The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers)

by Frank P. Ryan

  Oh, thank God! Thank heaven I’m not on my own!

  She heard noises to the other side of her. It had to be Mo and Mark. They were all here. Wherever here was. It seemed like they had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. Though the panic had subsided a little, her senses still reeled with an overwhelming claustrophobia. Her hair felt dirty and bedraggled, as if matted with dust and cobwebs. It was all so horribly unfair she wanted to scream, to shriek at this figure that was frightening the life out of her. But a deeper caution kept her still, froze her so she merely watched and waited, doing her best to make sense out of the situation. She was lying on something soft and springy. She felt it with her fingers. Something natural, like moss. A thick bed of mossy material separated her from the cold dirt of the floor.

  “Who . . . who are you?”

  There was no answer, other than a low-pitched growling.

  But the figure with the torch was already moving away from her, which allowed her to work out the rough size of whoever—or whatever—it was. Kate guessed that the stranger was smaller than herself, no more than five feet or so, and amazingly compact.

  Suddenly there was a low-pitched snarl.

  Fright made Kate try to jump up. But the same fright made her muscles turn to jelly. Darkness yawned about her as the figure moved away, leaving her bathed in sweat.

  “Alan—Mark—Mo? Are any of you awake?”

  There was a chorus of jittery whispers that told her they were all awake.

  Suddenly they all heard that low-pitched growl again: “Arrrhhhggh—Duuuvaaallll!”

  Kate heard that clearly. The figure had called out Alan’s name in a voice as dry as desert bones, yet so deeply pitched it demanded complete attention.

  “Shee—it!”

  She could just about make out Alan’s face directly underneath the torch. The figure was holding the flame so close to his face he was clenching his eyes shut.

  Mark called out, “We need some light of our own.”

  There was a momentary silence as each realized that in their preparations for the adventure not one of them had brought a lighter, or even a box of matches. Kate could see how Alan was averting his face from the flickering flame. Then suddenly, strangely, the light mellowed. A greenish tinge settled over it so that Alan could open his eyes again, bravely she thought, to look up at the figure that was standing over him, peering down at him, and growling his name, like a summons.

  “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

  There was a muttering—it sounded like a grumbling—in that same gravelly tone, as the figure poked at him with one index finger, armed with a talon of nail that projected from an incredibly filthy hand. Kate saw how the hand itself glowed with greenish phosphorescence.

  “Great!” Mark muttered. “It’s the ultimate bag lady.”

  Kate couldn’t help a nervous laugh.

  But Alan wasn’t laughing. He was moaning as the grimy nail scratched over his brow. The figure seemed to be interested in the birthmark that had been burning hot when they were back in the stone circle. Kate winced in sympathy. Alan turned his face away from the insistent prodding and probing and grabbed at the instrusive hands. He couldn’t stop himself from groaning as the figure’s hands, which seemed far too large for the figure’s small size, closed around his brow and appeared to squeeze right through to his brain.

  Mark hissed, “Where’s the spear?”

  Kate couldn’t believe what Mark was thinking. “Forget about the spear!”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Listen!” Kate’s whisper sounded husky, even to her own ears. “Let’s switch on our cell phones. I bet the screens will throw some light.” She scrambled around in the moss, eventually finding her backpack. Her fingers located her cell phone. But they trembled as she tried to find the on switch in the dark. Suddenly her screen lit up, followed by Mark’s. The darkness was suddenly illuminated as if by two small beacons, and they could see they were in an enormous cave. It had to be somewhere deep in the mountains. The creature shrieked. In a snarling twist, as it wheeled away from them, motes of dust swirled and sparkled, as if set alight by its passage. There was a smell like burning hair. And in that moment, as the light from the screens fell onto the figure, Kate glimpsed an impossible face . . .

  A woman’s face—the most incredible old crone.

  The memory of that face haunted Kate’s imagination: skin of a brindled brown over silvery gray, with a thick, bedraggled mane of frosty white hair that tumbled down over the filthiest collection of rags that had ever passed for clothes. Her build was squat and powerful. Heavy eyebrows and a broad, widening nose that dominated the dewlaps of her pendulous cheeks gave her face, momentarily perplexed by the light from the phones, a curiously turtle-like look. Even after she had gone, Kate could still smell her, like the organic compost at the bottom of her uncle’s vegetable garden: the smell she recalled from taking a handful of mulched soil to her nose.

  Mark was on his feet. “Hah! We’ve got the witch! Keep your screen turned on her! Don’t let her escape!”

  But suddenly Kate’s breath caught as another presence appeared out of the gloom of the cave. It seemed to beckon toward Mark in particular, a grim shadow cowled within darkness.

  “Nuh-nuh-no!” Mo’s voice rose to a cry. “Tuh-tuh-turn thuh-them off! Thuh-thuh-thuh-they’re huh-hurting her.”

  Mark was dumbstruck, just staring at the shadow.

  Kate switched off her phone. She called to Mark to do the same. “Mo’s right. Turn off your screen.”

  Mark’s mouth opened wide with fright. The shadow was growing. It appeared to be taking substance in the ethereal green light from the screens. Mark’s eyes were wide and staring.

  Alan grabbed the phone from Mark’s paralyzed hand and doused the light. Gloom immediately enveloped them again. Kate heard Mo shuffle across the moss to throw her arms about her brother. She heard Mo’s panting breath as she rubbed at Mark’s goose-pimply arms to get some warmth back into him.

  Within minutes, a friendlier light began to glow no more than ten feet away. Alan watched this happen with his heart in his mouth and his breath still panting. The shadow that had threatened Mark was still there, somewhere in the dark. He sensed it rather than saw it. But the focus of the light was back on the gnarly old woman, who was squatting on the cave floor in front of a fire. The flames roared, illuminating a black pot that sat in the middle of the flames. The old woman used her fingers to stir some unpleasant-looking ingredients into a stew that was bubbling noisily in the pot.

  Alan watched her in growing amazement.

  She snarled what sounded like a curse, waving a casual hand to the darkness, as if warning the shadow to shrink away, then returned to her preoccupation with her cooking, grumbling incessantly. In the glow of the fire, her matted white hair cascaded about her triangular figure onto the surrounding dirt.

  Abruptly, she veered toward them with an expression more determined than earlier, as if a restless energy seethed just under the heavily lined brow, and at the same time Alan saw her eyes clearly for the first time. They had neither whites nor irises, but were all black, liquidly glistening, and as fierce as an eagle’s. His gaze fell from her eyes to the voluminous rags of her dress, which shifted and moved like something quick and horribly alive, and in which minuscule diamonds of light seemed to gambol and reflect the firelight. His heart hammered against the cage of his chest as he realized the true nature of her dress. It was woven from cobwebs. The diamond lights that scrabbled and sparkled in its dark, lacy depths were the eyes of the spiders that were actively spinning it.

  She appeared to be singing to herself, with her head down and her chin lost in the folds of her neck and upper chest.

  Her song crooned like a hymn in some age-old cathedral of shadow, closer to the grinding of pebbles than any sound that could come out of a human throat. It seemed to be directed at Alan in particular, in the strangest, most guttural language he had ever heard. And in h
er ruminations, he seemed to catch the same word, “Quuuruuunnn,” again and again.

  Qurun . . . ?

  He sensed that the word was important, although he had no idea what it meant.

  With a sudden pounce, she was upon him. She took hold of his face with one grimy hand, forcing the index finger of the other into his mouth and down his throat, the exploring probe wriggling ever deeper. He tasted the dirt of ages on that grimy finger. He choked, unable to breathe. He saw that her nose was running and heard her breath crackling with rheumy phlegm. She withdrew her finger from his throat. Then, with a powerful flick of her wrist, she twisted his head back on his neck, ignoring his moan of discomfort, and stared intently into his eyes.

  Gagging, sweating with horror, his gaze was drawn into the black eyes, unable to resist her probing of his mind. In what seemed like mere moments, she cackled loudly, then crooned in triumph.

  “Duuuvaaalll—paaaiiinnn!”

  That mind-boggling word, “pain,” hung in the air between them, like the throaty growl of a tigress.

  Once more, she reached deep into his throat with her finger. Nausea rose in him, causing his back to arch off the floor of the cave. He thought it would drive him crazy, but then gradually it subsided. Then she removed her finger from his throat and he felt her search his pockets. She held his cell phone in her hands, staring at it with a look of fury.

  “Hey . . . it’s just a phone!”

  Wheeling about again, she headed away toward the fire, whipping up clouds of dust with the wide hem of her skirts.

  He inhaled the excrement of insects and spiders from the billowing dust.

  Without warning, she turned upon him once again, her heavy head jutting forward, the grimy finger poking aggressively into his face. “Duvaaaal aaassskkks—yeeesss! Duvaaaal seeessss—noooo!”

  What was that supposed to mean?

  His head jerked away from her finger, while he continued to search for some meaning in the depths of those black eyes.

  The finger, the eyes too, motioned to one side; he understood this to indicate the outside world. He heard a rattling sound from deep in her chest, a warning, as if the meaning was in the sound.

  “Cha-teh-teh-teh-teh-teh!”

  The grotesque finger was making darting signs at his heart.

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Cha-teh-teh-teh-teh-teh!”

  “I’m in some kind of danger?”

  “Daaannngggerrr!” Her growl deepened, as if it rose out of the very bowels of the earth.

  “What danger?”

  Her eyes sprang wide open, the darkness in them glittering. Then she reached out and her finger appeared to brush against his mind. Peace overcame him. It was a wonderful feeling. He guessed, judging by the cries and sighs surrounding him, that she was doing something very similar for his friends. Alan was relieved to drift into a deep and restful sleep.

  When Alan woke, feeling refreshed, the old woman was approaching him with a rolling movement on her widely spaced legs, her head thrown back and her tongue, as green as mold, poking out between grimy stumps of teeth. She was carrying the pot of foul-smelling gruel she had been stewing earlier, dumping it onto the dirt in front of him. She dipped a filthy clay bowl into it and brought it to his mouth.

  “SSSlllluuuurrrrppptltltl!”

  She made spittle-flecked sounds, while flicking her tongue over her lips, all the while studying him with her eagle eyes. Doing his best to overcome his revulsion, he brought his lips to the edge of the cup.

  He gagged with nausea.

  “Uuuummmsssslllluuurrrpppp!”

  Her tongue licked over her teeth.

  “Uuummmhhh!”

  She forced the cup to his mouth once more, making more of those lip-smacking sounds, intermixed with growls. He tried again but it only ended with retching and coughing. He jerked his head away.

  Her black eyes blinked a single contemplative blink, then held him in a belligerent confrontation, with her finger reaching toward his mouth.

  “No!” He gritted his teeth.

  “Aaaarrgghhh!”

  She whirled away in a fury, vanishing with impossible speed from the circle of firelight. He could hear the echoes of her grumbles chasing one another along what sounded like a maze of tunnels.

  “What in hell’s going on?”

  Alan turned his bewildered face to his friends, made visible by a sudden brightening of the fire. The vault of the cave was high, much higher than he would have imagined. In other circumstances he would have thought it awesomely beautiful. But he knew they were not alone. The shadow thing had to be somewhere nearby. And there were sounds in the dark beyond the reaches of firelight: faint hisses, sighs, cracklings, the dripping of water, the suggestions of whispers. He thought he glimpsed other shapes out of the corners of his eyes, sinewy movements that seemed to glissade along walls, floor and ceiling, independent of gravity or the laws of nature. Then suddenly he could smell the fact she was back even before he could see her. She was standing over Mark, whose leather jacket she had somehow spirited into her grimy hands. To the accompaniment of low-pitched garglings and burblings, her fingers were reaching into the pockets.

  “Stop that! Leave my things alone!”

  “Huummmmphhh!”

  She inspected the harmonica, then tossed it into the dirt. Mark scrabbled over on hands and knees to get it back. She discovered Alan’s silver flask, still half-full of Padraig’s poteen. Sniffing at the screw-top, she discarded the cap and held the flask to her nose. She tasted the contents, her tongue lapping around the neck.

  Her eyes bulged out of her face.

  “Bag lady likes poteen!”

  Alan ignored Mark, staring in nervous fascination.

  With a growl of satisfaction the old woman inverted the small flask over her broad, fissured lips, her tongue making lapping sounds as she swallowed the contents in a single draught. She trumped a loud, long resonant fart.

  “Ooh—gross!” came a chorus of exclamations.

  Alan murmured, “I think she’s been taking lessons from you, Mark!”

  The old woman gazed at the now empty flask. She secreted it away in some pocket of her dress. Then she came to Alan and held out her hand, growling.

  “What does she want?”

  Kate urged him, “Give her your phone!”

  “Why should I?”

  “The phones don’t work here anyway. And they frighten her.” Kate searched for her own cell phone, finally holding it out at arm’s length. “You too, Mark. It’s lying right next to you, where Alan left it.”

  Mark complained, “It still has my music in it!”

  Alan muttered, “That’s the only goddamn blessing.”

  With a croak, the old woman snatched the three phones from their hands and stuffed them into a pocket of her dress before shuffling back to squat by the fire. She retrieved the silver flask from another pocket and coddled the gleaming silver, her finger chasing the embossed outline of the eagle that decorated the front surface, turning it over and over mere inches from her eyes. She began to sway and croon over the dancing flames, then calmly, as if it were nothing unusual, she leaned forward and pressed the flask into the fire.

  The flames erupted much higher, spitting and flaring in what was now a crackling furnace. Though her back was half-turned to him, Alan could see that she had no fear of being burned as she pressed her cupped hands deep into the flames. She was crooning happily, her body swaying from side to side, as she performed a series of molding caresses with her hands.

  In amazement, he watched her lift something out of the fire. What had been the flask was now shiny and molten, in the process of being coaxed and transformed in her hands. Its elements were woven with the elements of fire, with added ingredients of charcoal and sand—and even her own spit—until it appeared to move within her fingers, as if imbued with life.

  There was a chorus of gasps from the watching faces. Kate put her arm around Alan’s shoulder.

/>   A tiny bald eagle, as bright as the sun, beat its wings within the cradle of her splayed fingers. It rose several feet into the air, the brilliance of its fluttering wings reflected in the dark eyes that beheld it.

  Catching his breath, Alan watched the eagle settle back with a gentle grace within the cage of her fingers. Then she closed her hands over it, reforging its elements to become a goblet, whorled with blue and silver. Finally, with a circular friction of her finger that set up a melody of harmonics, she finished the bowl with a perfectly lipped edge.

  “Muh-muh-muh-magic!” Mo whispered.

  Immersed in her act of creation, she warbled from deep within her chest before applying a final smoothing gloss by licking the goblet inside and out with her tongue. Then she held it aloft, reveling in the rainbow sparkle of its luminescence, a sudden brilliant glow that eddied and coruscated over the walls and ceiling of her cave.

  Alan’s voice was guttural with shock. “Who—or what—are you?”

  In her sudden glower, in her croon of triumph, they all heard what sounded like a name: “Graaannneee Dewwww.”

  “Granny Dew—is that what we call you?”

  “Duuuvaaalll!” She was mocking him again in that gravelly voice, while polishing the goblet on the murky folds of her dress. “A biiirrrddd siiingggsss.”

  Against the mockery of her reply, he felt foolish and ignorant, but he was determined to find out more. “What kind of a place is this, Granny Dew? Where are we?”

  A crinkle of amusement lifted the corners of her eyes at his use of her name. She thrust the goblet deep into the simmering pot, removed it now brimming with the oily liquid, and then, in a whirl of uninterrupted movement, she brought it purposefully against his lips. This time he found himself unable to refuse it. He drank the lot in a series of gulps, ignoring the nausea. The potion had a wilder, deeper taste than leaves or roots, or even herbs. There was a taste of fungi, with gristly bits, which seemed to creep and crawl in his mouth in a way he just didn’t want to think about. The gruel tingled on his tongue. It slithered down his throat, expanding to fill every corner and hollow in his gut.