by Tom Deitz
“I thought we were goin’ to the Ghost Country,” Brock insisted.
Okacha looked distraught. “Yeah, well, there’s no time for that now.” She pounded her fist into her thigh. “Dammit, why couldn’t I have been quicker? Why did I think I had time to waste talkin’?”
“Are you sure there’s no way?” Sandy asked edgily. Okacha’s brow furrowed. “There may be one.” She paused, thought a moment longer, then: “Yeah, maybe there is…if Calvin’s got any more of that cedar…?”
“Bunches and bunches.”
“Ward this area as best you can,” she told him. “I need time to think.” Whereupon she folded herself into a lotus position and closed her eyes.
Calvin scowled, having been interrupted at warding once already, but reached for the small pile of cedar branches he’d cut earlier. He quickly located the twigs he’d marked with color, thought for a moment, and retrieved his atasi as well. It wasn’t magical, in particu-lar—not that he could tell. But it came from a magical place, and since the function of clubs was to protect as well as assail, perhaps that virtue could be called into service here. Scowling, he set the red-marked sprig at the eastern edge of the campsite, then began inscribing an arc in the sand with the pointed end of the club. Brock watched, fascinated. “Why cedar?” he whispered.
Calvin ignored him as he inserted a second sprig beside the white stick in the south. Then, tersely: “’Cause it’s protection against witches, for one thing.”
The line reached the western quadrant. Another sprig stabbed into the ground.
“But why?” Brock persisted.
Another arc. Another sprig, joining the blue stick in the north. A fourth arc closed the circle.
“Why?” Brock repeated.
Calvin glanced at Okacha. Her eyes were still shut, her breathing slow and measured. She was obviously in some sort of trance. He stared at her for a moment, then drew Brock aside. “This isn’t exactly the time for it, kid, but if it’ll make you hush, it’s like this. In hilahiyu, in Ancient Times, when the World was new-made, the plants and animals were all sentient, all with humanlike intelligence and emotions, and such. Anyway, the sun—I think it was—told them they all had to stay awake for seven days, but one by one they all dropped off to sleep. The only animals awake at the end of the seven days were the ones that can see in the dark. And the only plants were the pine, the spruce, the laurel, the holly…and the cedar. And they became the plants that don’t shed their leaves—the plants of vigilance against evil.”
Brock looked at him solemnly, but Calvin read fear in his eyes: real uncertainty, which was good for him, if not good in its own right. Sandy was doing as little as possible, though she was standing inside the circle Calvin had inscribed. At least she had the sense not to ask questions that could destroy Okacha’s concentration; knew when to ask or protest and when to let be. She couldn’t avoid a start, though, when Okacha’s eyes suddenly popped open. The panther-woman’s face was grim.
“Maybe this’ll work,” she breathed. “Maybe.”
“Whatever,” Calvin told her. “You call it, I’ll do it. Everybody else is on their own.”
Okacha nodded. She crossed to her backpack, rummaged within, then pulled out a six-foot length of what was obviously hand-braided cordage. “We don’t dare get separated,” she said quickly. “So anybody who’s with me, stick your left hands this way—yeah, right Brock, right over that Power Wheel Calvin was tellin’ you about.” Brock looked uncertain for a moment, then shrugged and extended his arm as instructed. Okacha promptly looped the cordage around it and drew it tight, then, with Brock in front, she inserted her left hand beneath the boy’s and whipped the cord around it twice, binding them together. “Calvin, you’re next,” she called over her shoulder. “Stand behind me and put your hand under mine.”
Calvin struggled into his jacket and knapsack—a move made awkward by the pain in his ribs—then stuffed the atasi into his belt and did as asked; felt the loop draw just tight enough to feel the rough texture.
“Sandy?” Okacha prompted, lifting an eyebrow in inquiry. “You don’t have to…I mean, you’re not part of this, except as you’re involved with Calvin. If you come along, I can’t say what’ll happen to you, but you’ll probably never be the same again. If you stay here, though—well, I can’t vouch for what Snakeeyes might do to you. That’s not a threat; it’s a simple fact. But it’s your call.”
Sandy gnawed her lip wretchedly, then nodded. “Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t, I guess.” She sighed. “The devil I know versus the devil I don’t, and all that.” Whereupon she hoisted her pack and placed her hand under Calvin’s. As Okacha twisted the end of the cord around her wrist, binding her into the linkage, Calvin met his lady’s gaze above the conjoined hands. He could think of nothing comforting to say, but his helpless shrug conveyed both his approval and his apprehension. Sandy simply looked very, very uneasy.
Okacha finished her work by tucking the free end of the cord back in her own hand. “Just follow me,” she murmured. “Do as I do, and sing as I sing. Even if you can’t follow the words, try your best.”
And with no further notice, she began to chant: softly at first, then more loudly. Though the words were utterly incomprehensible to Calvin, they sounded vaguely like what little of the Creek Indian language he had heard. The rhythm was familiar, though, as were the pitch and cadence. And then he recognized them! It had the same form and structure as the chant he’d used to summon the fog that time down in Jackson County when he’d tried for Awi Usdi and got Spearfinger in the bargain. Perhaps this was a version of that same gate-opening song. It made sense. But though he tried his best to follow the unfamiliar syllables, he was filled with dread.
Meanwhile, Okacha reached into a pocket and pulled out a small rattle made of box turtle shell. This she proceeded to shake in time to her chant, as she commenced a slow shuffling dance in the center of the warded circle. Nothing complicated, it was merely what was called a stomp dance: a placement of the feet and a keeping of the beat with the body in time with the chant and rattle, all while following the leader in a circle. Yet, as always happened when Calvin joined one, the whole seemed larger than the sum of the parts. From the outside it looked slow, laborious, and hideously dull. But as a participant…something happened. A person became one with the tune and the rhythm, and through them with the other dancers, and through the words in the air and the touch of feet upon the ground, likewise one with the earth itself. It was hypnotic—which was doubtless the intent.
They had made four circuits now and were meshing more as a team. Calvin had already picked up enough of the chant to follow, and sang louder. Brock was managing, and Sandy was doing what she could, her voice low and strained.
And something was happening. For as their feet shook the earth, the sandy soil around them began to bounce in time, raising low dusty clouds barely an inch above the ground. But every round took it higher, and then Calvin noticed that on the side toward the creek, a mist was slowly writhing their way.
More singing, more stomping, and the mist reached the dust, and when it did, it merged, thickened, moved faster, as if it thereby gained strength. Two more rounds, and the mixture was lapping about their feet. It carried a chill with it, too, of cold water and sunless places. Sandy evidently didn’t like it either, for Calvin heard her singing falter as it rose above her shoe tops, but he sang louder in response.
Brock looked intent, was singing what he could, but keeping step very well indeed. His eyes were closed, though, and in that maybe he was lucky—for the mist had reached their knees.
Louder still, and Calvin was certain they could be heard a long way off—which was not conducive to avoiding notice. But another round found the mist lapping his waist.
Another brought it chest high, and then his head was swallowed. He gasped, as if he had fallen into deep water, but other than the cold and dampness, there was no change save that the song seemed more distant, as if the fog stifled its volume. C
alvin strained to sing louder in compensation, but the fog siphoned off the sound as soon as it left his lips. Nor could he see much—Okacha was but a vague shape before him, Brock an even dimmer one to his left. Sandy, who was behind him, he couldn’t see at all, but he felt her hand beneath his, an island of warmth in all that cold. He closed his eyes and danced on…danced, and sang.
Abruptly, Okacha’s hand, that lay atop his own, spasmed, was suddenly warmer and…different. His eyes popped open, and by straining his vision, he could just make out her shape less than an arm’s length before him. But something was wrong! Her ears were shifting higher on her head, while her brow compressed and the lower part of her face lengthened!
He swallowed hard, flinched—and felt the cord bite into his wrist. Okacha was shifting shape! Which made sense, given what she’d said about water instigating that—for what was fog but water?
But she’d also said it made her dangerous!
And the last thing he needed was for either himself or two people he cared about to be caught so, with a witch coming their way fast on the one hand, while they were bound to a shape-shifting monster he suddenly realized he had very tenuous reasons to trust.
But before he could reconcile himself to action, the rattling ceased, then sounded again, briefly, a muffled noise as Okacha dropped it. The fog swirled and eddied around her—just enough for Calvin to glimpse the oddly proportioned shape ahead of him reach around with her right hand. Claws gleamed there, and though she still sang, that did not stop her from reaching in to rip the flesh of her left hand with her right.
He gasped as the bright blood flashed, visible even through the fog. And gasped again as the blood reached his own hand. It was burning hot! Hot as acid! Hot as fire!
He heard Sandy’s sharp intake of breath when it oozed around Calvin’s hand to touch hers. She jerked, tried to pull away, but could not. A strangled grunt was Brock.
But all that mattered was the pain in his hand—that awful agony that roiled and hissed around his flesh, as if their joined limbs had been plunged into boiling water. It was the worst pain he had ever felt—far worse than that which accompanied transference to Galunlati, if for no other reason than because, by being localized, it was also more intense.
Hotter and hotter, and Calvin closed his eyes, as if by that action he could shut out the agony.
But he could not. Indeed, it made the pain greater for it removed one less distraction. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes again—and saw to his dismay that the mist had drawn back a yard all around them. Below was still sand, Brock was still to his left, eyes closed, his jaw clamped hard as he strove not to cry out.
But Okacha…was completely changed now—or those parts he could see of her through her suddenly ill-fitting clothes were. No longer did a woman stand there, but a panther: a cougar rearing on its hind legs, with its tawny, whiskery muzzle on a level with Calvin’s head. And the worst thing—beyond the pain, which suddenly became one degree more distant—was that it was still singing; that human words still issued from mouth and lips and tongue in nowise designed to shape them.
For an instant he caught the panther’s eyes, saw wildness there—or madness. And then one of the long syllables in the chant began to stretch, to shift itself into a shrill feline scream that filled the world.
And as the scream grew louder and longer and more agonized, more blood pumped from the panther’s paw onto his hand—and the agony redoubled. Calvin screamed, too—he couldn’t help it. And Sandy did—and Brock, as if each had borne as much as he or she could stand.
Calvin closed his eyes again, wanted out, wanted an end to it all, would do anything, he realized, to stop the agony.
“Open your eyes!” came an inhuman growl.
Calvin did—exactly in time to see the gleam of bright claws and the flash of tawny fur as Okacha drew back her free right hand and, with one clean, arcing swoop, slashed those dreadful claws across Brock’s neck.
“No!” he screamed. “N—”
But the sound was cut off as the claws continued around to strike Sandy and then himself. The last coherent image he caught was of Okacha’s claws tearing at her own neck.
And then the whole world turned to red and pain as boiling hot blood went everywhere. He felt it splatter his face, smelled its acrid copper stench, even tasted it, as some flew into his gaping mouth.
The final thing he knew was that something was tugging against his wrist, dragging him toward…
…the river.
…falling, then, and impact; and cold replaced heat, and darkness light. And Calvin knew he was dead.
PART THREE
Usunhiyi
Chapter XIV: What the Cat Dragged In
(Usunhiyl—night)
…black…
…white…
…black again, and then more black; and Calvin concluded that black must be the color of cold, even as white was of heat—which made vague sense if one recalled how metal behaved in a furnace: red-hot, then orange, yellow, blue, white-hot…
…heat…fire…his hand was on fire—no, had been on fire…had been flayed and boiled and fried all at once; had been cooked beet red…
…red…the color of fire, of pain, of…blood…
…blood…the taste in his mouth, the warm salty copper tinge…
…and then back to black, but this time he realized that he was realizing; that he was noticing things and linking notions, which meant he either wasn’t dead or that the afterlife wasn’t at all what he’d expected.
He blinked and caught the black shifting: lighter, and darker…
Another blink—eyes full open now—and he saw the paler black.
No! It was white—had been for a fractioned second: white as summer lightning…
Lightning…
That had been a sky! A sky of cold turned hot, then cold again.
A third blink, and up arrived. A horizon defined itself: a ragged edge of utter dark against a background that, though scarcely lighter, was dimly sprinkled with colors: red and yellow, orange and blue-white—lots of that.
Stars!
He was seeing stars!
White—far off, as it had always been: sheet lightning bleaching a night sky, when the last one he had seen was noon day; sheet lightning cutting out the peaks of distant mountains like pyramids of torn paper…
He blinked again, noticed that he was breathing—and that his throat and nose and lungs felt clogged and burny.
A cough brought up water that tasted like sand and tannin and south Georgia. He rolled to his side, coughed again, felt pain stab into his chest and twist. He thought something grated.
Which reminded him that he had a body. He moved again—and felt no new pain save the familiar ones in his ribs and hands, though now he thought of it, the cold was a lot like pain. Still, that was okay: it meant he was alive. He had eyes, an up, a down; lungs, a tongue—ribs. And now he had a cold heavy weight that pressed down upon something at once rock-hard and yielding. His fingers slid into it as he explored it gingerly.
It moved back, shifted at that touch.
Sand.
Calvin sat up and, when the world stopped whirling, discovered he was hunched over on a broad beach of gritty black sand, where a cold black glitter hissed to itself a yard to the left: a body of water—probably a very wide river. And there were mountains.
He analyzed the surroundings. The beach—or whatever—was easily fifty yards wide on his side and lay at the foot of a ravine whose fractured, black stone walls rose two to three times higher than he was tall. Before, behind, it twisted along the water, a study in black on black. But now that his eyes were adjusting, he could make out other, paler shapes: fantastic forms, gnarled and grotesque. Some were small—the size of his arm or leg; others were as large as horses or cars or houses, and the bigger they were, the more fantastically they whorled and bent.
A word came to him: driftwood. He was seeing driftwood: wrack tossed up by that vast black river.
He stood carefully, feeling his ribs catch and try to bind pain inside, even as his clothes pulled and grasped at his outer form. He was soaked through! And standing waterlogged in a stiff cold wind was certainly one reason he was suddenly shivering uncontrollably. For a breeze was blowing: a strong one from…well, from whatever direction was away from the water. And when it struck his skin, it made him shake and cringe and want to hug himself…but when it had played with him a while, he felt warmer.
Without really thinking about it, he shucked the heavy object—his backpack—that was weighing down his shoulders and cutting into his collarbones, then skinned stiffly out of his jacket, T-shirt, and bandage. His boots and white tube socks followed, but he hesitated at his jeans. And what was this odd thing stuck in his belt? This arm-long length of pale, polished wood, bladed at the end like a double-headed axe?
War club. It was a war club. Good! He’d carry it while he explored, and explore while he dried off and tried to figure out where he was and what had become of…the others!
With a jolt like a bolt of the pervasive lightning, a whole set of memories awoke. One instant he’d been completely self-absorbed, intent solely on taking inventory of himself and his place in the cosmos. The next—
Sandy! His mouth shaped her name, even as his eyes strained into the darkness. Brock! And… He frowned. What was her name? The weird chick—the panther-woman who had brought them here?
Okacha? Yeah, that was it! Okacha!
But where were they? They should’ve all been here, for their wrists had been bound together. But strain his eyes though he would, nowhere could he see any sign of them.
On the other hand, this dark, cramped landscape was scarcely all-revealing. The black sand showed dips and ridges galore, as well as curves and twists of shoreline. Never mind the often head-high driftwood that could conceal any number of secrets.
Well, one direction was as good as another. And with that, he wrung out his clothing as well as he could, then, with the club in his hand and his pack on his back, set out shirtless and barefoot down the beach, having concluded that as heaviest of the group, he should have been spat up first; therefore, following the current would sooner or later bring him to the others.