Time Slipping (18 page)

Tim flew out from behind my head and stopped in the air in front of Ish, hands on hips, his hair thrown back. It was quite a look with that green face of his. “I am Tim!” he said in a loud pixie-booming voice. Of course Ish heard none of it. “But you may call me Sir!”

I flopped my hand out as if presenting my roommate to a crowd of adoring fans instead of just Ish. “This is Tim the pixie, but he said you can call him buttnugget if you prefer.”

Tim spun around and glared at me. “Fix that! Fix it
right
this instant!” He spun back toward a confused Ish, his head high again, but not quite as perky as before.

“I’m sorry. I misunderstood. He didn’t say buttnugget. He said
Fluffy
. You may call him Fluffy instead of Tim if you wish.”

Tim dropped his head, shaking it slowly. “I will dust you and then dust you a second time, elemental. I swear it. I swear it on my wings, I’ll do it.”

I sighed. “Fine. You’re no fun anymore.” I switched my focus to Ish. “His name is Tim. That’s it. Just call him Tim.”

“And you hear him speaking?” Ish was fascinated, reaching out a hand toward my roommate.

Tim immediately zipped over and slapped Ish’s hand before leaving us all behind.

“Unfortunately, yes. And other things.”

“Don’t you dare, Jayne!” Tim yelled from wherever he was hiding.

I left the revelations about Tim’s digestive problems for another day, turning to face my friends instead. It was time to get the hell out of Dodge. Tim, never one to be ignored for longer than two seconds, appeared from somewhere behind me and tried to land on my shoulder, but I waved him away. He continued to try and approach, but I ducked left and right as I spoke.

“My theory is that every realm has to have an entrance or a portal to the Otherworlds, since this seer in the village is predicting deaths and stuff, which means no one here is immortal.” I looked to Ish to confirm, and he nodded.

“We are not immortal. Only
too
mortal, I am afraid.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and assume they go to the same Overworld and Underworld we go to, or their heaven and hell are at least connected to ours in some way, since I’ve been to those realms and seen some crazy shit that wasn’t going on in the Here and Now — it was probably creatures from here or even another realm we don’t know about I saw.” The pixies spinning stinging buttwebs around those dwarves in the Overworld came to mind. “So if that’s the case, and they do have dragons here, then I think our best bet is to find the portal and talk to the dragon that guards it. Or see if Biad or Heryon are there, if they have the same portals as we do. They’ll know what to do.”

“What did the prophecy say?” Tony asked.

I hated that I couldn’t answer his question. I should have listened closer, and knowing that made me pissed off at myself. “I have no idea.” My frustration came through in my tone. “I told you, I don’t remember.”

“I could use a retrieval spell,” Sam said. “Maybe.”

“You are truly a witch?” Ish asked.

She just stared at him.

I held out a hand to calm her down. “She’s more than a witch, okay? She’s a witch plus a bonus Fate.”

“Don’t,” was all she said to me.

“Fine. Whatever.” The conversation was really starting to piss me off at that point. I was about to blow my top at them when Scrum stopped me.

“Jayne?” He pointed to the space behind us. Where a troll used to be was a bare patch of earth and a few squashed bushes.

“Oh shit,” I said, looking around. “Where’d he go?”

Silence reigned for about five seconds and then we heard yelling and saw a cloud of dust off in the distance.

Ish’s face went white. “Oh no. Not the village.” He took off running and we went after him, following the trail of broken trees and trampled bushes that led back in the direction I’d come from when I left his little hut.

Chapter Twenty-Three

WE CAUGHT UP WITH THE troll on the edge of the village where he’d found a group of children playing by a well. What we’d thought were screams of pain turned out to be shrieks of laughter and joy. The smallest one of them all, a tike about the size of a four year old, was sailing up in the air, fifteen feet above the troll’s head.

“Me catch! Me catch!” he yelled, his giant, meaty hands opened up beneath her.

“Oh my god, he’s playing with his food.” I didn’t stop to think, I just did what I thought needed to be done to keep an innocent child from being eaten like a piece of popcorn. A shot of pure New Green energy left my hand and hit the girl, putting her in a bubble of protection that stopped and floated just above the troll’s fingers.

“Me catch?” The troll looked at his empty hands in confusion. Then he noticed the bubble and his finger came out.

“No, don’t!” I yelled. But it was too late.

He poked it.

The bubble shot off like it was a rubber ball he’d whacked with a bat. It only stopped when it hit a tree, but then it zoomed off in another direction, going even faster.

The group of children who’d gathered to play toss-the-baby-villager watched with awed expressions their faces, not saying a word.

“Jayne, stop it!” Tony yelled in my ear.

“I’m trying!” My own voice came out as a desperate whisper-scream. It was only a matter of time before the grownups in the village came to find out why it was so quiet; I’d babysat enough little brats to know that when they went quiet, shit was going down.
Oh my god, they have no idea of the shit that’s going down right now!
We were going to be burned at the stake as soon as they saw, I knew we were.

I couldn’t control it. The New Green bubble I’d created was a thing of glory, made of some kind of super-rubber that bounced off everything. It hit Scrum and still managed to ricochet, even though he was slammed to the ground and stunned by the impact.

“Need some help?” Sam asked, stepping up to my other side.

“Please!” Both of my hands were out in front of me waving around like crazy; I was trying to grab the bubble and rein it in, but it had well and truly escaped me. I was like the idiot in the tetherball game who kept swinging the racket and missing not just the ball but the string it was connected to as well.

Sam started muttering under her breath, one of her hands out. The bubble got bigger.

“Not sure that’s helping,” I said nervously.

“This place has powerful magic,” she said, her voice slightly strained.

“Tell me about it,” I growled. The bubble bounced on top of another kid, but instead of slamming him to the ground like it had Scrum, it sucked him inside. Now there were two kids in there, both of them with their hands pressed onto the sides, screaming with laughter. We couldn’t exactly hear their voices, but they were clearly having a ball in there.

“At least they’re not crying,” Becky said, trying to be helpful.

“Me! Me!” A little boy started yelling. He was jumping up and down, pointing at the bubble that was bouncing off another tree.

Like the damn thing had heard him, it zigged over and bounced on his head, snatching him up too. Three kids were inside now, two of them laughing and one starting to look a little green around the gills. The first bubble girl had reached her limit, apparently.

I panicked. “Troll!” I yelled at the beast.

He looked at me and then pointed to his bellybutton. “Me troll.”

“Yes! You troll! Get the bubble! Get the bubble!”

“Me eat bubble?”

“NO! No eat the bubble. Catch the bubble!”
How in the hell do I describe how to catch a bouncing bubble in caveman-troll speak?
I had no idea, but did that stop me from trying? Of course it didn’t.

“Stop bubble! Hold bubble! Love bubble!”

His eyes perked up. “Love bubble?”

“Yes!” I shrieked. “You
love
that bubble, troll! Go get that bubble you love. Cuddle that bubble!”
Oops. Shit. What did I just do?
“But not too hard. Soft easy cuddle of the bubble!” Obviously I was losing my mind. I could just picture all those angry mothers calling for my head when their squashed babies came tumbling out on the ground. It was like my childhood moments on the playground all over again. Not many moms liked me there. It might have had something to do with me encouraging kids to go down slides backwards and upside down.

The troll started running around with his hands out. “Love bubble! Me love bubble! Come bubble! Me love bubble!”

Just when I thought it was all over, when the bubble was bouncing toward the village and sure to expose us for the wannabe stake-burned fae we were, the troll leaped up into the air like Michael Fucking Jordan and snatched it out of the sky. He landed on his feet with a loud boom and a shaking of the earth, gathering the glowing green mass into his arms and cradling it against his chest.

“Me love bubble,” he said, petting it and leaning in toward it. I didn’t realize his intention until he was already in the middle of it, his lips puckering up and his eyes closing. The minute the slobber from his troll kiss touched the Green bubble, it popped, and all the kids inside tumbled out and landed on the ground in a heap.

There was a five-second pause when no one said a word and not a single breath was taken. And then the troll let loose.

“Wwaaaaaahhhhaa hhaaa haa!” he wailed. “Me love bubble! Bubble die!! Waaaahhhaaa!”

Ish looked at the village, his complexion going even whiter than it already had. “The parents of the children. They are coming. You must go!”

I ran over with the intention of grabbing the troll’s slimy hand. I managed to latch onto his pinky using both hands. “Time to go, troll! Come on!”

“Me hungry. Me sad.” He started walking with me, dragging his feet like a recalcitrant child.

I hauled on him as hard as I could, grateful when my friends went behind him and started pushing on his legs and butt to hurry him along.

“I know, troll. I’m hungry too. Let’s go find you a deer or a dragon egg or something. I’ll make you a great, big omelette.”

“Faster, Jayne,” Spike grunted out. “They’re going to see him.”

“Troll, run!” I said. “We run, Troll!”

“Me run?” he asked, possible signs of enthusiasm coming out in his tone. I probably should have been worried but I wasn’t. I was more relieved than anything that I seemed to be pretty good at this troll communication thing. It was handy when you had a spare troll hanging around causing trouble.

I nodded, pausing for a breath. He was friggin heavy as shit to encourage along. “Yes. We all run.” I pointed to my friends.

He nodded, his bottom lip bouncing with the effort his head was making. “We run. Troll run. All run.”

“Yes.” I was about to say something else, I don’t remember what, but it never happened. I was swept up into the troll’s arms along with Spike, Jared, Scrum, and Tony, and suddenly we were moving. I found myself with my face squashed into the belly button of the troll, and he was running faster than I would have imagined possible.

“Oh my god,” I mumbled past the stink, “I’m going to die.”

Tim was suddenly buzzing by my ear. “This is why we call karma a bitch, Lellemental.” He giggled with the glee of his revenge, which was his second mistake after his first, which was getting too close to me. He was too distracted with his own awesomeness to recognize mine when it was in motion.

I snagged him from the air next to my ear using my kickass ninja snatching skills and held him right next to my face, grinning like a madwoman as the breeze fluffed my hair. His face went pale green with fear and the regret that he wasn’t nearly as badass as I was. “Why yes it is, my little buttnugget. Yes it is.” I forgot that I was buried up to my neck in troll belly button lint and laughed like I hadn’t in years.

Running from angry villagers in the arms of a hungry troll made me a little nutty. I learned that about myself that day.

Chapter Twenty-Four

WE WENT FAR AND FAST enough to outrun even the most curious villager. The troll finally put us down in an area that was full of trees and had fewer of the scrubby bushes plentiful where Ish’s hut was. Those of us held in the arms of the troll weren’t nearly as breathless as our other friends, but we sure did have a special odor to us.

Tim was busy rubbing himself all over with needles from a pine tree, but I could have told him it was going to be about as effective as the air fresheners they used in the public restroom. Troll stink was seriously potent. I tried to ignore it and focus on our bigger problem instead.

“Ish, do you know where the entrances to your Otherworlds are?”

He was mopping his brow, his face beet red and his shoulders slumped. He’d done a great job of not losing sight of us or the girls and Finn who’d been trying to keep up with the surprisingly fast sprinting troll, but I could tell he’d spent more miles on dragonback than he had on his own feet for a long time by the way he was breathing.

“I do not, but I am willing to ask Othello for this information. He travels the world alone often. It is also possible I have flown over its location without knowing.”

I nodded, looking around at my friends. Jared was the only one who didn’t appear to be suffering the effects of either the run or the stink. Talk about cool. I walked over to him and waited for Tony to join us before sharing my thoughts.

“Operation Find the Entrance to One of the Otherwords. That’s my grand plan. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a good start.”

“Do you have any other ideas?” Tony asked Jared.

“I think we need to discuss our options.” He motioned for the others to join us, and we all sat down in a circle, some of us taking up ground space, and others finding logs or large rocks to sit on. The coolness offered by the tall trees and the slightly higher elevation was a very welcome change from the almost desert-like environment by the village.

“Here’s what I see as potential issues and options.” He pushed on his first finger, looking at me. “We have a prophecy or a hint of some sort, delivered by the witch to Jayne.”

“The one I can’t remember. Great.”

Jared looked at Sam. “I want you to try to get in her head and get that memory out of there.”

I looked around to see if any of my friends were as concerned by that idea as I was, but it appeared as if I was the only one thinking Sam as a brain surgeon was a non-starter. I raised my hand to complain, but I was cut off by Felicia.