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Less stylistic than the other dragon drawings, it was a series of wavering lines, some lightly etched and others deeply gouged. She studied it for a moment, keenly aware of the huge monster shifting beside them. It seemed completely random, but she trusted Oilcan's intelligence. If he said this meant something, it did. If the dragon recognized Oilcan's Pittsburgh—was this how he saw the city? It was the deep pit on the north side, roughly at the location of Reinholds that triggered the recognition. "He's drawn the ley lines."

"Yes. I think it was the magic in the barrels that drew him here." Oilcan pointed out a blank area of the wall. "And look at this."

"At wh—?"

The dragon nosed her aside—jolting her heart into a fierce pounding—and raised a long, sharp claw to the wall. In a nerve-grating rasp, it lightly sketched a dot at the center of Turtle Creek and radial lines outward, carefully linking the radials up to existing ley lines. The dragon glanced up at her, making sure she was watching, and then flattened its great paw and smudged away the dot and lines, creating the same blank space.

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"There's no magic," she whispered.

"Tooloo has always said the dragons can't exist without magic." Oilcan absently scratched the dragon's jaw, getting a deep purrlike rumble from it.

"So as long as we keep him saturated in magic, he's safe."

"Yeah."

Tinker thought of the barrels stacked in the tractor shed. They represented a huge pool of magic, but a leaky one, draining away. "He can't stay here, then. I have no idea how long the magic will last from the barrels, but it's an artificial environment. Sooner or later, it's going to be drained."

"Yeah, I know."

"Oilcan! This isn't some stray dog. Look what I found, Grandpa, can I keep it? It didn't work with the warg puppy."

"This isn't a warg, this is an intelligent being that can talk, and create art, and communicate. Look!" He pointed out a set of small pictures. "It has a written language!"

"How do you know? That could be—be—anything!"

He gave her an annoyed look. "Did it or did it not just communicate something meaningful to you?"

She sighed. "Yes."

The
sekasha
weregoing to just love this.

"What?" Stormsong asked for about the third time in a row when Tinker updated the
sekasha
on the current plan.

"We need to move the dragon to the scrap yard. It's got a strong ley line running through it, so the dragon will stay sentient there. But the flatbed is a double clutch manual transmission, so if none of you
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can drive manual, then I'm going to have to—"

Stormsong caught her by the hand, dragged her to the side of the barn into the old apple orchard.

"Hey, hey, hey, what are you doing?" Tinker cried.

"What am I doing?" Stormsong snatched up an apple and flung it at Tinker. "What am I doing?"

The apple smacked the barn wall, blossoming into a flower of rotten sweetness unnervingly close to Tinker's head.

"What fucking part of that don't you understand?" Tinker shouted at her.

"You—are—too—trusting!" Stormsong flung apples to emphasize her words—one apple per word.

They whizzed past Tinker so closely she felt their passage.

"And—too—slow—at—putting—up—your—shields."

There was now a halo of spattered fruit outlining Tinker.

"I get the point! I get the point!" Tinker called up her shield. "See, shield! Happy?"

"Happy?" Stormsong snorted, picked an apple from the tree instead of the ground, and polished it against her black jeans until it gleamed with promise. "Here!" She tossed the apple in a lazy arc toward Tinker.

Tinker moved her hands to catch the apple and her shield vanished.

"You're—too—trusting!"

The first apple hit Tinker in the shoulder in a painful splatter. The second and third were intercepted midair by other apples so that they exploded in front of her, spraying her with apple bits.

"Stop it." Pony had another apple ready. Part of Tinker was impressed that he could knock apples out of the air—the other part wanted to know where the hell he was for the first volley. "She is the
domi
.

She leads us."

"She's going to get herself killed!" Stormsong growled.

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"What she says is true," Pony said. "The dragon cannot stay here. The truck is the only vehicle that will carry it. She and Oilcan are the only ones who know how to drive it—and he will be focused on keeping the creature calm. The fewer people we involve in moving the beast, the less likely the oni will learn that we have it."

"How can you support this plan?"

"The
domana's
self-centered creativity is why we chose to obey them. We need their drive. Trust her, she will make it work."

"Or die trying," Stormsong muttered. "This is insanity."

"Is it? We have the Scarecrow." Pony pointed at Tinker and then tapped his chest. "The Lion. The Tin Man." He pointed at Oilcan's metal sculpture. "And the apple trees." He held up the apple in his hand.

"And the apples being thrown at the Scarecrow."

Stormsong's eyes went wide.

"There, see!" Tinker cried. "It's crazy with a purpose."

"And that is supposed to make me feel better?" Stormsong snarled. "What are you going to do with the dragon now that you've found him?"

Tinker held up her finger, indicating they were to wait, and pulled out her datapad. "Give me a few minutes. I've been keeping notes on the dreams. Offhand, I don't remember anything. Wait—how about this—Esme said, 'He knows the paths, the twisted way, the garden path. You have to talk to him. He'll tell you the way."

"The way? To where?"

"Obviously where I need to go."

It was like having a
very
large, hyperactive five-year-old in her workshop. The dragon flowed in and out of the various rooms of the trailer, carrying on a running commentary in its rumbling voice, as it examined everything with its massive but manipulative paws. After rescuing her scanner, their radio base, and
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antique CD player, Tinker realized what had happened to Oilcan's answering machine and started to fear.

"Okay, okay, I think first thing in communicating would be—to—get a record of what it's saying." She snatched her camera from the dragon before he could disassemble it. She flipped out her tripod, snapped the camera to it, and caught Cloudwalker by the hand and dragged him to the camera. "Here, keep the dragon—the dragon's image—in this little window." Great, she was actually dealing with two groups of technology-challenged people. "And we'll build a dictionary of his words."

"I was trying to do that." Oilcan distracted the dragon from her computer systems with a flashlight. "But usually it's hard to tell where one word starts and another ends."

". . .
mmmenananannaaaaaaapoooookaaaammmammamamyyyyyyaaanananammmmoooo
. . ."

The dragon rumbled while clicking the flashlight on and off, and then disassembled it and sniffed at the batteries.

"Yeah, I can hear that." Tinker had microphones planted in the offices so she could trigger her computers without a headset. "Sparks, are you active?"

"Yes, boss," her office AI answered.

"Filter audio pickup into separate voiceprints and put it up on the workshop screen."

"Okay, boss."

As she had hoped, Impatience's ramblings easily divided out. "Sparks, record this track." She tapped the bass rumbles of the dragon's voice. "Convert to phonetics and indicate all pauses and breaks."

Impatience stuffed the batteries back into the casing, screwed on the lid, and tried the switch. When the flashlight didn't light, the dragon took it back apart and eyed the pieces carefully. Apparently it had spotted the "this way up" diagram stamped on the plastic as it eyed the batteries closely, repacked them into the casing and turned it on. This time it was rewarded with a beam of light.

"Huuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuuhuu."

One word down.

"Okay." Tinker pulled up the recordings she had made of Turtle Creek and directed them to her largest monitor. "Since I don't have a clue how I'm supposed to help my mother, let's see what he has to say about my biggest problem: the Ghostlands."

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The great Westinghouse Bridge had fallen. The Ghostlands had lapped up against the centermost support column and toppled it. Two of its four great arching spans now lay in ruins on the valley floor, slowly leeching to blue. The remaining two spans would soon follow.

Wolf gazed down at the ruin, trying to not let dismay overtake him. "There's nothing you can do?"

Jewel Tear glared at the valley as if it personally defied her. "Not in time. At the rate it's expanding, it will involve the main river shortly."

She meant the Monongahela River, which flowed past the mouth of the Turtle Creek.

"The creek froze solid," Wolf said. "You don't think the river will freeze?"

"If I understand this correctly, the worlds are mirror images." Jewel pointed out at the river. "Where there is a river here, there is one on Onihida?"

"Yes."

"I can't predict what will happen when the force of the river meets this, but what I fear is that the oni can make use of it. As they are now, the Ghostlands are a deathtrap. The forces are funneling downward, like the pit of an ant lion. The river might allow the oni to pass unchecked through the Ghostlands."

"How soon?"

"Only a few more days." She turned away from the Ghostlands and him. "Something has to be done.

They say your
domi
can work miracles. Since this is her fault, it would be good for her to fix her mistake."

Yes, he needed to talk to Tinker. He had faith that once she was given opportunity to study the situation, she would find a solution. He had brought a second Hand just so he could have one of the
sekasha

"babies" along to operate the walkie-talkie.

"Find out where
domi
is," Wolf said to Wraith and turned back to Jewel Tear. "I want Stone Clan to keep their distance from my
domi
. After what happened with the black willow, I do not trust any of you near her."

Jewel Tear looked away, giving a slight huff of indignation, but didn't deny the implication that they meant
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Tinker harm.

Wraith came back with unease clear on his face. Wolf bowed his leave-taking and headed for his Rolls.

"What is it?" Wolf asked Wraith once they were out of the Stone Clan's hearing.

"
Domi
is at the scrap yard. The dragon is there."

Wolf's heart leapt at the news. "She's fighting the dragon?"

"No. Apparently, she's—talking—to it."

"No, I'm not talking to it," Tinker said with much disgust in her voice. She smelled of apples, butter, and sugar, and her face had mysterious streaks of color paste on it—but otherwise she looked unharmed.

"It's giving me math lessons—and I think my head is going to explode."

"Math lessons?" There were times he wondered if his English wasn't as strong as he thought it was.

His
domi's
workshop was normally ordered chaos, but it now looked like a storm front had passed through it. The digital wall boards were covered with elaborate designs and fluid pictures. Printouts were tacked to bare walls, extending the boards to each side and up onto the ceiling. A television cycled through pictures of the Ghostlands. Machines either half built or partially disassembled covered all the table surfaces and the floor was littered with magazines, engine parts, and chewed tires.

The only sign of the dragon itself was its long tail sticking out from behind the worktable, thumping against the floor with a force that shook the entire trailer.

"I think it's math." Tinker tugged at her hair as if she wanted to tear it out. "Whoever said math is the universal language should be hunted down and shot. Or maybe they thought that sentient creatures wouldn't have the attention span of a gnat."

"So you're safe with it?"

Tinker glanced toward Stormsong instead of the dragon for some reason. "I—don't know. It seems playful as a puppy, but it has sharp teeth—lots of them—in a big mouth."

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Wolf shifted sideways until he could see around the table. Tinker's
nagarou
, Oilcan, and the dragon stared at a television screen while they manipulated something in their hands. On the television screen, a small human female in a skimpy red dress fought a tall muscle-bound creature with energetic kicks and punches. The fight ended abruptly with the words "Winner" flashing on the screen and the female bouncing around cheerfully. Oilcan groaned and slumped to one side.

"He—he learns fast." Tinker shook her head. "I've never met anyone that intimidated me with their intellect before—but I always thought that the person that did would be more—"

"Human?"

Tinker waved her hand, as if trying to sift out a better word, and then nodded. "I suppose that would work. The language is a huge barrier to understanding what's he's trying to explain to me."

"Have you learned anything useful?"

"This was educational." Tinker caught Wolf's arm and pulled him to the kitchen. On the counter was an odd sculpture. A rainbow of creamy paste whirled upward like a tornado with paper plates dividing the various colors. It was supported by a silvery aluminum plate, which had been balanced on a base of soda cans.