by Tom Deitz
There were a bunch of footnotes giving additional biblical quotations cited by Reverend Kirk, and David scanned them, but did not really notice what he read.
So! He smiled in satisfaction. It must have been the funeral procession Little Billy and I saw. He recalled then, seeing it between his legs.
But that was a difficult concept for a rational man to swallow, he realized after a moment’s consideration. There was simply no connection between the two events that he could discern, not even the vaguest sort of cause and effect. And then there was that business about a “tether that has bound a corpse to a bier.” He had certainly done no such thing—yet he had the Sight, which didn’t make sense, unless the bit about the tether was just a bit of nonsense to keep people from trying it willy-nilly. Probably the folk with the Sight had enjoyed a special position in the community and didn’t want everybody getting in on the act, so they just made up a complicated bit of apparatus to go with it.
It would take some doing, after all, to bind a corpse to a bier with a tether of hair (and what kind of hair would be long and strong enough for that, or to wind in a helix about one’s middle—surely not human?)—and then sneak in later and remove it. David giggled; it seemed he knew something that Reverend Kirk hadn’t. And, he thought, it might be nice to try that bit about giving the Sight to someone else—to Alec or Little Billy, maybe. He reread that section to be certain he had it right, then checked the footnotes, which he had passed over before. The would-be seer was supposed to surrender himself completely to the control of the Sighted one, he discovered. The Sighted one would then assert his physical domination by the method Kirk had described, while at the same time confirming his control by reciting “Everything between my hands and my feet is mine,” or some similar phrase.
Well, that’s interesting, David said to himself. Very interesting indeed.
He spent the next hour or so examining parts of the book he had skipped earlier. Among them he learned about the sad fate of Reverend Kirk: How his body had been found beside a supposed fairy mound, and how some people had said he had been taken by the fair-folk and a changeling left in his place; and that there had been various attempts at setting him free, but that they had all failed. He shuddered involuntarily, thinking how perilously close he had come to that same fate.
His eyes had grown tired by this time, for it was very late, and he turned out the light and snuggled down under the covers. He then realized that his teeth felt scummy and that his mouth tasted faintly of the sour-cream-and-onion potato chips he had been eating. Wearily, he got up and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth.
As he turned on the water and got out his toothbrush, he felt a burning sensation from where the ring lay on his bare chest. At the same time he became aware of a voice sounding in his ears. It was like no voice he had ever heard before: so low as to seem almost subliminal; harsh, not unlike a growl; and strangely inflected, as if the mouth that shaped it was unaccustomed to the subtleties of human speech. Sweat sprang out on his body as he stared foolishly about the tiny room in search of the source of that voice. After a moment it spoke again, and this time he pinpointed its origin: the darkness beyond the bathroom window.
David felt a chill race down between his shoulder blades and lodge at the base of his spine; his muscles tensed, and he shuddered involuntarily. Finally he took a deep breath to steel himself and eased aside the curtain, keeping his eyes slitted, dreading what he might see.
It was as he feared.
No man’s shape greeted him there. Rather, the massive head and front paws of an immense white dog stood out against the yard light’s glow. Its claws rested on the windowsill, and its enormous eyes burned like red-hot coals.
They stared at each other for a moment, and then the dog began to speak again, and this time he could make out its words. “One of your own kind, David Sullivan, has said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And so it is. You have a little knowledge, and you seek to make it more, and so it is a dangerous thing.”
David started to say something, but found that his mouth was so dry he could not speak. He swallowed clumsily. The toothbrush slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor with a plastic clatter.
“Now it is widely known,” continued the dog complacently, “that certain . . . things have become known to men—certain shards of a greater knowledge that are perhaps not entirely appropriate for them to know. Many have sought that knowledge, though few have found it, and fewer still have profited by it.
“But where you are different is that you have knowledge backed by proof—the proof that lies sparkling upon your chest. And such knowledge places you in a position dangerous both to yourself—for in Ailill Windmaster you have made a powerful enemy—and to certain others who sometimes share your World.”
The dog hesitated a moment, though its eyes never left David. “Thus it is that you have two choices: If you end this quest for knowledge now, when it is scarcely begun, and try to forget what you have seen and turn your thoughts to other things, there may still be time to forestall Ailill’s intervention. But if you do not, never again will your life be as it has been. Do not seek to know more than you do—or be prepared to pay the consequences of that seeking.”
And it was gone.
David felt the hair prickle once again on his neck and arms. He picked up the toothbrush and rinsed it off mechanically, but he found that no matter how hard he tried, he could not quite hold his hands steady. The ring continued to send forth pulses of low heat, and to glow softly. A final shudder shook him, and the coiled fear began to disperse.
Well, he thought, maybe I’d better leave that trail alone for a while.
Or, he added, maybe I should memorize the fortuneteller’s book.
PART II
Prologue II: In Tir-Nan-Og
(high summer)
It is good to be an eagle, thought Ailill, who now wore that shape. Wings, longer than his man’s form was tall, swept from his shoulders, caressing the air like the fingers of the most sensuous of lovers. Feathers black as his hair covered him; eyes sharp as his devious wit peered over a beak cruel as the desire for vengeance that burned within him.
It is good to fly, Ailill added to himself. It is good to rule the air, to ride winds no mortal bird could dare, to breathe air too thin for their clumsy lungs, to fly so high that stars appear above, so high the curve of the mortal World shows when I look down.
It is good to look down on the World of Men and think how it would be to crush them, to beat them into the iron-sodden dirt from whence they came. Or better yet, to hurl them into the cold blackness that surrounds them. Tenuous indeed is their hold on that World—if they but knew.
He blinked his yellow eyes and spiraled higher on the merest suggestion of an updraft, then drew upon his Power and looked down again, to see both worlds—the round Lands of Men clustered close and thick and fearful, bound all unknowing within the less easily described shapes of the far-flung Realms of Faerie, all laced about by the glittering golden lattice of the Straight Tracks that wrapped all Worlds and rose past him into space—and time as well—binding them all together in ways at once too complex and too subtle for even the Sidhe to fully comprehend. Though not of Faerie, the Faerie-born could travel upon them, if they dared—and mortal men as well, if they had the art, as none now did, except possibly that detestable boy who Nuada had virtually snatched from his hand, and who had cost him considerable trouble and no little pain in the days since.
Nuada!
Ailill felt the tendons that worked his claws tighten when that name entered his thoughts. Unconsciously he ground the edges of his beak together, then uttered a harsh shriek of rage into the cold empty air that surrounded him.
Nuada Airgetlam, whom men called Silverhand. Once King of the Tuatha de Daanan, once disarmed in the most literal sense by a blade of iron, once slain in the Lands of Men—and yet another barrier between Ailill and the war he desired between the two Worlds, between men and gods, if men
chose to call them that. But there was another thing Ailill wanted now, and that thing was vengeance: vengeance against Nuada, who had thwarted his plan and made him look the fool in the bargain; and against the mortal boy, David Sullivan, who somehow bore some arcane protection about him whose nature Ailill could not discover, nor his Power break.
He was the unknown, the unloaded die, the rogue element in the orderly plan Ailill was formulating.
He is the one I must control; he is the one whose blood this body would taste this day if I gave myself to it, and if someone—or something—did not protect him. That is what I must discover, and if it is an object which protects him, then that object I must possess.
The eagle shape he wore spoke to him then, in that part of his mind where instincts had their dwelling. And what it spoke of was hunger.
Ailill gazed about himself, at the glitter of stars in the black sky, at the Worlds—both Worlds—spread below gleaming in the encompassing golden lattice.
And then he narrowed the focus of his vision, so that he gazed only into the Lands of Men.
And there he saw what his body sought.
He folded his wings and dived, felt the air thicken about him, felt his body grow warm from the force of that fall, knowing as he did so that if he put upon himself the substance of the mortal world, as he must do to remain there for more than a few hours, that the thing men called friction would burn him to nothing before he reached his goal.
But he was not of that substance. This body, like his man-body, was formed of the stuff of Faerie, and so was bound by the laws of that World.
Below him the land spread wide, the distant coast was a thin-edged glimmer on the horizon, the mountains faint wrinkles in the landscape.
And still he fell.
A moment later fields and rivers took clearer form, and those same mountains rose about him. Trees became distinct, and then the leaves that clothed them. Ailill saw with the eagle’s eye alone now; he let the bird’s own small mind take control so that instincts burned in the place of thoughts.
The eagle saw its quarry: long-eared, brown-furred, white tuft a marker of despair at its tail. Red became the color of the eagle’s thoughts as the hidden part that was Ailill called upon his Power and wrapped his eagle-shape in the substance of the Lands of Men. Only thus could it feed.
The rabbit moved beneath him, running, frantic, sensing the black-winged doom that fell suddenly toward it out of a clear sky.
Now! Wings out! Tail fanned! Brake! Brake! Legs down, talons extended!
There was impact and a squeaking, and then the muffled sound of feathers brushing against dry grass.
An eagle’s shape is an excellent shape—for certain purposes, Ailill thought, as he prepared to feed. But there are even better shapes a clever man might wear to achieve his goals.
He gave himself over to the eagle then, and red became the color of the grass as Ailill, who was the eagle, feasted.
Chapter VI: Swimming
(Saturday, August 8)
“It’s hot,” said Alec from his place on the edge of the Sullivans’ front porch. “Too hot to spend half the day helping your dad pull the engine out of that old wreck of a truck he just bought.”
“This is Georgia in August; it’s supposed to be hot,” David replied, taking a long draw on a Dr. Pepper and setting it down beside him in the porch swing. Down the hill and across the cornfield he could see a steady stream of traffic flashing by, as it would for the next four months. Tourist season had begun with the fair, and there was nothing he could do about it. “Wildwood Flower” would resonate in his mind for months.
“This is the Georgia mountains in August,” Alec went on obstinately. “It’s not supposed to be a hundred degrees in the shade!”
“At least there is shade.” David gestured around the porch. “And, anyway, who are you to tell me what it’s supposed to be like up here? I was born here; you moved in.”
A large yellow tomcat jumped unexpectedly into the swing, upsetting the Dr. Pepper into David’s lap.
Alec’s face wrinkled with laughter. “Still wetting your pants, are you?”
“Damn.”
“Better not let your mom hear that!”
“Damn!” David said again, louder, as he got up and disappeared into the house. In a moment he returned with a wet dishrag and mopped the swing. He had not changed his sodden white cutoffs.
He grinned at Alec. “Leastwise part of me’s cool now.”
“Some way to get cool!”
Silence fell on their conversation then. The air stilled. The only sounds were the muffled roar of the cars on the highway and the soft creaking of the swing. They did not look at each other. David stared into space over Alec’s head; Alec methodically dismembered a daisy from one of the pots that perched precariously along the porch railing.
“You’ve been acting funny lately, Davy,” Alec said at last. “Besides the business with the ring, I mean, which is another matter entirely. You never can seem to get around to giving me the straight scoop on that, and lord knows I’ve been trying all week.” The petals continued to fall. He looked up at his friend and their gazes met: blue and gray. Alec’s tone was soft and firm, but something about it hit David like a blow, as if he had just heard one of his secrets told aloud.
David frowned and blinked, breaking the contact. “What do you mean? I always act funny; it’s the way I am.”
“I know that,” Alec replied, folding his arms across his chest and stretching his legs along the top step. “Like when you tried to turn yourself into a werewolf that time. But that’s not what I mean. I can’t really tell you exactly what I do mean, but it’s like . . . like you’re not all here. You seem distracted a lot, or something.”
He paused, swallowed, felt for the post behind him before continuing. “I can’t explain it any better, Davy, but you—well, you stare into space a lot more than you used to, and I see you looking at things funny sometimes.”
David didn’t say anything, but he began to rock the swing gently.
“Like you’re doing now, David. You’re not half listening to me. It’s like we can kid around and all like we were just doing, but then suddenly you’re off in space somewhere.” He swallowed again and took a deep breath. “I guess that’s what bothers me most—that you seem to be going somewhere I can’t follow. I mean look, Sullivan, we’ve been friends practically forever and never kept anything from each other, and now something is bothering you, or something is happening to you, or has happened to you, and you won’t tell me what it is. It’s like a barrier where there’s never been a barrier—and I don’t like it at all.”
He threw the completely dismembered daisy far down into the yard. The yellow tomcat ran tentatively toward it before retreating into the shadows under the house.
“I’m sorry, Alec,” said David, with a sense of great effort behind the words. “I didn’t realize there was any change. Would it help if I did something weird now?”
“You are doing something weird,” Alec replied, looking up with an expression of hurt on his face that shocked David. “You’re not being straight with me, and you’ve never done that.”
“If I told you, you’d never believe me.”
“I’ve heard that line before—and I’ve never believed it!”
David took a deep breath. “I have seen the Sidhe.”
His eyes flashed for a moment as his gaze again locked with Alec’s and broke as suddenly. The line of his mouth was set.
Alec shook his head and looked down. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”
“Then you won’t believe that I got the ring from them.”
“Damn it!” Alec almost shouted. He stood up angrily and began to pace the length of the porch, hands clinched into white-knuckled fists. “Goddamn it, Sullivan, will you never tell me the truth about that frigging ring? You got it from a girl. You got it from the fairies. Next you’ll be telling me you got it from a goddamned man from Mars! For Christ’s sake, Davy, don
’t you see I don’t know what to believe? I might have believed you if that was the story you told first, but it’s not, so can you blame me for not believing it now?”
The speed of his pacing increased, and then he whirled around suddenly to stand glowering at David. He was almost shaking. The swing had stopped.
“No, I don’t blame you,” David said softly. “I almost don’t believe it myself. But I’ve got to do something about it—it’s about to drive me crazy.”
“That’s your problem, man. You’re the one who’s been flashing it around like it was the crown jewels. I’d have kept it quiet if I didn’t want people to know about it, and I sure wouldn’t have told my loud-mouthed brother.” Alec pounded the porch rail irritably, but the white heat of his anger was already subsiding. Somewhere in the house the telephone rang.
“Twenty-twenty hindsight.”
“You could, of course, just get rid of it—and say that everything was over; that’s what I’d do.”
“I’ve thought about that, but I feel really uncomfortable without it, like something awful will happen if I don’t have it with me, or if I lose it. I nearly get sick to my stomach just thinking about it. The chain’s a reasonable compromise.”
“Well, don’t complain to me. You’ve made your bed, now you can lie in it.”
“David? Telephone!” his mother called from inside.
“Crap,” David muttered as he disappeared through the front door. Alec sat down and looked for another daisy.
“Well, David Sullivan,” Liz’s voice crackled on the line. “You haven’t called me since the fair, so I’m taking matters into my own hands.”
Her voice was firm rather than flirtatious, and David couldn’t help but grin. Liz had a way about her—a plain, honest, straightforward way. That was what he liked best about her. She always said what she meant, and if it was tactful, fine; and if it wasn’t, fine; and if it made her look like a fool, well, that didn’t bother her too much, either. He wished he could be as straightforward, but on the other hand, Liz hadn’t seen the Sidhe.