremendously cliché to ever happen in real life. And furthermore, if he started thinking like that, he'd never be able to focus on this mission. Milla was always telling him that the best defense in a psychic ordeal was to think positively. Otherwise you would just start to get paranoid and panic. No, the best way for him to make it through this was to -

"Aooohh-ooooohhh," howled a wolf somewhere that sounded way too close to his current location.

Okay, now Raz was panicking.

His pace picked up a little, as he traced the edge of Jeremiah Fields, scuffing through overgrown knee-high grass and occasionally having to hop over fallen logs or rotting tree stumps. His torch was still blazing brightly, nothing to worry about there, but every so often Raz swore he could hear rustling that wasn't caused by his own movement or by the wind. He was scared to even think it - and he'd certainly never say it out loud - but he was starting to wonder if he was being followed.

Raz froze suddenly and turned around, bringing the light of the torch along with him. But behind him there was nothing to see, except the squashed-down pathway of crumpled grass where he'd been walking, slowly righting itself. Re-orienting himself, and trying to stay positive, Raz turned and started heading slightly more northward. He had a lot of field to cover, and he wasn't going to get anything done if he started freaking out over -

"Aooohh-ooooohhh," came the wolf howl again, even closer than before.

"I'm not scared of you, wolves," Raz cried out, needing to hear his own voice. "I've handled telekinetic bears and cougars that could light me on fire, you guys are no big deal." And it was true, wasn't it? But if that were true, then why was this somehow much more frightening than running around Whispering Rock in the dark?

Nevertheless, he kept walking, and after a longer stretch of time with no wolf howls his jitters started to go away. He felt better that he was walking further away from the edge of the denser forest now, rather than hugging it on the outskirts of the field. He'd also reached an area where the grass wasn't quite so tall, and the rustling sounds couldn't be heard any more either. After maneuvering around a tall, free-standing tree, Raz stopped and turned around again. There wasn't anything there, of course, but he hadn't really been expecting anything. He chuckled a little to himself. This wasn't so much scarier than camp after all. Nothing to worry about.

He turned back around to keep walking and came face-to-face with...nothing. Except this was the kind of nothing that breathed hot, foul-smelling breath right into your eyes, and seemed to be making a noise somewhere between panting and growling.

"Oh," Raz said nervously, "right. Invisible wolves. Awesome."

And then he turned tail and fled, screaming like a girl.

Though Raz couldn't see it, the wolf's presence was obvious at his back, and there was no way he was going to outrun it. He drew out his levitation ball and tried to roll away, but it was still keeping up with him - and if Raz knew anything about wolves, it was that he was going to tire a lot faster than they were. And that they traveled in packs, and he was probably about to run into at least two more.

He only had one other option, and that was provided he made it to the tree in time.

Closer...closer...closer...yes! Raz leapt as high as he could and swung neatly around the tree's lowest branch before vaulting himself up into it. Not a bad bit of acrobatics considering he was holding a torch in his teeth. He balanced precariously on the branch before darting up to the one above him. At the base of the tree, the wolves flickered in and out of sight, scraping at the bark trying to climb it. They'd probably manage that in a few minutes, too, so Raz had to think fast. But where could he go? He probably had it in him to jump and levitate to another tree, but his torch wasn't lighting up much beyond the vanishing wolves and their immediate vicinity. Think, Razputin, think!

"That's it!"

Instead of illuminating the wolves at the base of the tree, Raz turned around and shone his torch on the upper branches of his temporary safe spot, scanning for something, anything that might connect him back to a bird. When his initial search yielded nothing, he climbed up to the next highest branch, but it was thinner, and probably the last one that would hold his weight. At the bottom of the tree, the nothingness that was the first wolf got about three feet up and then slipped, but he was obviously not giving up.

"Come on, come on...ha!" Finally, a lone owl feather lodged into the rough, crumbling bark at the top of the tree. Raz snatched at it desperately and performed the fastest clairvoyance he probably ever had, even on that mission up in Canada with the psychic spies. According to the owl, there was a tree about fifteen feet away that he could definitely make it to with a good levitating leap. Beyond that, another tree lay across a slightly bigger gap, and then he could make it to the forest line and just stay up in the branches.

Raz lined himself up and leapt blindly into the dark.

The solid center of a branch was suddenly beneath his feet, and a thick cluster of leaves was suddenly in his face. He windmilled his arms for balance before finding his tightrope-walker's footing and sliding inward toward the trunk of the tree. Below him, he heard the invisible wolves scuffling around in confusion. They obviously couldn't tell what he was doing.

He shifted around the tree to a branch that was pointing in the right direction to get him to the other tree, and then flung himself out into the air again. At the peak of his leap his levitation ball appeared in his hand, and he glided desperately toward the taller, thicker tree. When he landed on its outstretched branch, the limb gave and sagged with his weight. Frantically he clambered across it to a point where it was more solid. Twice he nearly fell.

After that, it was easier. The branches of the adjoining trees were close enough that he could swing through them like the little circus performer he used to be, stopping periodically to readjust the grip his teeth had on his foul-tasting, sappy torch. Soon enough, Raz couldn't hear the wolves beneath him any more. This time when he stopped, it was to breathe.

He leaned his back heavily against the tree trunk, sagging against it and panting with adrenaline. It almost made him want to laugh - pyrokinetic cougars and telekinetic bears, those crazy bugs in that third-world jungle that could kinda make time slow down, and now invisible wolves. How did all of his missions get him stuck in the places with the crazy psychic animals?

He huffed out a desperate laugh and reclined his head against the tree trunk, too, looking straight up.

And above him, high up in the tree, was a house.

-xxx-

Raz held up his torch, trying to get a better look at the underside of the house. When that didn't really help, he climbed up to a higher branch, then crept out to the very edge of what would support him, craning his neck.

Though it was bigger than any he had ever seen, the structure above him looked like an honest-to-god treehouse. There was a low-slung doorway that had a tattered, wafting curtain hanging in it in place of any real door, and a little steepled roof, and a couple of windows, and the whole thing sat on a relatively level platform that extended out past the sides of the house, giving it a sort of porch. Leading up to it from the ground - Raz groaned in frustration when he saw it - was a thick, solid rope ladder. That was a little embarrassing.

Nailed up on one side of the door was a small wooden plaque, barely distinguishable from the wood of the house itself by the light of Raz's fire. He had to climb up even closer to the house to read it: F. Croshaw.

It occurred to Raz that he didn't know the real name of this supposed Mr. Jeremiah Fields, but that starting with this guy couldn't hurt.

He tried to act casual as he approached the treehouse balcony - moving slowly enough so as not to seem aggressive but noisily and naturally enough so as not to seem like he was sneaking. Not that it was really possible to nonchalantly knock on the door of a house that was eight or ten feet up in the air and didn't actually have a door to knock on, but damned if he wasn't going to try. He knocked on the little nameplate instead, and then, boldly, called out. "Hello?" There was no answer, and there were no lights on in the house. Raz, being Raz, therefore decided that it was a brilliant idea to just waltz on in. After all, there wasn't really a door.

Inside, his torch illuminated a shack of a house with a chair and table in one corner, a large icebox in another, and a bucket on a rope in a third. (The bucket smelled foul enough that Raz could pretty much guess what it was used for.) Three of the walls were rough and unfinished, and one of them had another open doorway set into it, probably leading off to a place for the mysterious Mr. Croshaw to sleep.

The fourth wall was completely plastered, in an almost wallpaper-like fashion, with old sheet music.

Curious, Raz stepped slowly closer, making sure not to get his torch close enough to the wall to catch it on fire. Regular sheet music with heavy, black ledger lines was mixed in with huge long music rolls, a couple of which spanned the entirety of the wall, overlapping here and there with others. At first Raz was expecting to see bits of the wall through the holes in the music rolls, but the closer he got, the more he realized that the paper stuck to this wall was quite a few layers thick.

"Whoa," he commented.

Suddenly, a voice cried out from the smaller room. "Who's there?"

Confused, as the voice seemed to belong to a woman, Raz called out with the only name he had. "Mr. Croshaw?"

"Is that you, Jerry?"

"No, my name is Raz, I'm looking for..."

The sentence died on his lips, because the woman had stepped out of the room and was heading straight toward him. Her skin was pale and puffy, like someone who had drowned, and her salt-and-pepper hair stuck out from her head in a huge nest of tangled curls. She was wearing a dress that at one point had probably been bright chartreuse and clinging to her chest what looked like a teddy bear dressed as a ballerina.

"Jerry!" she cried. "Oh merciful heavens, I thought I'd never see you again!"

"Ma'am, my name isn't Jerry," he said again. "I'm Agent Razputin Aquato - "

"You are in so much trouble, young man! Disappearing like that, Granny's going to have to punish you - "

"Look, lady, I'm not your grandson! I'm here about a piece of music."

She stopped advancing toward him and blinked confusedly. "Music? It's been so long...."

"Yes, music. A particular song, something called...Big Top Banzai." He eyed her warily, and started using his talking-to-crazies voice. "Did you write that song?"

But suddenly, her expression shifted. "That song? That song? What in the hell would you want with that song? You're no grandson of mine!" She threw the toy bear at him and its tiara clanked against his goggles. Raz winced. "Get out, get out of my house!"

He gladly would have complied, but she was currently blocking his only exit. "I said get out, or I'll wring your scrawny neck, you hellspawn!"

Raz tried to think. This woman was obviously nuts - but she also obviously knew something about the song, or she wouldn't have reacted so violently to its name. And the plan was that if he found out anything about the song, he was supposed to call Lili.

But he didn't really have time to do much talking, because the crazy lady's small, pudgy hands were getting dangerously close to his throat, and when he dug down into his backpack, his hand closed around the psycho-portal before it found the cell phone.

Two seconds later, the goggles were down across his eyes, and he was inside.