Magic Time: Ghostlands Read Online Free

wonder of this new world.
    Cal’s lips felt numb, reticent to pronounce the words. He forced them out. “You’re escaped slaves, aren’t you?”
     
    The sun dipping low and every sign of a hard snow on the way, Cal elected not to question their new companions until he found them safe harbor for the night. As he, Colleen and Doc rode point through the grasslands, Goldie drew up alongside on Later, speaking low so the fugitives straggling behind couldn’t hear.
    “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings—”
    “Since when?” Colleen interjected.
    Cal cut her off with a wave, but Goldie was unperturbed. “As long as we have Winnie the Pooh and the other residents of the Hundred-Acre Wood accompanying us on our jaunty way, it’s virtually a sure thing we’re gonna get a visit from the paddyrollers. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of our lives.”
    “The paddy—what?” Colleen asked. “They anything like the Tommyknockers?”
    “No, Colleen, those are creatures from folklore and a Stephen King novel,” Goldie said, with a patronizing air she would’ve liked to chop into little pieces and stuff down his throat. “I’m talking reality, or at least history here.”
    Cal nodded, remembering the lessons his mother had given him to augment the inadequate—and inaccurate—courses he had endured back at Hurley High. “The paddyrollers were men who made a living pursuing escaped slaves and returning them to their masters.”
    Doc added, “During and in the period immediately prior to your American Civil War.”
    Colleen groaned, reining Big-T back as the big gelding tried to surge forward. “Am I the only one here without the least excuse for an education?”
    Doc smiled gently. “No, Colleen, you are educated in the skills that are most useful of all. The rest of us have simply accumulated a magpie collection of mostly useless facts.”
    Colleen grimaced. “God, Viktor, I hate it when you’re charming.” But her eyes were smiling. “Paddyrollers, huh?” She contemplated Olifiers and the group of footsore men and women gamely bringing up the rear.
    “Or something with an alternate name but the same enchanting job description,” Goldie noted.
    “It may be a new world,” Cal said, sorrow welling in his voice, “but it’s a whole lot like the one that came before it.”
    Colleen let out a slow breath, considering. “If they’ve got a good tracker, or anyone with a map ability like yours—” She nodded toward Cal.
    “Like I used to have, you mean.”
    “Whatever. We’re in for a hell of a ride.”
    “An E-ticket ride, if I might elaborate,” muttered Goldie.
    “Yeah,” Colleen said. “And no one would know what the hell you’re elaborating about, as usual.”
    “Oops, sorry, I always forget you’re of a generation without cultural grounding.” Goldie plucked one of the five aces from his hat, toyed with it between his fingers. “Second vocabulary term of the day. It’s an old thing from Disneyland—back when there was a Disneyland, I suppose. My esteemed mother and father took me there, a little side trip from a couple of symposia they were attending.” A flick of his fingers and the ace was gone…appearing back in the brim with the other cards. “They didn’t just use to have one pass where you’d enter and ride all the attractions. There were tickets with letter grades—A, B, C, D and E. The A tickets were really lame—trolley rides on Main Street, that sort of thing. But the E-ticket rides, now that was real magic, the monorail, jungle cruise, haunted mansion…. It was the highest you could go, the best.”
    “Thanks as usual for telling me more than I’d ever need to know,” Colleen huffed. “Anyhow, if you’re right about that paddyroller stuff, what’s coming down the pike won’t be the best of anything. It’ll be a royal ass-kicking, and I’d just as soon it not be us on the receiving end.”
    “Ducking out on a fight?” Cal grinned