by Tom Deitz
He’d been pinned by a college boy!
Grunting, he dug his elbows into the ground and twisted—hard. Red-hair flipped off him. Half-dazed and panting, Calvin struggled to his feet, snatching up his sticks as he rose.
Following the shouting showed him that the Na Hollo captain had caught the ball on the fly and was dashing toward the goal, short legs pumping like pistons. Rifle Runningbear was closing on him, though. Gregory wasn’t going to make it.…
But he did!—was through the goal. Rifle caught him there and slammed him to the ground. Which meant the Na Hollo either had to escape or get the ball to a teammate to bring it out again. Neither seemed likely, as body after body flung themselves into the fray. The saplings shuddered, bent beneath the press of flesh. The Na Hollo with the long braid dropped his sticks and hauled on a Bauchenbaugh in hopes of freeing his captain. One of the Wolftown boys jogged around and was probing somewhere near the Na Hollo captain’s head.
Suddenly he stepped back, raised his sticks—and threw—just as a small blond guy laid him low.
And the ball was coming straight toward Calvin, who was—almost—alone in midfield.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Red-hair on an intercept course with either himself or the ball. Calvin was closer, ran faster. He grabbed at the ball and missed, saw it roll along the ground toward the crowd. He chased it. Red-hair was right behind, with members of both teams charging up fast. Calvin made a grab, barely touched it, but accidentally spun it even closer to the crowd. He grimaced, steeled himself for impact, yelled “Look out!” mostly from reflex.
He had it then, prisoned in his sticks. But there were too many people around for him to escape. Desperate, he spun in place and flung the ball back toward mid-field—just as Red-hair piled into him again. He toppled backward, felt his shoulders scrape the ground. Saw sky, then feet, then mostly stars. “Sorry,” Red-hair panted, scrambling off him—primarily for the sake of the startled tourists, he imagined.
Calvin found himself lying on his back surrounded by spectators. He remained where he was for a moment, gasping, regaining both breath and equilibrium, as he heard the tide of play surge away once more.
Abruptly, a face swung into view above him—a familiar face. He squinted at it, puzzled—then had a chill. It was the weird-looking guy he’d seen before! The one with the disturbing eyes. And those eyes were staring—not at him, but at the uktena scale plainly visible on his bare chest!
The man’s mouth opened, as though he were on the verge of speaking, but something clicked in Calvin, and he sprang up again. Red-hair was waiting on him at the margin of the crowd, looking concerned. If Calvin went out, so did he.
A point had been scored, apparently; probably by Casey Cooper. The teams were regrouping in midfield—raggedly, though. Not everyone had to be present. Calvin jogged that way, and for the third time in as many minutes saw the ball rise, fall, then sail directly his way.
He batted it to the ground, ran toward it, with Red-hair right behind, racing a middle-sized blond in a buckskin breechclout—Frank, he thought his name was.
Calvin reached it first, extended a stick. Flipped the ball up, felt it thump into his hand. His fingers closed on it. He ran…
And was lifted from the ground….
For an instant he floated there, oblivious to gravity. And then he fell—hard—aided perhaps by Blondie’s arms. He’d been bodyslammed.
But he still had the ball! He tried to fling it away, but someone was kneeling on his arm. He twisted, felt pain in his back and shoulders, knew a muscle had pulled, but managed to roll over just as a heavy body piled onto his back. More joined it quickly: half a ton of young male muscle grinding around on top of him. It was hard to breathe. If they didn’t get off soon…
Something was digging into his chest, too: something hard and sharp. He felt it slice into his sternum, knew by the gush of warmth that he was bleeding. And the world was getting dim, as the pressure on his chest grew too great.
Dammit! This wasn’t right! You weren’t supposed to pile on this hard and this long! Where was Kirk? He was supposed to stop stuff like this!
But he couldn’t escape.… Not as man, he couldn’t. But if he were smaller…
Another body hit somewhere above. The pain bit into his chest. Calvin’s awareness narrowed. Out, he wanted out! And to do that…
’Possum? Squirrel? ’Coon?
Pain wracked him; his body spasmed. Something very far away remembered and screamed No! His arms felt odd, especially the one with something hard in it. It drew back. The thing rolled free.
And the weight diminished. Shouts filled the air. The weight was…gone.
Air hit Calvin’s lungs.
He dragged in breath after breath. Felt his cutoffs oddly loose.
And almost screamed—for he had glimpsed his arm: shorter than it should be and covered with thick dark fur. “Jesus!” he gasped—and flung himself back to the ground, grinding the uktena scale into his flesh once more, feeding it on his blood as he thought desperately, Man, man, man!
Pain again, and a stretching—and then darkness.… The next thing he knew, hands were easing into his armpits, and he was being moved.
He opened his eyes, saw Kirkwood looking at him with an odd mix of concern, curiosity, and—almost—fear. “Cut up chest and maybe cracked ribs, cuz,” he said shortly. “You’re not playin’ anymore today. Sorry.”
“Tonight…?” Calvin was desperate enough to counter.
Kirk’s face went even grimmer. “Very definitely yes,” he muttered. “After what I just saw—or thought I did—no way I’m lettin’ you escape now!”
“What’d you see?” Calvin managed, as blackness once more hovered near.
“Something I hope nobody else saw!”
But as a pair of unknown Cherokee carried him from the field toward a waiting van, Calvin glimpsed one particular face among the nameless crowd: the guy with the odd eyes, staring at him—speculatively.
Unconsciousness, he concluded, was better.
Chapter VIII: Recompense and Revelation
(north of Qualla Boundary—Sunday, June 17—2:00 A.M.)
“Sorry to be such a pill,” Calvin grunted as he eased into a more comfortable position in the armchair Kirk had dragged onto the porch for him hours earlier. As the last set of taillights winked out behind the walnut trees, the yard faded to a plain of moonlit dimness surrounded by mountains of laurel, with the banked embers of a bonfire still glimmering and smoking out past the steps like a baleful red eye—which was not a comforting image. In the ranch house up the hill a single light still shone in a bedroom. He resented it: it upset the ambience, like a chaperone at a party—which in a sense it had been. But he was damned grateful for it, too, because it was in Kirkwood’s parents’ place, and therefore belonged to Calvin’s own aunt and uncle. The ones who suffered their crazy college-educated son to live in a handbuilt cabin on the lawn and who gave him no grief when—like tonight—he hosted the forty-nine: the post-ball game party.
“Huh?” Kirkwood asked with a start.
“I said I was sorry to be such a pill.”
“I’m the one who oughta be sorry.” Kirk sighed as he nudged Winford the beagle aside in order to clear a phalanx of beer bottles from the path to the door. More ranked around it—everywhere Calvin looked, in fact; unopened and empty, both. A couple even camped behind his chair, though not of his consuming. Tempting though it might have been, especially tonight, Calvin still abstained.
“I’m the one who thought he could wind this thing up at a reasonable hour,” Kirk continued. He sighed again, gave up on the bottles, and slumped down in the rocker next to Calvin’s. “I should’ve known better. God knows I’ve been around enough Indians and anthropologists to know what kind of partiers they are! And put the two together—wow!”
“Those guys were anthropologists? The Na Hollos?”
Kirk nodded and sipped absently from a bottle of Corona. “Most of ’em were. Couple of
art majors, some microbiologists, of all things. Forestry, journalism—grown-ups. You name it.”
Calvin chuckled—then winced and grunted again. That had hurt!
Kirk noticed it and scowled. “So…how are you? You got back from gettin’ poked and prodded just as the party kicked in. I kinda missed the full report.”
“The full report was that I’m shaken, cut up, and cracked, but not concussed or broken—and have a torso mummified with Ace bandages to prove it. Specifically, I’ve got two cracked ribs and a pair of oddly healed gashes in my chest—which I shouldn’t have! Other than that, I’m healthy as an ox, ’cept that I’ve got some symptoms of stress—which I knew.”
“Well, gee, man,” Kirk said contritely, “I really am sorry about all that. I shouldn’t have made you play.”
Calvin shrugged, then realized that his kinsman had probably interpreted his comment as an accusation—which it wasn’t. “It was the right thing to do,” he replied. “Favor for favor, and all that.”
“At least you gave the team a rallyin’ point. Shoot, those Georgia boys were out for blood!”
“Girls, too. There were girls, too.”
“We beat ’em, though. Boys and girls. Barely.”
A pause. Then, from Calvin: “That’s not what I meant, though.”
“About what?”
“About how I shouldn’t have been hurt like that.”
Kirk regarded him curiously through tired eyes. “So is this, like, it, then? Are we on the edge of the big ’un?”
“If you’re up for it. I had a nap; you didn’t.”
“Gimme a sec to whip up some coffee?”
“Any munchies left?”
“Oughta be.” And with that, Kirk polished off the beer he’d been nursing and disappeared inside.
Calvin leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, trying to muster his thoughts. Before he’d even begun, though, Kirk was back—with a bag of Ruffles and an enormous mug of what proved to be very black and strong coffee. Calvin sampled it. “Jesus, man; this’d dissolve a friggin’ spoon!”
Kirk laughed softly. “So maybe it’ll keep a…wizard awake?”
A wary chuckle—and another wince. “If that’s what I am.”
“You tell me.”
Calvin shook his head. “Why don’t you tell me what you saw—or thought you did—first.”
Kirk rolled his eyes and sipped his coffee. He didn’t look at Calvin, rather gazed out at the lawn. “I’m…not sure,” he began carefully. “But what I thought I saw when I finally whipped that bunch of guys off you, was… Well, it looked like your whole body was startin’ to shrink, and your arm—which was all I got a good look at—was all drawn up and…and gettin’ furry!”
“And then?”
A shrug. “I blinked, you groaned, and were back to normal.”
Calvin fished down the front of his T-shirt and dragged out the uktena scale on its thong. Even in the half-light it gleamed: the size of his palm and roughly triangular, milky-clear save at the tips of two of the three points, which were red as blood. Carefully, and with more than a bit of trepidation, he slipped it over his head and passed it to his cousin. “Know what this is?”
Kirk took it, held it in the light streaming out from the window. “Can’t say for sure, but if I had to make a stab in the dark, I’d say it was…some kinda fish scale.”
Calvin smiled. “Half right.”
“Which half?”
“It’s a scale—but not from a fish.”
Kirk eyed him skeptically. “You’re not sayin’…”
Calvin nodded. “’Fraid so, cuz. That little bit of vitreous protein you’re holdin’ is probably one of the three or four most valuable things on this planet.”
“I think I’ll let you explain why.”
“’Cause at one extreme it represents a challenge to physics as we know it, ’specially the law of conservation of matter and energy.”
“And a la otra mano?”
“It’s proof that what most folks call the supernatural really exists.”
“You’re shittin’ me!”
“I wouldn’t even be tellin’ you, ’cept that it’s part of a larger problem I can’t resolve on my own—which is why I’m here. Oh, there’re a couple other folks I can talk to, sure—and I’m goin’ to. But you’re the only one who knows enough about our people to help me do what’s right from that point of view.”
“Some folks’d say it’s the only point of view.”
“And some folks’d say there’s no such thing as magic.”
“What do you say?”
Calvin’s reply was a sip of coffee. Then: “I say that I’d like to know what you’d say if I was to take that scale, and cut myself with it hard enough to draw blood, and wished to be an animal—it has to be something I’ve eaten, so that I can absorb the genetic imprint; and I have to have in some sense hunted it, which I think has something to do with adrenaline either priming or fixing the pattern—and then turned into that animal.”
“Sounds like fun,” Kirk replied nervously, but his eyes were dead serious.
“Not hardly!” Calvin snorted as he retrieved the scale. “It hurts like hell for one thing; and you have to concentrate all the time to remind your self you’re human. See, the animal instincts kinda have to kick in to ensure survival. But they want to override—which you have to let ’em do if you’re gonna fly, say—assuming you’re a bird, which I have been. Never mind that the smaller you go and the further from primate, or especially mammal, the less space there is in the brain for you, simply ’cause there’re fewer brain cells available—which means you run a higher risk of forgettin’ who you are and bein’ trapped in that shape forever.”
“Ah,” Kirk mused, “I see. It scares you to turn, never mind those bigger issues you were talkin’ about—and when you get down to it, most folks err on the side of self-preservation.”
“Right.”
“So how does this relate to your wounds not healing?”
Another shrug. “Normally when I get hurt and then shift, the injuries vanish when I change back. I guess the reason they didn’t this time is ’cause I didn’t shift entirely.”
Kirk exhaled heavily. “My cuz, the coverboy for the National Enquirer!”
“Better make that National Wildlife!”
“Field and Stream?”
“And prob’ly Playgirl as well!”
“Playgirl?”
“Your clothes don’t shift with you—nothin’ that’s not in your genes does. Which means you tend to wind up naked in odd places.”
Kirk laughed out loud. “I’ll bet you do!”
Calvin looked glum. “It also means my tattoo’s fadin’—the old one, anyway—and that something that was…ahem…snipped off when I was a wee lad’s growin’ back.”
“I won’t even ask.”
“Aw shucks, I was hopin’ I’d get to show you.”
Another sip of coffee. “Okay, then. So why don’t you tell me the whole thing? I get a sense I’m gettin’ ahead of the game.”
Calvin sighed, took a long swallow of coffee. “Okay, man, well, it’s like this…”
For the next hour Calvin told his cousin the whole tale of his magical adventures, from the time he’d first met David Sullivan and his Faery friend, Fionchadd, two summers back, through his journey to Galunlati, his fight with the uktena, and Uki’s taking him on as apprentice. Nor did he neglect the war in Faerie which had affected the sun in Galunlati, and how he’d inadvertently let Spearfinger into this world. He continued with a detailed account of Spearfinger’s tracking of him, which had allowed her to kill four people, including his father. And concluded with his promise to Brock, Gary Hudson’s wedding, and the subsequent war-naming ceremony.
Kirk remained quiet throughout, listening intently, and only speaking to ask clarifying questions.
Eventually Calvin fell silent. “That’s about it.” He sighed. “Except for the stuff I actually came here to ask about.”
>
Kirk’s eyes were huge. “Like, what you told me already’s not enough?”
Calvin shook his head. “’Fraid not—and I have to ask you to keep that under your hat.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I know where you live, I can shapeshift, and if I chase you down and sample your blood, I can steal your shape, so who’d even know?”
“You’d do that?”
“I devoutly hope not. But I could. I suppose I would if I had to…for the good of the world.”
“Shit!”
“A crock of which this is!”
“So what about the statue of your buddy that Spear-finger made and sent to get him? What became of that?”
“It…collapsed. Just fell away to its component parts. As best I can tell, Uki used the magic in it to breach the World Walls when he zapped us off to Galunlati. But that’s not why I came, cuz. This has all been to give you background on the thing that’s buggin’ me. Two things, actually.”
“So shoot.”
“More coffee?”
“Fine.”
Two minutes later, Calvin dived in again. “Okay, then,” he said. “I told you about that kid, Brock, right? The one I promised to teach one piece of magic? Well, I’ve got about two days before that comes due, and I don’t know what to do!”
“What do you want to do?”
“I knew you’d ask that!”
“Then why’d you come?”
“To absolve myself of guilt, I reckon. But to answer your question: my head tells me to stand the kid up and write off that friendship as too risky.”
“And your heart?”
“It says I’ve gotta go through with it. It says magic carries an obligation to use it right. But along with that comes the responsibility to do everything right. Never to fuck up, in other words. To always do the right thing, ’cause if you don’t, you’re liable to find yourself in a bad situation, and if that happens, you’re more likely to use magic—which always causes trouble.”
“So you’re sayin’ one should only use magic for good?” Kirk countered, gnawing a finger. “That’s not Cherokee. We say that you can’t separate magic from the rest of reality, as I’m sure you know. That the whole world’s suffused with magic, that you can’t get away from it, and that everybody uses it, just like any other art or skill—including stuff that might be good for one person but not another. See, every hunter used huntin’ songs and such as that. And the myths are full of shape-shifters. Traditionally, you wouldn’t be that special.”