The room was dimmed by clown curtains and painted a calming blue. Two cribs, handmade from pine and lovingly sanded until there were no splinters to prick a chubby hand, sat side-by-side on a thin brown carpet. An odor of talc and lemon blurred the street lights and sounds of cars passing by. Two tiny figures lay, one in each crib, strawberry-blonde hair plastered to their foreheads, fists curled by their noses, toes touching between the bars an eyelashes resting against their cheeks.
Two more figures quietly exploded the air that had been where they appeared in the room.
Kolano felt a sickness in her throat, looking at the sleeping humans. She reached down a hand to almost touch a soft cheek. The infant mumbled and rolled over, and lay with its heels touching its sibling's toes. Kolano pulled her hand away.
Cherry moved to the head of the cribs to glare down at the children. "All right, Kolano," she growled, "which one?"
"I don't know right now, and I'm sure I shouldn't tell you if I did. And keep your voice down! You'll wake them. And then they'll start crying, and I'm not the one with a transportation handicap. When the parents come, you'll be caught, because I won't take you with me."
"I suppose I could just kill them both," Cherry suggested, a blatant threat.
Kolano knew what was right. She also knew that it might be a futile gesture. If Cherry got angry, she might easily kill both humans and seriously injure the phantom, who could not die. However, she wasn't angry yet. Her eyes were a cold purple. She could still be talked out of it, and that meant she might be influenced by a symbolic gesture. Kolano insinuated herself between Cherry and the cribs, spread her wings as widely as she could in the small room, and said, "No."
Cherry stared down at the little brown phantom and made an incredulous noise at the back of her throat.
Kolano stiffened her wings and tried to brace herself for physical, verbal, or magical attack. Cherry wouldn't necessarily choose the most practical, and Kolano had no idea how impractical she would decide to be.
But Cherry, surprisingly, did something intelligent instead of impulsive. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, visibly relaxing. Kolano groaned mentally. If Cherry had known, somehow, about this child, she had the means of finding out which. And if she had remembered to come after the child a year and a half later, she might even be patient enough on this matter to wait for the necessary vision. It certainly looked as if she was putting down roots.
"You're not a child-killer, Cherry," Kolano said quietly.
"I'm not letting this one grow up," Cherry whispered.
Good. Kolano had gotten Cherry to talk. Kolano cast around for something to say to further the conversation.
"You owe me a chess game."
Cherry's eyes flew open. The violet light of magic flickered as it almost overflowed and died out as Cherry grounded it.
"Three chess games, actually." Kolano turned and looked at the children. A headache and blinding light slammed into her, snapping her wings close around her body and flinging her head back. The words flowed into her and choked her throat closed, refusing to let themselves escape. A little part of Kolano said, 'Just my luck, it's one of those visions.' The rest of her collapsed against a crib bar. The boy would become a poet. He could be one of the better enchanters the human world had produced in the last hundred years, if he applied himself. That was his if. The girl's if was if she lived to finish her first book - prose, not poetry - she would be a strong Creator. Not a god, just a Creator. The boy would live. The girl might be killed by Cherry even in the next few minutes. Kolano picked up the boy, who stirred and looked up at her with big, sleepy hazel eyes, and hoped Cherry wasn't reading her mind.
Kolano turned around and said, "For stakes."
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