Windmaster's Bane

by Tom Deitz

  A lot of things have changed since then, he reflected as he busied himself building a small cooking fire, setting up his battered but well-loved cooking pot, and putting the almost frozen venison on to simmer with mushrooms, onions, carrots and potatoes—and a limp brown packet of the secret family seasonings. The odor soon mingled with the scent of pine trees and wet leaves, as the first breeze of evening brought the tiniest hint of chill creeping around the mountainside. It could get a little nippy on Lookout Rock, even in July.

  Alec had finished setting up the tent in the traditional place at the edge of the clearing and now came over to stand beside his friend, wiping his dirty hands on his jeans. He was sweating lightly. “You don’t suppose it’s warm enough to go swimming, do you?” He glanced skeptically toward the pool.

  David stood up and looked Alec straight in the eye. “It is July,” he said. “It doesn’t get any warmer than that. And, besides, my vainly hopeful friend, it’s never been too cold for me to pay due respect to my Place of Power. Of course we’re going swimming; we must placate the spirits of this place by offering our bodies naked to the waters.”

  Alec rolled his eyes. “Now?”

  David slapped him roughly on the back. “Won’t get any warmer tonight, kid. We’ve done it in April, so what’s to worry about July?”

  The wind shifted, whistling through the trees. The harsh cry of some unfamiliar bird crackled in the air. Suddenly David’s eyes were itching furiously. He rubbed them and shook his head vigorously from side to side. Smoke must be getting to them, he thought.

  “That wind feels like fall; we’ll have to swim quick if we don’t want to freeze our butts off,” Alec sighed, rummaging in his pack for a towel before starting for the pool. He looked around for David, expecting to find him already at waterside and half undressed, but his friend had not moved; he stood staring toward the overlook, his brows lowered thoughtfully. “Davy?” he called tentatively. “Last one in’s a rotten possum.”

  “My eyes keep tingling,” David whispered, mostly to himself, as he slowly followed Alec to the edge of the pool. He felt strange, too, he realized: almost dizzy. Things seemed to slip in and out of focus. The sensation was almost exactly like the way new glasses made his eyes feel, as if something were forcing his vision, tugging at his eyes.

  “Some of this cold water’ll do wonders for ’em,” Alec tossed over his shoulder as he skinned out of his T-shirt and started on the laces of his hiking boots.

  “I hope so,” David muttered absently. He cast one last backward glance toward the precipice and hastily began stripping off his clothes. A moment later both boys stood naked by the waterside. They hesitated for a moment, feeling the sly nip of wind against bare skin, knowing that the water was far, far colder. Still, there was tradition to consider—and honor.

  “After you,” said David.

  “Your Place of Power,” Alec pointed out.

  David frowned, ever so slightly. Somehow that idea did not appeal to him just then, though he couldn’t quite think why. He’d said the phrase himself only a moment before, had found it in some fantasy novel or other and appropriated it to designate his special place, that private place of beauty and contemplation he had claimed for his own, that he shared with no one else except by his choice. But now, for no apparent reason, such casual usage seemed frivolous, almost sacrilegious.

  Alec cleared his throat. “Your Place of Power, I say.”

  David bit his lip and nodded decisively. “Right. Together then, and none of this sissy wading stuff: Jump in like men. Come on, race you to the falls.”

  Alec nodded in turn, and he and David simultaneously launched themselves in flat, shallow dives into the darkening water. David came up gasping as the coldness stole his breath, and ducked again, opening his eyes to let the water have a go at the annoying tingle. He felt a hand briefly brush Alec’s kicking leg and struck off in the direction of the falls. A moment later, his fingers touched mossy rock, and he broke surface to see Alec’s sleek, dark head emerge beside him spitting water. They both took deep breaths and started back.

  David quickly found himself intensely uncomfortable, and not only from the chill of the water. The tingle in his eyes seemed to be getting worse. It was almost a burning now, and he thought he saw bright flashes in the water around him.

  “Too cold for my blood,” David gasped as he emerged from the water a mass of goosebumps. He gathered up his clothes and headed back to the fire to dry off and dress.

  Alec stayed in a while longer, only coming out when he felt his fingers begin to numb. He wrapped his towel around his waist and made his way across the clearing, shivering all the way. David had returned to the edge of the lookout when he got there, gazing off into space again. The fading sunlight cast red highlights on David’s bare shoulders.

  “You look like a barbarian,” Alec said as he tugged on his jeans and applied the towel to his hair. “You know, like on one of those science fiction book covers? All you need is a sword and a beautiful maiden and a fearful monster.”

  “And about ninety pounds of muscle and nine inches of height,” David added offhandedly. Beyond him the sun touched the horizon.

  “Stew smells good,” Alec ventured.

  David did not respond; he was gazing across space at the next high mountain over, a mountain whose nether slopes were entirely ringed by the lake—an island, but no less a mountain.

  Bloody Bald, they called it, though it had a name in Cherokee. Bloody Bald, because the naked rock outcrops on its east and west flanks caught the first red rays of dawn and the last red rays of dusk.

  Suddenly the half-heard, half-felt buzz was back, like some insect humming in front of David’s face, and his eyes misted again, worse than ever, tingling badly. He rubbed them with his fingers, squinted, and stared into space, suddenly motionless.

  For Bloody Bald shimmered as David looked at it, seeming at once to fade and to rise higher, into a symmetrical cone almost as perilously pointed as—as the steeple of a church, David thought. Misty, gray-green trees shrouded the lower slopes, merging into a sort of twisting haze of pastel colors that obscured the place where the shoreline should have been. A little higher up shadowy gardens now overlaid the naked rocks, weaving in and out of the ghostly filigree of embattled white walls which in turn gave way to the slender, fluted towers that crowned the peak like the clustered facets of some rare crystal. Pale banners flickered from the golden roofs of those tenuous pinnacles, and faint but clear came the distant sound of trumpets blowing.

  It was like a watercolor painting seen through a screen of fog, like a thing seen in a dream, shaped by the mind alone. Or by the spirit.

  David stood immobile, caught up.

  Alec came over to stand beside him, followed with his own eyes David’s rapt stare—and saw only the familiar forested peak, fuzzy with trees except at the top where red rocks blazed from purple shadows.

  “David? Are you all right?”

  David shook his head, wrenched off his glasses and rubbed his eyes vigorously, glanced at the ground then back into the air. He shook his head again and frowned.

  “Davy?”

  David turned to face his friend, and Alec could see the tension flow out of him like water, leaving a residue of incredulity—or was it fear?

  “Strangest thing, Alec, I think I just had a hallucination.”

  “A hallucination? What kind of hallucination?”

  “I don’t know . . . I could have sworn just now that old Blood Top over there had a castle on it.”

  Alec folded his arms and nodded sarcastically. “Been reading those wild books again, haven’t you? Finally affected your mind.”

  “I’m serious, Alec. It looked real. I mean really real—like a mixture of Mad Ludwig’s castle and a Gothic cathedral transformed into glass. But now I look again I don’t see a thing.” He replaced his glasses and shook his head. “Must have been a trick of the light or something.” David did not sound convinced.

  The win
d shifted then, and the smell of venison stew filled their nostrils. Suddenly hunger was uppermost in both their minds.

  While David occupied himself putting the finishing touches on the stew, Alec picked up the blue volume from beside David’s pack and flipped through it. “What’s this book?” he asked, partly to take David’s mind off his recent disturbance.

  David squinted across the glare of firelight. “That’s the book I was telling you about when you called. I never had a chance to finish it. Irish mythology.”

  “Irish, huh? You’ve worn out Greek and Roman and Norse and I don’t know what all, so you’re starting on somebody else’s now?”

  David seemed to have shaken off his recent confusion. “That’s about it. I wish I’d run into it earlier; it’s great stuff if you can pronounce the names. Got more magic than Greek and not as grim as Norse. The Irish believed in fairies—human-sized fairies. Still do, in fact, or so I gather from reading that. Well, actually, they call them the Tuatha de Danaan, or the “shee”—that’s spelled s-i-d-h-e, by the way, but pronounced shee, like in banshee, I think.”

  “You’re starting to sound like my dad.”

  “Sorry, ’tis just me Irish blood a’talkin’ . . . now, laddie, would ye be havin’ some o’ me venison stew here? ’Tis made o’ the flesh o’ an Irish elk me brother found in a peat bog, the which he was led to by leprechauns.”

  Alec laughed loudly. “I’d rather have some of that deer your daddy shot last year out of season.”

  “I’ve got some of that, too, but it doesn’t taste as good.”

  David read to Alec after supper—not that Alec really wanted him to, but David seemed to be himself again, and was off on another of his forays into strangeness, so there was really nothing Alec could do about it but just lie back and listen. He did read well, at least. Alec watched David for a long time as his friend droned on about the coming of the old gods to Ireland, about their wars with the Fir Bolg and the Milesians. The firelight cast ruddy gold onto the blond hair that brushed the collar of the sleeveless denim jacket David now wore over bare skin, laid flickering high-relief shadows on his blunt, regular features, darkened his already dark brows and lashes, so that in spite of the glasses Alec could almost imagine his friend with sword and shield in hand, checked tunic belted about his waist, marching off somewhere to fight for the freedom of Ireland.

  David closed the book and looked over at Alec, who lay full length by the fire, his eyes closed, his mouth slightly open.

  David walked over to him and kicked him gently on the sole of his boot. “Up, thou rump-fed runion!” he cried. “I didn’t bring you up here to sleep.”

  “Aw, shucks! I was hoping you’d think I was really asleep and leave me alone, like any considerate person would do.”

  “No way.”

  They talked for a long time then, about Celtic mythology first, and then about the next school year, and Big Billy’s tyranny, and what to make of Liz Hughes. But there was something a touch disquieting about the way David’s conversation jumped erratically from subject to subject—something a little forced, as if he sought to disguise some underlying tension. It worried Alec, but he suppressed his concern, and then an unshakable drowsiness overtook him, and he crept off to the tent, leaving David awake with the stars.

  A long time later Alec awoke and found David still absent. He drew aside the mesh door of the tent and saw his friend still sitting near the ledge, gazing northwest toward Bloody Bald. It was almost dark of the moon, and the night sky glittered with the constellations of summer, Cygnus foremost among them.

  “Still seeing castles in the air?” Alec asked sleepily, coming to squat beside David.

  “It was on the ground, not in the air, and no, I don’t see it. I must have been seeing things . . . but damn, Alec, it was so real!” David pounded the rock with his fist.

  “Well, you know, it could have been some kind of mirage or something, reflecting part of Atlanta onto the mountains, or something like that. I’ve never heard of mirages on a mountain, though.”

  “I’ve never heard of castles on mountains in north Georgia, either. All that cold water must have done something to my eyes.”

  Alec clapped an arm on his shoulder and shook him gently. “No use losing sleep over, though.”

  “I guess not,” David sighed wearily. He stood up, stretched, and yawned. Back in the tent he flopped down atop his sleeping bag and lay there trying to think about the magic of Ireland, trying to picture in his mind’s eye the coming of the Tuatha de Danaan. But another image kept intruding in his thoughts, refusing to give way: the image of a shadowy castle on a mountaintop.

  Sleep claimed David finally, but he awoke again shortly before sunrise to lie quietly with his face by the door, looking out into the swirls of white mist awaiting banishment by the sun. A trace of the uncharacteristic coolness remained in the air, and he snuggled gratefully into his sleeping bag, heard Alec groan and roll over onto his back.

  Yeah, just a couple more minutes and he would get up and watch the sunrise from his Place of Power. It was the Celtic thing to do, after all. He had learned that much from the books he’d read: The Celts had ordered the year in certain ways, and certain days and times of day had power—including dusk and dawn. So what better way to make himself a part of that ancient tradition than by watching the sun rise?

  But still . . . it was warm in the sleeping bag, and he had sat up very late waiting—or hoping—or simply being—he was not certain which. He yawned. Five minutes more.

  The sun had already broken the horizon when he woke again. He sat up in the shadowed tent and cursed himself. For his eyes were burning like fire, and far away he thought he could make out the last fading call of trumpets. He rushed from the tent, gazed out into mist-filled space . . . and saw nothing. The burning faded abruptly, and he suddenly felt very foolish. David yawned and stretched, yawned again, and crawled back into the tent. When he awoke once more, it was to Alec kicking him none too gently in the ribs and reminding him that Big Billy had a busy day planned for him, and if he wanted anything to eat, he’d better get up right then, or there wouldn’t be anything left.

  David sighed resignedly. That was always the way of it. Big Billy always had something for him to do—especially when there was something else he wanted to do more: to think over the disquieting events of the last day, for instance. Maybe tonight he’d take another look at Bloody Bald.

  Small chance, he told himself bitterly; Big Billy would keep him busy right until dark—he always did. Well, David decided, he’d best get up and eat something, see if he could con Alec into a morning swim. It would be the last fun he’d have that day, that was for sure.

  Chapter III: Music In The Night

  (Saturday, August 1)

  Uncle Dale Sullivan, whose dead youngest brother had been Big Billy’s father, owned the next farm up the hollow and often “just thought he’d drop by” his nephew’s house around suppertime. Full of pork chops and mashed potatoes, he and Big Billy were sitting on the side porch that overlooked the highway, discussing their day’s work and watching evening creep into the valley. The soft clicking of dishes being washed in the kitchen made an almost musical counterpoint to the rhythmic squeaking of their rockers.

  Bone tired from his day’s begrudged labor, David slumped out of the kitchen and flopped down on the concrete steps, where he sat staring vacantly down the hill. The long, neat rows of glossy corn at the foot stirred in the soft evening breeze, their froth of tassels pale against the blue-green leaves like foam on a dirty sea. He could hear the occasional whoosh of a car as it came around the last curve off the high mountains to the right and accelerated on the straightaway that split the riverbottom. But he found himself straining his hearing for other sounds as well—sounds he was no longer certain he had heard. And his eyes tingled almost all the time now. He was still not sure exactly what he had seen, or if he had actually seen anything at all. It was beginning to worry him, though.

  Big B
illy gestured broadly with a stubby right hand. “I swear, Uncle Dale, I never could see why in the hell Grandpaw let them put that there highway through the middle of his riverbottom like that.” He took a healthy swig from the can of Miller that sat atop a copy of The Progressive Farmer on the floor beside him. “No-siree,” he continued, “if I had any idea why he done that, I’d sure say, but I don’t. He was a strange old feller, so Daddy said.”

  “He was a strange ’un, all right.” Uncle Dale nodded. “But he told me he let them put that road through there ’cause they wasn’t nothin’ would grow on it that was worth anything to anybody. He’d plant corn or cane, and it’d grow up fine and straight—except in that one place he’d get mornin’ glories and sweet peas that’d strangle the life outta the corn—either that, or briars.”

  “Always did have trouble with briars down there,” Big Billy agreed.

  “So when the railroad folks come along, he let ’em follow that route, and the highway folks come after. It was the straightest way, anyhow.”

  “Yeah, Pa said that there was an Old Indian trail down there one time; I know I’ve found a good many arrowheads ’round there.”

  Uncle Dale leaned forward in his rocker; his voice took on a darker coloring. “Yep, Pa told me about that when I was a boy . . . but he told me something else, too, Bill—he told me that the Indians that was here before his folks settled said the trail was made by the Moon-eyed People. You know, them spooky folks the Cherokees say was here afore them—that built them ruins down on Fort Mountain, some say.”

  “I heard those forts were built by Prince Madoc in the year 1170,” David interjected from the steps.

  “That boy’s a lot like his great-grandpaw was.” Uncle Dale chuckled as if David were not there, but his eyes showed a gleam when they sought his grand-nephew. “Not as interested in this world as in the next—or at least in some other part of this ’un than the north Georgia mountains.”

  “I like the mountains just fine,” David retorted. “I just don’t like all the tourists we get nowadays.”