The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers)

by Frank P. Ryan

  Alan felt weak and light-headed as he watched, without hope of understanding, the old woman return to the fire and refill the goblet. He was unable to drag his eyes away as she brought the goblet to Kate and Mark in turn, all the while cackling with glee as she invited them to drink the gruel from a vessel born out of magic.

  Strange Comforting

  Mo had always been able to sense an aura about people, one of those qualities that Grimstone loathed about her. And now, in the cave, she sensed that there was a very powerful aura about the old woman, if she was human at all, that reminded Mo of an experiment with magnets that her teacher had once conducted in science class at school. The teacher had put the pole of a magnet under a piece of paper and sprinkled iron filings on top of the paper. When she tapped the paper with her finger the iron filings had lined up along the lines of magnetic force, all around the focus of the pole of the magnet underneath. The old woman’s aura was something like that; it was as if she was the focus of immense lines of force—lines of power. So it was, dry-mouthed with nervousness, that Mo watched as her three friends were lulled into sleep by the gruel. Only then did Granny Dew extract the cell phones she had secreted away in the folds of her dress, and study them once again in the firelight. How closely she pored over the phones, showing the same fascination she had shown earlier with the silver flask, sniffing at each phone individually and peering closely into the face of its owner, all the while whispering in those strange, growly cadences.

  Mo wished, desperately, that she knew what was going on. She’d felt decidedly strange since crossing into this world and now that sense of strangeness grew as Granny Dew finally turned her attentions to her.

  In Mo’s case there was no phone to be examined. Instead the old woman did something entirely unexpected, coming across to pick Mo up into her arms and carry her over to the fireside. Here, ignoring the goblet, she scooped a bare hand deep into the pot and carried the gruel to Mo in this personal cradle, crooning softly as she pressed it to her lips. Mo didn’t dare to resist. She gulped down the earthy liquid until only an oily sheen of wetness was left on those grimy fingers. Nor did she resist when Granny Dew laid her head against her cobwebby breast, crooning softly.

  Mo had often wondered if her real mother, her biological mother, had ever held her to her breast. She would have had plenty of opportunity to do so since she hadn’t abandoned Mo until she was eleven months old. According to Grimstone, the date October 31 had been scrawled in felt-tip pen on the skin of her arm, so that he never tired of informing her that All Hallow’s Eve, or probably the more paganish Halloween, was her birthday.

  Whoever had abandoned her, whether it had been her real mother or someone else, they hadn’t even taken the trouble to wash her clean. Mo knew this too because Bethal frequently reminded her of it. Bethal took a delight in pointing out that a mother who couldn’t even be bothered to wash her baby was hardly the sort to caress her, or croon over her. Not that there was any doubt in Bethal’s mind as to the reason why. Bethal would haul her up in front of the mirror and show her why she had been unloved from the very moment of her birth. There was no loving or caressing the product of sin. But now, curled up against that strange cobwebby breast, Mo felt strangely comforted by Granny Dew.

  Lifting up her gaze, Mo looked deep into those all-black pupils. What she sensed there caused tears to gather in her own eyes, which she blinked away, but all the while she just wanted this feeling to go on and on and never stop. She closed her eyes as Granny Dew stroked the skin of her face, brushing back the fallen fringe of her hair, crooning softly and occasionally singing a word or a phrase in a language so guttural that Mo could not imagine what it meant . . .

  “Meeerrrraaa . . .

  Arrrrrryynnnn . . . Arrrrrryynnnn

  Aaaarrrrrggggghhhh!”

  Alan woke from his daze to a sharp crack on his shins. He saw that the fire was down to its embers and that his friends were being woken up in similar fashion. There was no longer any mystery about the whereabouts of the spear. Granny Dew held it in her right hand, while in her left she gripped a torch, with flames at least a foot high. All four climbed shakily to their feet—those who did so too slowly receiving a second rap on the shins from the spear shaft—before they were assembled, looking bewildered and brushing moss from their clothes.

  Granny Dew brought the spear around in a wide arc and then pointed forward in an unmistakable gesture.

  “Cha-teh-teh-teh-teh-teh!”

  She led them out of the chamber, down a steep descent, step by step into a winding tunnel. At times she seemed to force a way through solid rock that creaked and groaned in protest at their passage. Alan’s ears caught the murmuring of water deep underground, and his nostrils sniffed the mustiness of rot and damp, and as they bore deeper, the stink of sulphur. Yet all the while the solid rock appeared to open up before that strange squat figure, trailing her cataract of frosted hair in the storm of her progress as she scurried through her protesting underworld, rapping out her purpose with the spear.

  They rested from time to time, although it seemed to Alan that it was more for their benefit than their guide’s aged bones. He heard echoes, as if her snarls were being answered by forces within the mountain. At other times her shadow, cast by the torch, would expand to gigantic proportions and her cackle, reverberating about the massive walls, would rumble in her wake like thunder.

  It was easy to lose track of time and distance. But he gauged they must have traveled deep into the roots of the mountains. Here at the center of the labyrinth of caves the old woman led them into a chamber whose walls glittered with reflections, like a hall of mirrors. Suddenly the light of her torch flared and every mouth dropped open. The sight simply took their breath away.

  The walls, floor and ceiling were carved out of crystals of every color and shade. Even Mo, despite her fascination with crystals, could not even begin to name them, since there was such a proliferation of shapes, textures and hues. High above them, stalactites as fine as straw trailed down from the ceiling, their surfaces dazzling with glints and sparkles as if they were studded with diamonds. But the old woman ignored the beauty that surrounded them, pausing to squat on the crystal floor before a lake of sulphurous lava.

  They abandoned their whispering to watch her reach into the depths of those spidery rags and find the goblet. Once again, in the creative weave of her hands, the vessel metamorphosed into the glowing eagle.

  “Aw, man!” Alan sighed in a mixture of bewilderment and awe, watching it rise up out of its living cage to spiral for a moment before making a fluttering descent into the spitting lava. With her left hand, Granny Dew reached back into the folds of her dress, bringing out Alan’s cell phone. All of their gazes followed the descent of the old woman’s left hand into the yellow-spuming furnace. Still holding the phone immersed in the lava, with her right hand she beckoned to Alan, demanding that he should come over to join her. Alan backed away with all of the others.

  “Duuuvaaalll—paaahhh!” She grabbed hold of his reluctant right hand, prying open his fingers and then dashing them into the sulphur.

  Clenching his teeth in anticipation of scorching heat, he was startled instead to encounter an icy cold. He yanked his hand out. Red light spilled out in rays and darts from between the fingers of his clenched fist. When he opened them there was an oval ruby as large as a bantam’s egg in his palm. Granny Dew was nodding her head and growling incantations.

  “Quuurrruuunnn!”

  He stared at the glowing gemstone, the light of which cast shapes and gyrations into the air about it, fathomless creations that melded and writhed in his vision as if forever on the point of producing something even more wonderful. Granny Dew reached deep into her voluminous dress and retrieved the two remaining cell phones. With sudden snatches, she took, in turn, Kate’s hand and then Mark’s, pressing their phones back into each reluctant grasp. Each hand, with its phone, was dashed into the sulphurous yellow furnace to emerge holding a glowing egg-shaped cr
ystal. Kate’s had a soft green matrix speckled with shifting autumnal shades of gold, while Mark’s was black as obsidian in which tiny arabesques of silver appeared to glisten and pulsate.

  For Mo there was none.

  Standing back, Mo watched as each of her friends in turn drew his or her crystal from the glowing furnace. She could only wonder at the shock it seemed to induce in its new owner, observing how her friends’ eyes glazed over as they came into contact with their crystals amid Granny Dew’s incantations. Alan’s eyes were already closed as the old woman, consumed by a new purpose, took the ruby egg from his grasp. She inspected the stork mark on his brow and scratched at it with the long fingernail until she was rewarded by a trickle of blood.

  Mo was terrified of what might happen. She grabbed at the wrist of the old woman. “Nuh-nuh-nuh-no! Puh-puh-please!”

  The left hand of Granny Dew caressed Mo’s brow, as if reassuring her, while she closed her eyes and cackled some hymnal cadences, hatching some strange new magic within herself.

  Mo sensed that she was the sole enraptured audience as, by the same mysterious force of will, Granny Dew transformed the ruby into a repository of her own energy. She saw how the features of Granny Dew’s face, grotesquely distorted by the rays and spangles of light that burst through the cradle of her enfolded clasp, turned colder and grayer as the ruby increased in power. The light grew even more brilliantly incandescent, illuminating the bones of those gnarled fingers. Mo couldn’t drag her eyes away from this new vision. Suddenly, the old woman pressed the ruby against Alan’s bleeding brow.

  He came out of his trance with a scream.

  Mo took hold of Alan’s hand. At the touch, she felt an immense wave of power coursing through him. But Granny Dew pulled their hands apart. She shook her head, gazing down into Mo’s eyes with a glare of caution before returning her attention to Alan.

  “Duuuvaaalll aaassskkks! Duuuvaaalll sees!”

  Mo pleaded. “Puh-puh-puh-please . . . Yuh-yuh-you muh-muh-must suh-suh-suh-stop.”

  But the old woman paid her no heed. She wheeled away, satisfied that her work was now done. Growling, she woke the others out of their trances with prods and taps of the spear shaft, like a schoolteacher exasperated by a class of lazy pupils. Her power and strength were ferocious and they gave up any pretense of fighting back. The four friends could only follow her onrushing figure for what appeared to be miles through the groaning walls of stone until they arrived at a new cave, close enough to the surface for them to feel the biting cold. With an impatient wheeze she tapped her knobbly index finger against Kate’s and Mark’s hands, each still grasping the crystal eggs, then pointed to Alan’s still-bleeding brow in which the ruby crystal was implanted.

  They stared back at her in fright.

  With a shake of her head, Granny Dew hammered the base of the spear against the floor of the cave. It provoked an explosion of sound, deep under foot, as if a peal of thunder was passing through the very grains of the rock.

  Still muttering her impatience she tapped around the floor and walls, eliciting a flurry of spidery movement—and shrieks from the four friends. From the floor, walls and ceiling, the cave was invaded by armies of spiders. Myriad spinnerets wove cloaks about them, made from the same cobwebby material as the old woman’s dress, the living edges expanding rapidly over their heads until each of them was cloaked from head to toe in a mantle of living lace. Mo, Kate and Mark all found themselves staring at each other from holes they had poked through for their startled eyes. Even Alan shuddered, although he already felt warmed by his own body heat inside the creepy mantle. He established that he could at least breathe through it. Reaching up with shaky hands, he copied the others by poking two slits for his eyes to peer out of.

  Within minutes, they found themselves outside in the bitter cold, the driving snow settling over their thick new coverings. As if with a will of their own, their legs began to shuffle forward, so they formed a small single-file line, trudging like clockwork mannequins down from the mountain.

  Alan even thought he heard a tick-tock in his head that beat time with his legs.

  Mark was the first to rouse from the automatic trudging, many hours later. He was still heading downslope through the blizzard. Seeing no one ahead of him, he felt a momentary stab of panic. But he was not alone. A glance behind confirmed that the others were following behind him in what appeared to be an animated stupor, so camouflaged with snow it was as if minuscule fragments of the landscape were on the move.

  Snow gusted about him. It blew into his eyes. Even where the snow could not penetrate, the cold did, searing his nostrils and his gaping, breathless mouth. The cold—the anguish of it, pierced his skin and stiffened his muscles underneath. But it no longer troubled him. Anger—rage—was the force that drove him on. He had learned the lesson of rage long ago, when it had enabled him to survive life in the Grimstone household. And now he took refuge in his rage. His exhausted legs drew strength from it to make another step, another ten, a hundred yards. A series of hundred-yard intervals and—as Alan might have declared, “Hey, man!”—it was another mile.

  Had he dreamed that stuff back there in the cave?

  No, he didn’t think so, tightening his fist about the jet-black crystal. Boy, did it feel hard and heavy, yet coursed with some weird inner power. He squeezed it and identified with it, enduring the continuing shock of what felt like static electricity. The bag lady had also given them something in the gruel. The gruel had given them the strength to make this journey. But here in the snow it was he and not Alan who was the leader. It was he who had decided there could be no resting. Because he knew, absolutely, that if they stopped for a rest they would fold over and die.

  Under the spiderweb mantle he patted the shape of the harmonica in his coat pocket, recalling how he had first acquired it.

  It had been six years ago, when he was nine years old. A bad time at home. It had been some tramp, a man with straggly fair hair like his own, and about the right age to be his father, who had bumped into him in the rain-washed street. The tramp had pushed the harmonica into his hands. It had been early evening, in winter, and Mark remembered the tramp’s face, illuminated by the harsh yellow glare of the streetlight, with absolute clarity. He remembered the haunted look in his eyes—that had impressed him, and the fact he hadn’t asked for money. Actually he never said a word. Mark remembered how Grimstone had reacted to finding the harmonica in his possession, squeezing the story out of him with a terrible beating. Mark had derived a perverse, if painful, pleasure from the look in Grimstone’s eyes when he had described the tramp.

  Grimstone had broken Mark’s wrist, twisting his arm in order to tear the harmonica from him. The broken wrist had made it all the more awkward for him when, with Mo standing guard, he had climbed out of the bedroom window before dawn and sneaked out to the dustbin to reclaim the harmonica. He had taken great care to keep it hidden from Arseless ever since, coming to see it as his most precious possession, taking care to practice playing it only when he was far away from the house.

  That memory—the sweetness of it—kept him going for another mile. But his tired legs needed new things to be angry about, new hungers . . .

  Hunger—that felt like the right word for it. But he wasn’t really thinking about food. He was beyond any hunger for food.

  Tick-tock . . . tick-tock. The clock in his head beat time with his legs.

  Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

  Suddenly he pitched headfirst into snow, deep snow, as if he were falling into a cloud of bitter, threatening cold within a paranoid dream. Still he dragged himself up, sitting first, resting on his arms, then pushing himself onto his haunches before climbing back onto his legs.

  The thing is, it’s up to me. I’m the leader! Got to do it . . . no slacking. Just got to keep moving!

  He shook his head, within the cowl of webs. Blinked his eyes.

  That bloody never-ending snow!

  There was too much of it. He hated the bastard
, the way it just kept shitting down on him out of the sky. He hated the way it stuck to him, sucking the heat from his head and shoulders even through the spiderweb mantle. He felt it strike back at him in a series of heavy, solid blows. His eyes swiveled upward to glimpse the green patches from which the big clumps of snow were falling.

  Green!

  He looked up again. Saw pine needles.

  I made it . . . I made it to the trees!

  He tried to laugh but ended up tottering for support against a branch. His contact shook the tree, shaking more snow down on his head.

  Don’t stop, stupid! Get a move on . . .

  Tick-tock . . .

  A mistake, that. Should never have stopped. His legs were a lot more wobbly now. Yet still he discovered the rage to keep on trudging, the air wheezing out of his open mouth like exhausted bellows, his breath freezing to a mask of ice in the cobwebs over his cheeks and chin.

  Blinking again . . . his eyes trying to make sense of what he was looking at. . . . It seemed that he had wandered into the sea.

  No, not the sea . . .

  What it is, stupid, is just more snow! A whole flat field of it!

  He peered again.

  No—not snow. More like the sea and the snow have become one . . .

  As in the slow motion of a never-ending dream, he trudged on, his feet numb with cold so he couldn’t feel them hit the ground beneath him. It really was a disorientating feeling. He was gliding over a still sea in which dark shapes were floating, yet perfectly motionless.

  Boats. Wooden boats . . .

  A fleet of wooden boats was floating on this sea of ice in this world of perfect stillness. They wheeled and spiraled about him.

  And then his heart thudded with alarm as a strange face appeared above him, a ludicrously impossible face. The face was on top of a huge shaggy body and it was peering down at him.