by Tom Deitz
Or he could simply call them!
Why hadn’t he thought of that, dammit? His mind was still a major muddle. “Sandy!” he shouted. “Sandy!” Then: “Brock…Okacha!”
Again and again, until his throat went raw.
No answer returned, and so he walked.
But not far, for no more than two hundred paces down the beach (it was hard to estimate distance in the dim light), he rounded a particularly large clump of drift-wood—and found himself staring into the wide green eyes of a panther. The beast was sprawled languidly along what had once been a yard-thick limb from a truly gigantic tree before some ancient flood had claimed both trunk and branches. The beast was also wet; its fur glistened darkly, like a seal’s. And the eyes…he couldn’t tell if the light flickering there marked recognition, violence—or insanity.
“Okacha?” he murmured tentatively, fighting an urge to bolt.
From deep in its throat a growl rolled forth.
“Is that you, ’Kacha?”
The growl became a deep rumble. She was purring! Calvin cautiously extended a hand and stroked the slick wet fur between those troubling eyes.
They closed; the purring deepened.
“Welcome to the Darkening Land, huh? Well, it’s sure dark enough. Wish you’d had time to brief us, though.” He shivered again.
The panther growled. The wind twitched a hank of its fur free. It dried instantly.
“Come!” he commanded it, slapping his thighs as he backed to a spot where the wind would have clearer access.
It blinked lazily and drew back its lips just far enough to reveal the tips of its canines, but acquiesced, bounding heavily down from the branch to pad across the sand. It shook itself, growled—or maybe sang. And as it did, the wind picked up, blew harder, warmer…
And then the world turned to white and heat as a bolt of lightning flashed down from the starlit sky and struck the limb the beast had abdicated. Apparently tinder-dry, the driftwood burst into flames and burned steadily. Great! Just the thing to cheer a cheerless place—especially when Calvin hadn’t time to build one himself, what with the need to find his friends to whom it would hopefully serve as beacon. Not that he intended to wait around. He was, however, practical enough to spread his wet garments on the sand sufficently close to the blaze for them to derive some benefit from the heat. That accomplished, he returned to the still-soaked panther. “You comin’?”
It cocked its head, but instead of moving toward him, sank down on its haunches and began methodically licking its fur, abruptly all feline. Calvin merely snorted and continued south.
He had jogged for barely five minutes, when he saw a figure stagger from behind a house-high tangle of river wrack a few hundred paces further on. His heart leapt—then sank a small degree when it proved to be shorter and darker than he had dared hope—but leapt again in gratitude that a third member of their party had survived.
“Brock!” he yelled. “Hey, buddy, up here!”
The boy evidently saw him at the same time, because the next thing Calvin knew the kid was careening toward him.
“Brock!” he yelled again, feeling oddly uneasy about making so much noise in the eerily solemn darkness.
“Calvin!”
“Brock, m’ man!”
“Hey, Cal!”
An instant later they embraced soggily; Brock for once having forgotten to maintain attitude. Calvin’s ribs twinged, but he ignored them.
“I—I h-heard you c-c-call b-before,” the boy gasped into Calvin’s chest. “But I was k-kinda z-zoned an’ c-couldn’t answer.”
“Well, I’m glad to see you,” Calvin replied inanely. Then: “Sandy: did you see any sign of her?”
The boy shook his head, but when Calvin tried to ease free of his grip, Brock resisted, trembling uncontrollably. “Brock? What’s wrong?”
“C-cold,” the boy mumbled. “Kinda…dizzy.” He swayed on his feet, and Calvin had to shift his grip to keep him from falling. “Easy, kid,” he murmured. “Take it easy; you may be on the edge of goin’ into shock. But try to hold on just a little bit longer. There’s a fire right up the way. We’ll get you there, get you warm.”
“W-warm?”
“Yeah, kid, warm.”
Brock did not reply, simply stood shivering as chill after chill wracked his small, soaked body. Calvin studied him for an instant, then scooped him up, grunting when he discovered how surprisingly heavy he was for such a little guy. His ribs hurt abominably. But it was only pain. And pain he could endure.
“Keep talkin’,” Calvin panted, as he half walked half staggered back toward the fire he could barely see to what he had taken to thinking of as the north.
“’Bout what?”
“Anything. Recite poetry, or something.”
“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves…” the boy began.
“…Oh frabjous day!” he concluded a short while later, when Calvin lowered him down by the fire. Fortunately, it was still blazing, though the panther was nowhere in sight. He glanced about, concerned, but trying not to show it as he helped Brock to a seat on a smaller limb near the flaming one. The boy shuddered again, but seemed to draw strength from the heat. His clothing steamed. “I f-feel better now,” he managed—and sounded it.
Calvin stared at him uncertainly. “You need to get out of those wet clothes. They’ll dry faster, and you’ll get warm a lot quicker, both.”
Brock blinked dumbly, and Calvin guessed that in spite of his posturing, he was still pretty out of it. “C’mon, kid, shuck ’em. I’ll spread ’em out here by mine, and they’ll be dry before you know it.”
The boy nodded sullenly and proceeded to strip, though Calvin had to help him with his shoelaces. Brock hesitated, scowling, when he reached his briefs. “Use your good sense,” Calvin told him, trying not to smirk—from sympathy, not ridicule.
Brock grimaced, but turned his back, dropped his drawers, and flung them over his shoulder to Calvin, then squatted by the fire, legs close together, hands draped between.
“I doubt you’ve got anything to be ashamed of,” Calvin observed wryly. “Now, you just stay there and get warm. I’ve gotta look for Sandy. Oh, and if a panther shows up, don’t freak.”
Brock’s expression flickered between embarrassment, alarm, confusion, and indignation so quickly Calvin had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. The kid was recovering very quickly.
Brock dipped his head in the direction from which Calvin had first come. “Sh-she’s thataway, I think. I…felt her break loose from the ties before you did, so I guess that’d make s-sense, anyway.”
“Thanks,” Calvin told him, and jogged off the way the boy indicated.
So had the panther, by the prints left in the dark sand. But he couldn’t follow them far, because maybe three hundred yards north of the burning tree, they suddenly veered left, onto a shelf of smooth stone that suffered no trace of passage to remain on it. The shelf rose into a small headland that jutted into the river. Calvin guessed the panther had chosen the straightest path to whatever it sought, thereby cutting off a loop of meander. And if its senses were as sharp as he suspected, there was at least an even chance it might have scented something he couldn’t. And if not…well, he wasn’t out that much and could take the longer route later if need be.
Increasing his pace to a steady, uphill trot that had him sweating in spite of the chill, he soon reached the crest of the ridge. He was right, too: the height revealed a convolution of river meanders, a large one of which had been circumvented by his shortcut.
It also showed him two figures trudging up the slope from the opposite side.
One was low-slung, sinuous, and feline; the other bipedal, and obviously a woman.
“Sandy!” he cried joyfully, and for the second time in less than half an hour found himself running toward one of his companions.
“Cal!”
They met, hugged, kissed impulsively, and Calvin was relieved to note that though she was as cold and wet as Brock
had been, Sandy showed no signs of either chill or shock.
“You okay?” he asked when they drew apart.
“As well as I can be, given I don’t have a clue where we are or how we got here—and would prob’ly be out of a job if I did,” she replied, but then her face clouded. “Where’s Brock?”
“Dryin’ out and warmin’ up half a mile over the hill,” Calvin told her, drawing her close with an arm around her waist. “We’ll be there in no time.” They started up the slope.
But a low growl from the panther made them turn again. It wasn’t following, but was frozen where it stood. Calvin eased away from Sandy, walked slowly toward it, knelt, rubbed between its ears. The fur was almost dry—almost. Would have been if it had stayed beside the fire instead of coming to find Sandy. “Thanks, Okacha,” he whispered.
The beast did not move, but made a sound deep in its throat that was somewhere between a growl and a groan. A wind sprang up, first cousin to that which had earlier presaged the lightning. It played around them, warm and insistent.
And as it did, the panther’s fur dried; and as each tuft lost its moisture, skin showed beneath: human skin, writhing and changing as the wind blew Okacha’s humanity back to her.
She turned her face into it. Already mostly human, she rose onto her hind legs. Her mouth opened whiskered and jowly, but closed again with small red lips. “I would’ve done this before, but I needed my nose to find Sandy,” she gasped, her voice still with an odd timbre, but becoming more recognizable by the second.
And then the wind subsided, and Okacha stood there, fully human.
She was also naked—sleekly so. And very beautiful, Calvin couldn’t help but notice. He felt his cheeks warm, knew he was blushing. She laughed, oblivious to her nudity.
Calvin’s face grew hot—not from embarrassment, but from a surge of bitter anger that welled up in him so fast it made him choke. What had this crazy bitch done to them, anyway? In her desperation to escape Snakeeyes, where had she brought them? And at what cost? Shoot, Brock had almost gone into shock! And here she stood, stark naked and laughing at him, when he’d risked everything on the slimmest of explanations.
“You!” he spat. “You—” Rage made him inarticulate.
“To get us here as quickly as we did, you had to wish yourself dead and think yourself dead,” she said simply. “I gave you a pain that made you want to die to escape it. And I slashed your throats to make you believe you were dying. The river healed you.”
“Bitch!”
“Cal!” Sandy snapped. “Stop it!”
“No!” Okacha shot back. “He’s gotta get it out. Balance has to be maintained. I had to release the human in the beast to return to myself, but to balance that, he has to release the beast in him—his anger. There’s no room for deception here.”
Sandy scowled uncertainly, and Calvin was on the verge of venting yet more ire. Except, he realized, it was gone. It had flared, even as Okacha’s change had flared. Now it had vanished, burned away, as the beast was burned away in her. “That’s gonna take some gettin’ used to.” He gulped. “It is if we have to watch every emotion.”
Okacha shrugged. “My magic awoke your magic. Or it awoke whatever fuels your magic, anyway.”
Calvin shrugged and turned again. “We need to get back to Brock.”
Sandy was fumbling with her pack. She dragged out a wad of sodden fabric and handed it to Okacha. “Here.”
“Thanks,” Okacha murmured. “But if it’s okay with you, I think I’ll stay like I am until I can put on something dry.”
Silence, a little strained. Then, from Sandy: “Where are we, anyway?”
“Nowhere near the Land of the Dead, that’s for sure,” Okacha replied easily. “From the way my mother described it, I’d say we were just on the fringe of the Darkening Land.”
Calvin frowned, then frowned more when another thought fought its way through the muddle of his mind to reach the surface. “Snakeeyes…”
“What about him?”
“Can he follow us here?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause he doesn’t know the way—and ’cause he has no business here.”
His eyes narrowed. “And we do?”
“So it seems.”
“But—”
“Hush, Cal,” Sandy interrupted. “I don’t wanta hear about that kinda stuff right now.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He sighed. “Maybe we need to get centered.”
“I need to get warm,” Sandy replied tartly, and drew closer.
“I can see the fire,” Okacha noted as they topped the ridge.
Two minutes later they were in sight of the tree, on a far-side limb of which the fire blazed. And a minute after that, had rounded it. Calvin, intent on briefing Sandy on his doings since regaining consciousness, and on fleshing out the details of her story, had temporarily forgotten about Brock.
But there he was: all curled up fetus-style between the fire and a limb, bare as the day he was born, and evidently fast asleep. The fire gave his pale skin a healthy golden glow. Calvin couldn’t resist a chuckle.
“Cute kid,” Sandy observed. “Even cuter without his…attitude.”
“Cute little butt, too,” Okacha noted in turn, elbowing Sandy in the ribs. Calvin found his face warming again, embarrassed for Brock’s sake. “Uh, maybe you ladies oughta boogie for a second, while—”
But he’d evidently spoken too loudly—or someone had. Brock’s eyes suddenly popped open. He sat up abruptly, and had exactly time to assess the situation—that he was bare-assed in front of two women, one of whom was also blatantly sky-clad—before he leapt with amazing speed and dexterity behind the trunk. Calvin caught a flash of very white buttocks, which were quickly replaced by an indignant stare of blue eyes beneath soggy black hair as Brock peered across the weathered wood.
Calvin guffawed. “Lose your cool?” he called through his laughter. If the kid had regained his modesty, he was obviously fine.
“Pants,” came an irate mumble.
“Pants?” Calvin teased. “You mean, like, your pants?”
“Traitor,” Brock gritted, his eyes flashing with adolescent fury. Then: “Jesus shit! What th’ fucking hell?”
Whereupon he leapt back over the trunk—snagging a foot in the process, which tumbled him into an untidy and very revealing sprawl—with a toe perilously near the fire, which made him flop and curse inelegantly as he scrambled to his feet.
“What th—?” Calvin echoed, eyes wide with bemusement.
“Something fucking tickled me,” Brock spat, grappling unsuccessfully with his jockey shorts as he bounced about on one foot.
“Tickled you?” from Okacha.
“Fucking yeah!” Brock growled, having just realized he had started his skivvies on backward.
“Tickled you?” Sandy chimed in.
“Tickled you?” came a third, deeper voice.
Calvin froze, abruptly all seriousness. Where had that come from?
More laughter. From beyond the log.
Calvin crept that way at a wary crouch, atasi in hand, but before he’d gone two paces, a shape reared above the driftwood.
As large as a Shetland sheepdog it was, and as furry. But it also had long ears and dark, nervous eyes. And as Calvin gaped in surprise, it hopped atop the tree trunk and squatted there, wrinkling its small pink nose. Calvin blinked. He’d thought it was gray, but now it seemed more tan. But one thing was clear: it was a rabbit—albeit a very large one.
The bunny surveyed them solemnly, displaying no fear. It seemed especially interested in Okacha and in Brock, who was minimizing his problem by turning away from the women—and toward the animal. His briefs hung limp in his hand.
“Now I know why you wear so many clothes,” the rabbit observed, with what sounded suspiciously like a chuckle. “If I looked like that without my fur, I’d cover my skin, too!” And with that it bounded to the sand before them. “Mind if I join you?
Oh, but I’ve forgotten my manners! It’s nice to see you again, Edahi. I’m sure you remember me: your old friend, Tsistu?”
Sandy stared, Brock alternately blushed and gaped. Calvin looked troubled. And Okacha looked strangely…hungry.
Chapter XV: Hide and Seek
“Tsistu,” Calvin groaned, his hand lingering by the war club at his belt. “Shit!”
From its place behind the driftwood log, the rabbit stared at him with eyes as dark brown and moist as the leaves blanketing the bed of a mountain stream. Its nose twitched. Its right ear kinked downward. Somehow it was larger. The tawny fur became ticked with gray. It hopped onto a nearer limb—and was instantly the size of a common Georgia cottontail.
Calvin scowled and puffed his cheeks.
A long furry ear cocked his way. “What was that…Utlunta-dehi?” Tsistu demanded, abruptly twice his previous size. “The word has not been whispered in Galunlati, or the Lying World, or Usunhiyi, the Darkening Land, either, that eludes me! If you think too loud I hear it! I can hear the anger in your blood as it flees your brain and seeks your limbs through veins drawn tight to speed its flow. I can hear each metal spike click into its fellow on the odd thing that boy uses to close his leggings. I can hear the hiss as Ancient Red chases the Long Man’s spit from that fair-haired woman’s clothing to seek the open air. I can hear—”
“Can you hear me tellin’ you to stop this chatter, or you’ll be dead?” Okacha broke in sharply, her voice dripping with implicit menace.
Again an ear tilted. “Can you hear me telling you that if I am, you will lose the only guide you have in this place, O long-gone child of the Underworld and the Middle?”
Okacha’s eyes flashed fire, looking at least as feral as they had when she was entirely feline. “Cool it,” Calvin gritted; then, to the rabbit, “What did you say about bein’ a guide?”
The creature shrugged—or that was how it registered. “I showed you the way once, Edahi,” it sighed. “I thought perhaps you might want me to again.”