by Tom Deitz
“Them tourist folks brings trade, and trade brings money, boy,” Big Billy said brusquely. “Speaking of which, Dale, did I tell you I was thinking of switching to sorghum in this bottom too? The tourists love it, and old Webster Bryant over in Blairsville says he’ll buy all I can work. Too late this year, but I may just take him up on it next time around.”
Uncle Dale didn’t answer; he was looking at David. He rocked back in his wooden rocker and crossed his ankles on the porch railing; David glanced up to see three inches of thin, white, hairless leg between the old man’s socks and khaki work pants. He peered curiously down at his own bare, tanned legs, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes absently.
“Prince Madoc,” Uncle Dale mused at length, ignoring Big Billy. “I’ve heard Paw talk about him once or twice, but he didn’t put much stock in that story. One thing he did tell me about that old Indian trail, though, is that it’s bordered by briars as far as he ever followed it—and that’s a right smart ways. He’s right, too; they may be little and scraggly and close in or far out, but they’re there. And another thing he told me is that it goes on straight as a stick, right on over wood and water, says he got on it a huntin’ one night and it like to scared him to death.”
David was suddenly alert. “Did he say why?”
“Shore didn’t, though I do know his dogs never come back with him that night. He made us boys and girls swear on the Bible not to go on it ourselves, ’specially not at night, and we never did. He got most of us so scared we never even mentioned it to our younguns—’course we was nearly all married and gone by then anyway . . . yore pa ever told you about it, Bill?”
“Hell no,” Big Billy said sourly. He took another swig of beer and wiped his mouth on his hand. “Damn it, Uncle Dale. I ain’t got time for such fairy-tale nonsense. You’re as bad as the boys. Now, about that sorghum . . . I been meanin’ to ask you . . .”
Little Billy came around the back corner of the house with an enormous piece of fried apple pie in his hand—which he rapidly stuffed into his mouth as soon as he saw David. “David says that fairies are as big as people and twice as beautiful,” he announced loudly.
David rolled his eyes skyward.
“Damn it, and double damn it!” Big Billy exploded, slamming his fist down hard on the arm of his rocker. “I don’t know what’s worse: havin’ boys that won’t keep their mouths shut and that won’t mind their own business when grown folks is talkin’, or boys that won’t work and just sets around all day with their noses in books. I don’t give a tinker’s damn about fairies and how big they are. They ain’t no such things, and you both know it. If you’d read yore Bible ’stead of them funny books, you’d find that out.” Big Billy picked up the copy of The Progressive Farmer from beside his chair, rolled it into a tube, and tossed it at David. “Here, if you want to read somethin’ that’ll be worth somethin’ to you, read that.”
The magazine unrolled itself in flight and landed in an untidy heap at David’s feet.
David picked it up and shook it somewhat distastefully. Very pointedly he turned it upside-down and proceeded to peruse it with exaggerated attentiveness.
“You’re readin’ it upside down,” observed Little Billy from the yard beside him.
David lowered the magazine, fixed his eyes on his younger brother, drew his lips back slowly, clicked his teeth precisely together one time, and looked back down at the upside-down print. His eyes tingled, ever so slightly, but—he realized for the first time—it felt good.
“Davy, could you turn the radio off? I can’t sleep,” Little Billy mumbled groggily into the darkness of David’s bedroom.
David grunted and dragged his eyes open to see his little brother silhouetted in the doorway. A glance at his bedside clock showed it was nearly midnight.
“I don’t have it on,” he muttered, turning over and pulling a pillow over his head.
“You do so! I can hear it!”
“I do not! Now get back to bed.”
“Da-a-a-a-vy!”
“It’s David,” said David. “It must be the TV. Ma must be up watching the late show again. I guess she’s having another one of her restless spells.”
“It ain’t the TV, it’s comin’ from your side of the house.”
David levered himself up on his elbow and glared at the silhouette. “I-do-nor-have-the-radio-on, darn it!”
“Maybe it’s outside, then,” Little Billy suggested hesitantly, shifting from foot to foot.
David paused, listening. “Now you mention it, I do hear something like music outside. Must be some couple parking down by the turn-off with the radio on loud. Pa’ll have a fit if he hears it.”
Little Billy’s nose wrinkled thoughtfully. “Don’t sound like radio no more.”
David strained his own hearing. “That’s true,” he observed. He sat up in bed, drew the curtains aside, and looked out. A warm breeze floated over him—as warm that night as it had been cool the night before. He could see the solitary security light in the yard casting its circle of blue-white radiance onto the grass that sloped down to the cornfield. Away to the left he could make out the dirt road that came in from the hollow where Uncle David lived. He could hear the music more clearly, too, and it was strange music: not rock, nor yet country, nor what his pa called “that long-hair stuff.” No, it was different: soft and sweet and low, with a hint of flutes and maybe something like guitars and a gentle jingling like bells. More than anything else, it reminded him of what little bagpipe music he had heard, only without the pipes, and a thousand times more strange. Strange, yet somehow familiar.
“Something’s going on,” David announced abruptly. “I’m going out to take a look.”
“Not without me,” Little Billy whispered loudly as his brother slipped out of bed.
“Oh no you don’t! You’re staying right here. I’m in enough trouble because of you already.” David tugged on jeans, tennis shoes, and T-shirt, and headed for the door.
“I’ll follow you anyway,” Little Billy said diffidently.
David frowned, then sighed. “Okay, you can come, but please keep quiet. And if you say one word about this, I swear I’ll cut a spancel out of your hide.”
“What’s a spancel?”
“A strip of skin cut from a corpse.”
“But I ain’t dead.”
“You will be if you tell on me.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
“You’d better.”
David followed Little Billy into the hall. A floorboard squeaked like an alarm. He winced and gritted his teeth, but no sounds came from the rest of the house. He kept guard uneasily while Little Billy dashed into his own room to dress.
A moment later they stood in the yard. The mercury vapor light turned their skins an eerie green and their lips and nails blue.
“You look like Frankenstein,” whispered Little Billy.
“And you look like Dracula’s grandson. Now be quiet.” David cocked his head. “Don’t you hear it? Louder, coming from down by the highway. Come on, let’s run!”
They ran down the long slope of hill, stopping at the irregular barrier of blackberry briars that fringed the bank above the cornfield. All at once the music was louder; David thought he could make out the jingle of bells and what almost sounded like voices singing. He screwed up his eyes until they hurt, staring vainly into the darkness in search of he knew not what.
And then—at the far side of that part of the field which lay beyond the highway—he saw . . . something: a file of pale yellow lights, winking in and out among the trees which bordered the small stream that marked the property line maybe an eighth of a mile away.
David inhaled sharply.
Little Billy stared up at him quizzically.
“Can you see anything, Little Billy?” he whispered.
Little Billy squinted into the gloom. “I can see a buncha lightnin’ bugs flyin’ along in a line over by the creek. Is that what you’re talkin’ about? Makes my eyes hurt. An’ I c
an sorta hear some kinda singin’ too.” His voice trembled ever so slightly.
“Come on, then, let’s take a closer look.”
Little Billy hung back a moment, doubt a shadow among shadows on his face, but followed dutifully as his brother pushed through the briars, careful of the tiny thorns. They scooted down the clay slope and slipped into the welcome cover of the towering corn. As they thrust their way between the knobby stalks, the hard-edged leaves cut at their exposed skin like green knives. Finally they shouldered through the last row and crouched breathlessly among the weeds and beer cans in the shallow ditch just below the shoulder of the highway.
David eased himself up cautiously.
Pain filled his eyes of a sudden. Pain—or light, he could not tell which—subsiding as quickly as it had come into an itching so intense that he wrenched off his glasses and rubbed his lids furiously.
When he looked up again, the lights were closer, brighter, following the line of the highway but a little way back from it, angling gradually toward a point farther to the right where the road and the fields and the mountain all converged.
“They’re heading for the woods behind our house—toward that old Indian trail Uncle Dale was talking about, I bet! Quick, maybe we can get a better view from up there. Come on!”
David ducked back into the cornfield with Little Billy following reluctantly behind. Together they loped along between the last row and the bank, gradually drawing ahead of the lights that were fast approaching the highway to their left. Finally they halted at the base of a steeper, rockier slope above which the forest began in truth. A barricade of young maple trees and more blackberry briars marked its edge, except at one place further on where a dark gap showed in the leafy barrier—almost like an archway.
David hesitated, unsure, feeling somehow wary of the gap. He glanced back, saw the lights still approaching, brighter and brighter, and made his decision.
“Up the bank, Little Billy. Quick.”
Little Billy grabbed David’s pant leg. “You go, I don’t wanna. I’m scared.”
David grasped his brother roughly by the shoulders. “You want me to leave you alone in this cornfield in the middle of the night?” The harshness of the words surprised both of them.
Little Billy stared at the ground. “No, Davy.”
“Then shinny up that bank!”
Little Billy set his chin. “You first.”
David frowned. “No running off?”
“Promise.”
David scrambled up the bank, pausing before the thorny barrier at the top to hoist his brother the final few feet. The briars were thicker than they had first appeared, but he kicked recklessly through them and entered the forest, directly above the sharp curve where the highway bent squarely east and began its torturous climb up to Franks Gap. They were only about a quarter mile from home, so David knew he must have been in that place before, but in the bright moonlight of the summer night it seemed different somehow, as if transfigured by that light. Transfigured—or maybe damned: The thought was a flickering ghost in David’s mind as he glanced around, saw the familiar trunks of pines and maples, the dark clumps of rhododendron and laurel. And the briars—more briars than he had ever seen, weaving in and out among the trees to the right, forming a subtle prickly barrier between himself and the house whose blue light he could dimly discern like a distant will-o’-the-wisp.
But to his left the ground was clearer and he could see that there was a sort of trail coming on straight up between the trees like a continuation of the line of highway. It was covered with moss and pine needles, but nothing else grew there. Indeed, it was that lack of growth that most clearly delineated it, David decided, though now he examined it closely, it appeared overlaid by a ribbonlike glaze of golden luminescence that did not quite seem to lie upon the ground. He almost thought he could make out patterns forming and reforming along that nebulous surface. But looking at it made the tingle in his eyes become almost painful, and he felt a strange reluctance to walk there. Instead, he dragged Little Billy along beside it until their way was blocked maybe a hundred yards up the mountain by the half-rotted trunk of a fallen tree.
David sat down on the log, pulling his brother down next to him. And then realization struck him like a blow: There could be no moonlight, for the moon had been full two weeks ago. Why, just the night before he had remarked to Alec about it being dark of the moon. Yet there was the same kind of cold, sourceless brightness in that place, like a snowfield seen in starlight—everywhere but on the trail itself. A shiver ran up his spine. The lights . . . the moon . . . the briars . . . this place . . .
Something was very wrong.
But at that moment a whisper of music reached his ears, and the first yellow lights became visible at the top of the bank.
His eyes felt as if they were on fire; his vision sharpened, blurred, sharpened again. He discovered that he was sweating, too, could feel the short hairs on the back of his neck rise one by one as more and more of the lights entered the forest, increasing in intensity and size as they came, coalescing finally into a nimbus of golden light that enfolded in its heart . . .
People.
If people they were: a great host of stern-faced men and women riding as if in solemn procession astride great black or white horses, or horses whose smooth hides gleamed like polished steel or burnished copper or new-wrought gold. One or two of those steeds appeared to be scaled, and many sported fantastic horns or antlers, though whether these grew from the beasts themselves or were some work of artifice David could not tell.
But it was the appearance of the riders that made David’s mouth fall open in wonder, for he had never witnessed such a display of color and texture and form as now passed before him like a dream from another age.
They were a tall people—both men and women—and beautiful: slim of build, narrow of chin, slanted of brow, with long, shining hair, most frequently black, and flashing eyes that seemed at once menacing and remote.
Long, jewel-toned gowns of a heavy napped fabric like velvet accentuated the proud carriage of most of the women, though here and there rode one clad in strangely cut garb patterned in elaborate plaids or checks. The majority of the men wore long hose and short, tight tunics with flowing sleeves, but an occasional one was dressed in a longer robe or in clothing of a much simpler, looser style and rougher texture. A few members of both sexes wore glittering mail or plate armor. Tassels and jewels and feathers and fringes were everywhere; and here and there was the glint of shiny metal blades and golden crowns. The host had stopped singing now, but from the bells on their clothing and their horse trappings rang out a gentle, constant melody, taking its rhythm from their tread.
At their head rode a man clad in silver armor wrought of overlapping ridged plates like fishes’ scales, each one rayed with a blazing filigree of golden wire. His eyes were the color of deep still water, and the long fair hair that flowed like silk from beneath a plain silver circlet shone like the sun. He sat astride a long-limbed white stallion and bore a naked sword across the saddle before him. A white cloak swept from his shoulders, its golden fringe rippling about his ankles. The light came strongest from him.
David felt Little Billy’s hand tense in his own. A quick downward glance showed the little boy staring not at the spectacle on the trail, but at David himself. A disturbing thought struck him. “See anything . . . odd?” he asked carefully.
Little Billy shook his head uneasily. “Nope. Just lights. Bright lights, like the air was shinin’.”
David felt his breath catch, the copper taste of fear filled his mouth. He started to stand, to run away, but something held him back. He was seeing something strange, uncanny even—quite possibly dangerous—but no power on earth would have moved him then.
“I want to go home, Davy!”
“Hang on, kid, just a minute more. There’s something I want to check out.”
“Davy—”
“Hush!”
The procession drew nea
rer, the leader passed the two boys as if they were not there. Indeed, few of the lords and ladies paid them any heed, though some did spare them a brief, amused glance, and one or two looked slightly puzzled. But another, a man dressed more simply than most in a long robe of black and silver, reined his black horse to a slow walk and stared at them intently through eyes narrowed to baleful slits. “Hail, Children of Death,” he called derisively down at them as he rode past.
The voice filled David’s ears like a sound heard underwater—a sound more felt in the mind than heard in the ear. Suddenly he was frightened; chill after chill danced upon his body. He swallowed hard and rose automatically, jerking Little Billy up beside him, took a step forward. “Hello . . . Sir?” he finally managed to croak to the other’s departing back.
Little Billy stared at his brother in bewilderment. “Who’re you talkin’ to, Davy? I don’t see nobody. You’re scarin’ me! I wanna go home!”
“Be quiet!” David growled out of the corner of his mouth.
The black-clad figure jerked his horse to a dead stop and twisted around in his saddle. “You can see us!” he whispered fiercely, his voice almost a hiss. He turned to the gray-clad woman who rode nearest behind him. An enormous black crow perched arrogantly on her shoulder. “The man-child can see us!”
David suddenly felt very uneasy, but he steeled himself. “Of . . . of course I can see you,” he stammered. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Who’s here, Davy? You better quit scarin’ me, or I’m gonna tell Pa!” He kicked insistently at David’s right foot. “C’mon, let’s go!”
David grimaced at the slight discomfort, but did not move as a buzz of anticipation spread through the host like the swarming of bees. By ones and twos the mounted figures began to stop and gather round the boys, the tall shapes looming above them like the towers of some sinister citadel.
Suddenly David was afraid. Truly afraid. He began backing away, partly in response to that fear, partly in subconscious response to his brother’s insistent tugs—only to discover to his horror that he could go so far and no further. Something stopped him: a vague paralysis in his legs, an unyielding surface in the very air itself. He glanced down, saw the golden glimmer that now lay beneath his feet. Somehow, in spite of his intentions to the contrary, he had stepped onto the track. Oh my God! he thought. We’re trapped by their magic!