by Tom Deitz
“Thanks,” she murmured, then continued. “Like you said, a woman used to go to the river all the time, and eventually met this underwater panther—in which shape doesn’t matter—and as often happens under those circumstances she got pregnant. Well, as you might expect, there were some…odd things about the child, and the people in her village figured out what had happened, and a lot of ’em were afraid, ’cause they didn’t want a child in their town who was half monster, as they thought. So they tried to drive the woman away. Well, naturally she complained to her lover, and he told her to ask everybody who was on her side to leave and go with her. And she did, and they all went over a mountain. But a few days later, they came back and found the town drowned, and a lake where it used to be, and no sign of the people who’d given her grief. But you can still hear their drumming under the lake, sometimes.”
“Oh, neat,” Brock cried. “Hey, and there’s a story in England kinda like that, only it was a whole country that sunk. It was called Ys, and you can hear the bells, and—”
“Right,” Sandy acknowledged. “I’ve heard that, too.”
“But what about the girl?” Brock wondered. “What happened to her? And her kid?”
Calvin remained silent, not liking where this was heading.
And he liked it even less when, instead of a verbal reply Okacha simply stretched her hand into the space between them. Her skin was tawny rather than ruddy or tanned, he noted. And her hands were long, smooth, and graceful, though her fingers themselves were oddly stubby. But then she spread them, and Calvin could not suppress a chill, even as he heard Brock yip and Sandy gasp.
Okacha’s fingers were webbed! Thin skin connected the joints closest to the hand on all five fingers. And then he really got a start, as, without warning, tendons flexed in the palm, and her oddly thick and pointed nails elongated further—and became hooked claws.
Calvin stared at them for a moment, then back at her face. No wonder she looked so feline. No wonder she had such huge dark eyes, such uncanny grace.
“That answer your question?” Okacha asked Brock, smiling at him sadly. Calvin half-expected her teeth to be pointed. They weren’t—though she had especially prominent canines.
In spite of her apparent sincerity, the boy paled. “M-made a damned good st-start,” he stammered.
Okacha withdrew the hand and folded it under her other arm, then leaned back against her log, looking more weary by the minute. “I’m the last,” she murmured. “That is, I hope I am. And if I’m really lucky, I won’t pass on the curse.”
Sandy could only shake her head in awed perplexity. She glanced sideways at Calvin. “And to think that you deal with this kind of stuff as a matter of course.”
“Not hardly!” he snorted, squeezing her hand. “Not in the last year, anyway.”
“Did you say curse?” Brock inquired abruptly, all alertness, eyes narrowed attentively. “Are we talkin’, like, for real badness, here?”
“Not like you mean, probably,” Okacha told him with an ironic laugh. “But in the sense that it’s something you live with and endure without desiring, yet can never escape—then yeah, it’s definitely a curse.”
“Could you, uh, be more specific?” Calvin ventured politely, though with an edge on his voice. “I’ve kinda got the feelin’ you didn’t just happen to be passin’ through here.”
She gnawed her thumbnail thoughtfully, then nodded, as if she had come to some decision. “It’s the curse of otherness, first off; the curse of knowin’ everyday you’re not like anyone else. Of havin’ to watch every tiny little thing you do for fear you’ll let something slip and betray yourself, and therefore leave yourself open to ridicule—or worse. And yeah, you’re right, I’m not here by accident. But I’d rather wait on that, since old Brock here asked a good question.”
Whereupon Brock grinned smugly, looking inordinately pleased with himself.
“What I am,” she confessed in a sad, resigned voice, “is a magical creature in a nonmagical world. No, don’t freak,” she continued. “I saw how y’all reacted to my hand and what I’ve already said. You believe me, and you’ve all seen enough other things to accept the possibility that some pretty off-the-wall stuff can be true. But why am I trustin’ you with this stuff? you may reasonably ask. Or maybe, why am I buggin’ you with my problems? Because I’ve seen enough and heard enough and know enough to know I can. But before I get into that, you folks need to know a couple of things. First of all, whatever I tell you, I need to tell fast. And whatever we do needs to be done in a hurry. We’ve got a little time, but not much.”
Calvin frowned suspiciously. “What’s the rush?”
“Snakeeyes,” Okacha replied flatly. “He’ll be here sooner or later—probably sooner. I only barely escaped him, and he’s bound to come after me—and you, too, now; because you’re with me, and because of what you are and what you…have and know.”
Calvin puffed his cheeks. “So what, exactly, is the deal with you two?”
Okacha grimaced, “Okay, I’ll lay it on the line. First of all, it’s pretty obvious that I’m part water-panther: descendant of the woman who caused the drowning of Coosa, to be precise. But what that means in the real world, besides some neat little biological aberrations I have to work to hide, is that when I’m immersed in water, I change into a panther—or have to work very hard not to. In that form, the dark side of my personality becomes dominant: the instinctive side, you could say—it’s sort of like that movie Cat People. Oh, I can overrule it, to some degree, but I’m extremely susceptible to violence—and to suggestions of violence. My—call it my medicine—increases, too, and I can be used as a source of it for certain purposes, most of which I don’t approve of, but which, in panther shape, I can’t avoid.”
Calvin’s scowl deepened. “What do you mean you can’t avoid?”
Okacha sighed. “That brings us back to Snakeeyes. He’s a witch—you’ve probably heard that from your cousin Kirkwood—who’s a neat guy, by the way. And if you’ve heard that, you also know Snakeeyes has got a lot of people freaked up at Qualla, ’cause callin’ somebody a witch is a pretty basic insult, since it means accusin’ them of usin’ the powers of the world for impure purposes—which makes them impure. And you know how important purity is to traditional Cherokee. But be that as it may, I don’t have time now to explain how I fell under his influence, but suffice to say, he caught me at a vulnerable moment, and though I’ve looked free, he’s had me on a pretty short rein. Fortunately, I was able to escape about the same time you left Qualla—I was goin’ to ask you for help at the game, but then you got hurt and I couldn’t.”
“But how did you know about me?” Calvin demanded, utterly confounded.
“I saw the scale—among other things. It’s obvious, if you’re like me.”
“Yeah.” Calvin groaned. “And he saw it too, didn’t he? And recognized it.”
Okacha nodded regretfully.
“And he’d like to get it, wouldn’t he? Just like he got you: get it, and use it for his own ends!”
Again Okacha nodded.
“But being…what you are,” Sandy broke in carefully, “aren’t you stronger than he is?”
A shrug. “Not in human form, except for my claws and my reflexes, a little. But all he has to do is get me wet when I’m not expectin’ it, and I’m in trouble. And I haven’t told you the worst part, either. See…I’m like a cat in more ways than one, and one of ’em is that I…” She paused, blushing. “I come into season. And when that happens, I get really irrational—and very indiscriminate. So what Snakeeyes wants to do is to wait until I’m in that condition and get a child on me, and then kill me and manipulate that child, which he could do in a way that would never work on an adult—the available power’s about the same, and all.”
“But why would he kill you?” Sandy asked, grim-faced.
“’Cause he’s afraid of me, and he can’t control me—not always. Oh, a lot of the time he keeps me kinda doped up—and he’s got a mental bond on
me I can’t really break—it’s like he lets me go and then reels me back in.”
Calvin’s eyes narrowed. “But what about now?”
Okacha regarded him seriously. “When he shifts shape, his hold on me weakens.”
“And the further away Snakeeyes goes in animal shape, the less his hold on you, right?”
“Right. And when you beat him off when he was in owl shape, it addled him for a while, and he lost all hold on me for the first time since he caught me. It only lasted a few minutes, but I had a plan in place in case that happened. And the minute I felt Snakeeyes’s hold on me relax, I hopped in his car and drove as fast as I could away from him. And between the distance and the fact that he was in another shape, I managed to elude him long enough to get here. Not that it did any good,” she added bitterly, looking apprehensively at the sky.
Calvin’s eyes narrowed. “But that stuff at my cousin’s place: how’d you know about that? And how’d you find us, for that matter?”
“Snakeeyes told me—in a sense. Whenever he does that—changes shape, or any other major magic—well, it’s like a resonance. The same way a fire can make your face hot, his magic makes mine…resonate—even when he’s not actually drawin’ on it. And when that happens, it’s easy for me to see what he’s up to, and know what he knows, to some extent—like your destination, which he probably overheard. He can’t hide anything magical he does from me, nor I from him, not at close range. The more distance, the less that works, though.”
Sandy looked thoughtful—and worried. “So that’s how you know he’s approaching?”
“As long as he’s usin’ magic during his approach, yeah—if he’s shifted shape, or something like that. And like I said, he is comin’. He knows what Calvin’s got on a thong around his neck, and he wants it, if for no other reason than ’cause it’ll decrease his dependence on rebellious, unreliable me.”
Calvin did not speak for a long moment, then: “So what was all that stuff you were goin’ on about when you arrived? All that about us helpin’ each other, and all? Seems to me we’ve both got a bunch of problems.”
Okacha gnawed her lip, as if trying to regain patience. “Very well,” she said. “I mentioned a bargain earlier. Here it is. You are haunted: this I know from what I’ve sensed, what I’ve heard, and what I’ve seen. Your father’s ghost roams restlessly on the fringe of the Ghost Country, free neither to continue on nor to return, and he’ll stay that way as long as his body’s incomplete. But if you went there, I think I know a way his spirit could be put to rest. And of course there’re those other spirits, too: that boy Spearfinger killed, for one. You could probably help him also. But even more importantly, there’s Don Scott—yeah, I saw the paper, and I guessed the rest.”
“We were right about him then?” From Calvin.
“Pretty much,” Okacha replied. “I’ve talked to the bobcats hereabout, and they told me how it was: basically the boy missed his friend and called his ghost and couldn’t resist the ghost’s complaints of loneliness, and so the boy reached into the water and went with him.”
“And you think you can help us bring him back?” Sandy asked.
Okacha nodded. “I think so. He doesn’t belong there; he can’t stay.”
“Okay,” Calvin said, “you’ve told us you might be able to help us—and I’ll be frank: if you can do all that, I’d be mighty grateful. But you’ve also said you need something from us as well. I think it’s about time you told us.”
Okacha took a deep breath. “I…know how to get to the Ghost Country—I’ve already told you that. It’s a thing passed down through my family, from my water-panther ancestor. He told his human wife how to get there and explained some of the mysteries of the place and made her memorize them. She told her daughters, and so on. I’ve never been there, but I think if I were to go I could hide there long enough to figure out some way to escape Snakeeyes. If nothing else, he won’t be able to follow me.”
“Which leaves us to deal with him,” Calvin noted.
“Which is where the rest of the bargain comes in,” Okacha countered. “Without me here for him to draw on, you’re stronger than he is. He should be afraid of you, and even if he’s not, you should be able to defeat him—when he comes after you.”
“Now wait a minute!” Calvin shot back instantly.
Okacha looked at him frankly. “I don’t know of anybody else who could beat him, Calvin—and he is a threat to your clan and kin at Qualla, and probably elsewhere as well. If I were to walk out of here right now and never be seen again, he’d still exist—and be evil—and do evil. I don’t think you’re the kind of man to allow that. Not when he can kill your family and friends and thus add all the years they would have lived to his own sorry life.”
Calvin took a deep breath. “Maybe, maybe not. But I won’t kill him. That’s flat. I’ve got enough deaths on my conscience.”
Okacha did not reply. No one did.
“Can we even trust her?” Sandy asked at last, not looking at their visitor.
More silence. Then, from Brock: “‘Trust the woman,’” he whispered. “‘Trust the woman—or be damned.’”
“Where’d you hear that?” Calvin snapped, a sick feeling in his gut.
Brock’s eyes were huge. “I—I don’t know! It—it just came to me, like someone whispering in my head!”
“Someone who could be Snakeeyes,” Calvin pointed out.
“Shit!” Sandy murmured.
Okacha simply stared at him, her eyes keen as daggers. “Not Snakeeyes. He can’t do that—not to an ordinary person, not when they’re awake.”
“Unless you’re lying,” Calvin growled.
“You’ve got more to lose than I do if I’m not,” Okacha said simply, but her voice was tight with despair.
Sandy gnawed her lip. “I think…we ought to trust her,” she said at last. “I can’t say how I believe that, but I do. Cal…?”
Calvin puffed his cheeks. “I dunno, folks,” he sighed at last. “Some of it sounds reasonable, in a sense—and even fair, given that we’re talkin’ high stakes and big risks here: a trip to one World to save a lot of folks in another, and a good deed done both ways. But there’s a lot to be considered. Like, who’s goin’? What do the others do while we’re gone? What kind of time frame are we talkin’ about? What’re the risks?”
“Yeah, and how do we get to the Ghost Country?” Brock chimed in.
Calvin had been so intent on sorting through the ramifications of Okacha’s revelation he had frankly forgotten the boy. Now he glared at him. “What’s this we bullshit?”
A confident shrug. “I assumed I was goin’.”
“Like hell!”
“But Cal!”
“No!”
Brock stood up, furious, hands on hips. “No, hell! Who the fuck do you think you are, man? I know you’ve gotta go, ’cause that’s what you do…’cause there’s not many people in the world that can do what you’ve gotta do. But you can’t do everything by yourself. You’ve gotta have help. That’s where I come in—me and Sandy, ’cause I bet she wants to go too, and I bet you’ll tell her the same bullshitty thing!”
“No, Brock.”
“Just a word, man,” Brock snorted, turning away. “Just a goddamned word!” He spun around again, face red with fury. “Look, man; I’m not dumb enough to think you’d actually hurt me. But if you conk me on the head, I’ll come to eventually and follow; and if you lock me up, I’ll escape eventually and follow; and if you just up and run off, I’ll just bloody well follow! And we both know what’ll happen if I try to do that on my own: why, I’m really liable to wind up in trouble. So your choice isn’t whether I go, it’s whether you’ve got me where you can keep an eye on me or not!”
Calvin gaped incredulously.
Brock was still wound up. “Besides,” he half-sobbed. “Besides—you owe me, man! You owe me a goddam piece of magic.”
“What if I was to teach you that now?”
“I wouldn’t liste
n!”
Sandy was smirking in spite of herself. “He’s got you there.”
“Seems to me like he’s got you every way,” Okacha observed. “And he’s right. He’s just the kind who would try to follow. And I’ll bet he’s resourceful enough to find a way. Besides, he’s heard everything, which means that if he stays and Snakeeyes finds him, we could all be in trouble. I—”
Okacha froze, her face a mask of alarm. Her muscles tensed; the tendons in her neck stood out like cables. She closed her eyes, and Calvin saw her jaws clamp hard, as if she resisted something by main will alone.
“Okacha?” he called softly, then much more forcefully as, oblivious to the pain in his ribs, he leapt to his feet and crossed the small space between them. “Okacha!” He grabbed her shoulders, shook her. “Okacha!” Finally, desperately, he drew back a hand and slapped her face—once, twice—but as he attempted a third, Sandy was there restraining him. He blinked back to himself, wondering what had gotten into him—but equally unclear what was to be done about their companion. She was still under whatever control had been affecting her, whether of her own creation or of Snakeeyes’s conjuring, he couldn’t tell.
But what could he do, short of injuring her? And then he noticed something: one of the sprigs of cedar with which he’d intended to ward the site before Sandy’s return with the paper had distracted him. He snatched it up, swept it across Okacha’s body like a feather duster, then held the fresh-cut spray directly beneath her nostrils so that she had no choice but to inhale the resinous fumes.
It worked! Scarcely had Calvin brought the sprig to her nose the second time when the tension flowed out of her neck and jaw. An instant later, her breathing deepened, her lids flickered, and she blinked at him. Her gaze was wide and terrified. “Th-thanks,” she gasped shakily, “that happened so fast I couldn’t resist. But…but we have to hurry! It’s Snakeeyes! He’s here, in these woods. We’ve gotta go!”
“But where?” Sandy cried, looking around frantically—wildly off center and out of her depth, Calvin knew. “Wherever we go, he’ll find us. What—”