by Tom Deitz
And if nothing else they at least provided some sense of progress.
Abruptly, Tsistu stopped.
They stumbled to a halt behind him, all panting and gasping, as the shift shook them from the half-dream of their progress.
“R-rest?” Brock managed hopefully.
“Change,” Tsistu corrected. “This way.”
And with that, he turned ninety degrees, hopped once—and vanished.
Calvin followed, then Okacha—and likewise disappeared.
Except that when Sandy stood where Calvin had been instants before and gazed the same way, she could see him again, jogging along another vague glimmer of golden sand as if nothing had happened.
A pause to exchange tired glances with Brock, and she did the same.
And found herself forced to focus purely on running, because Tsistu all but doubled the pace. No time to look at the landscape now; time only to think about breathing.
Breathing, and running, and the pain in her legs.
And then, all at once, their path dived into another watercourse; they shifted directions again at the bottom
—And the mountains were closer.
Very close, in fact, filling a quarter of what world Sandy could make out at all, with the steep walls of the defile rising twice her height on either side.
More running—though not so much as ought to have been the case, and the mountains filled half the sky ahead.
More running—and they were there…
It was jarring. For though she had traveled a bit, Sandy was from North Carolina, where mountains bubbled up from the earth in low hills and ridges and humps, so that one came into them gradually. This was much more like the West, where the Rockies rose with startling precision from the Great Plains. Shoot, you could practically put your finger at the point where the plain (for the bottom of the defile was as flat as the surrounding desert had been) ended and the mountain commenced.
Or that would have been possible had the way ahead consisted of stone instead of a cave, the mouth of which arched overhead to curve down again at the top of the defile.
One instant they were at the edge of the mountain, the next, they were under it.
Calvin made two torches from the sticks of driftwood he’d brought along and lit them with the coals he’d kept alive in the bowl. Those, together with a surprising amount of light that followed them in from outside—Sandy thought it was due to the high reflective quality of the vitreous rock around them—allowed them to make decent progress.
No more jogging, though; now it was a steady trek, still following a narrow stream along a yard-wide beach of black sand, while the cave walls rose tubelike around them. The only sound was the chanting of the water and their own breathing, both of which echoed and reechoed into a sort of white noise that was oddly soothing.
Slower and slower, and now they walked. Sandy felt the sweat drying on her body, her heart assuming a more reasonable throb. She was utterly burned out, yet not tired, at once drained and energized, as if all resistance and stiffness and strain had boiled away, leaving only that reservoir of inner strength that was always hers to command.
Yet she had no urge to speak; none of them did. All seemed content to amble along while torches painted alien landscapes in red and gold along the shiny, black-purple walls, and Tsistu’s tail (cotton white) continued to mark the way.
Until, abruptly, it vanished, leaving them alone in a high-domed room the size of her cabin, at the far end of which the stream plunged under an arch the height of her knee. Beside it, she could barely make out a glimmer, as if daylight filtered in from a matching arch to the left on their beach.
Calvin staggered to a stop ahead of her. She eased up to join him, grasped his hand unobtrusively.
“He’s…gone!” Calvin groaned, glancing around at Okacha. “Where—?”
The panther-woman scowled. “I’m not sure. I—”
“What are you waiting on?” came an irritatingly familiar voice from somewhere beyond that low arch. It expanded, filled the chamber with echoes. Sandy didn’t want to think about a rabbit that big.
“Where are you?” she called back, unable to stop herself.
“Here, of course: on the other side.”
“Other side of what?” Brock chimed in.
“Of the gate!”
“Gate…?” From Calvin.
“Gate! Do you not see it, fools? There, a hop from your kneecaps.”
Calvin knelt to peer beneath the arch. Sandy followed suit—and got a shock that sent shivers up her spine. What she saw was hard to describe. Light, yes: a yard-wide span of it below the stone wall beside the stream. But that light was…full. It was as if the air itself was a sort of semisolid in which dust floated and gleamed and glimmered as though supersaturating it. She couldn’t tell how thick it was, how far it persisted; only that the glare beyond was stronger than the dim flickering which surrounded them. But what really got to her was that even as she watched, a darkness settled onto the arch of light from above, as if—there was no other phrase for it—a gate descended. Down it went, at an ever-increasing pace, until no light showed at all—whereupon it slowly rose again. Twice she observed that process: that rise and fall, which lasted maybe a minute from cycle to cycle. Yet at no time did the light extend higher than her knee.
“What is keeping you?” Tsistu called again.
“Good sense,” Calvin growled. “So, what d’ you think, Okacha?”
The panther-woman frowned. “I think we’ve gotta go through. I don’t know—I can’t know, but I really think we do. Everything I’ve known so far’s been based on what I’ve been told, on what I feel. But here—I only know what the legends say.”
“And what do they say?” Sandy inquired wearily.
“That to the west the sky vault comes down to the earth, so that one must run beneath it to reach the Ghost Country.”
Sandy rolled her eyes. “Gimme a break, woman.”
Okacha’s eyes flashed fire, but her words were calm when she spoke. “I’d suggest you keep an open mind,” she whispered. “See what you see and draw your own conclusions.”
“I see quite wonderful things out here,” came Tsistu’s voice from the slit. “But all I hear is the cackling of fools. Come or stay, but the gate will soon close for the last time this day, regardless. Then you will have to await sunrise. And Snakeeyes will have twelve more hours in which to prowl your World.”
Calvin grimaced worriedly. Sandy wondered how much he hurt. “How far is it?”
“Not so far I cannot run through before the gate falls. Maybe further than that for slow ones such as you!”
“Shit!” Calvin spat. “You mean you brought us here, and now we can’t get through?”
“I wouldn’t have wasted my time so foolishly if what I propose were not possible,” Tsistu shot back. “You can pass—but you have to be fast.”
“How fast?”
“Fast as me.”
Again Calvin sighed. “But…we’d have to crawl. And nobody can crawl fast.”
“Nobody… Tsistu let the word fade off suggestively.
“Nobody human,” Okacha breathed at last. Sandy gazed at her quizzically, wondering what the hell that meant.
Calvin too stared at her, his expression a mix of doubt and dread.
“A panther can move that fast,” Okacha said quietly. “And there’s water right beside us.”
“Ah, so your brain works,” Tsistu’s voice rumbled.
“That’s fine for you,” Brock grumbled, kicking at a chip of glassy stone. “But what about the rest of us?”
Calvin gnawed his lip. “It’s possible,” he said at last. “But I don’t even want to think about actually doin’ it.”
“Doing what?” Sandy inquired, though she feared she already knew.
Calvin’s face was grim. “Usin’ the scale,” he murmured, his hand moving to the thong at his throat. “I can use it to change shape into something fast.”
“So, do it
!” Brock told him flatly.
“Easy for you to say,” Calvin replied with a frown. “You don’t know the whole story. See, I can use the scale to change—but Uki told me last year at my naming ceremony that it can only empower an indefinite number of changes—and I don’t know how many I’ve got left.”
“Which means we could get stuck in animal form and not be able to change back,” Sandy finished for him.
Calvin glared at her. “There’s that we again!”
“The gate closes for the day in five more cycles,” Tsistu announced from beyond.
“I’m goin’.” Okacha sighed, tugging at her shirttail. “Maybe I can do some good, even if you guys can’t.”
“I have to go too,” Calvin agreed solemnly. “Sorry, Sandy, Brock, but you guys have to stay here.”
“The cave is sometimes occupied at night,” Tsistu informed them helpfully. “More than once I have seen an uktena come here.”
“There’s only one uktena at a time,” Calvin called back.
“Only one great uktena. Who is to say he does not have offspring? For certainly there is more than one ulunsuti! Or perhaps it is the one you slew, passing time here before it returns to Galunlati. Doubtless it will remember you…. ”
Calvin slapped the rock wall with his bandaged hand, obviously having trouble restraining his anger in such an impossible situation. Sandy understood. She knew how he was about things like this: hating responsibility, yet constantly taking it on himself; willing to risk anything for a friend, but reluctant to suffer a friend to risk anything at all for him. And above all, hating to be manipulated, hating to have his options limited by things he could not control.
Okacha looked at him thoughtfully, then at them all. Sandy would not meet her eyes. “If anyone stays here, there’s a good chance they’ll die. If we all go…somebody may make it back.”
“But he only said an uktena might come here,” Sandy protested.
“And if it does, you’ll die,” Calvin told her dully. “Trust me on that one!”
Brock had said nothing recently—surprisingly. Sandy turned to him.
“I think we all oughta go,” the boy mumbled, as if he had heard her thought. “’Kacha doesn’t need a scale to change, but the rest of us do. So what I say is that since the main thing is that Cal gets through, he change first, but leave the scale behind when he goes. Then me and Sandy’ll use it and follow—with the scale, of course.”
“And if somebody gets stuck and can’t change back?” Calvin challenged.
Brock shrugged. “Bein’ an animal beats bein’ dead.” Sandy rolled her eyes but did not reply. The kid was right, dammit. There were only unpleasant options. To remain here was one kind of risk, to go on was another. “Four more cycles,” Tsistu called impatiently. Calvin looked at her, shrugged helplessly. “I don’t see that we’ve got a choice.”
“You change first,” Brock repeated, “when you go through, and then when we shift back to human again, both. That way you’ve got the best chance of making it.”
“And you?” Calvin asked him icily. “What about you? And Sandy?”
“I’ve got a sister and a mom and some mates,” Brock replied. “But none of ’em cares about me as much as they do about somebody else. I’m nobody’s number one, therefore I’m expendable.”
“Bullshit!” Calvin snapped. Then, more softly: “Sandy?”
Sandy felt a bolt of cold strike her heart. “I…don’t want to go,” she said. “But you and Okacha kinda have to. And if you go—and leave your scale—Brock’ll go—might anyway, given how small and quick he is. And if he goes…well, I don’t want to be left behind here, uktena or no.”
Calvin vented a long exasperated breath. “Damned if we do and damned if we don’t, huh?”
“I’m ready,” Okacha announced abruptly. “Anybody that wants clothes on the other side better shuck ’em here and put ’em in a pack. I’ll carry one pack, ’cause I’m probably gonna be the strongest.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Calvin conceded wearily, sitting to tug at his boots. “Which brings up the next problem: what shapes do we use?”
“It has to be something we’ve eaten, right?” Brock asked.
Calvin nodded. “And in some sense hunted, or at least chased—preferably something mammalian and of roughly your own size.”
“What’re you goin’ as?”
“I’d prefer a deer,” Calvin told him, already at work on his second boot. “They’re fastest. But they can’t go through an opening that low. The only other thing I can think of is to be another panther—I made it a point to eat some last year. That way I can also carry the other pack.”
Brock’s brow wrinkled, while Sandy did quick inventory of what she’d eaten that might be useful. She’d hunted a bit, and tried lots of game, including venison. But she hadn’t sampled any of the big predators. Which left…what?
“Rabbit,” Brock said. “That’s all I’ve eaten that’s small and quick—and I did shoot one once.”
“Sounds good,” Sandy agreed. “What do you think, Cal?”
“I think you should hurry,” Tsistu called. “Only three more times will the gate rise now.”
Calvin had finished stripping, and Brock was on his way. Sandy followed suit. As she reached for the zipper to her jeans, she saw Okacha plunge into the stream at their side. When she resurfaced an instant later, it was as a panther. A very sleek, very wet panther.
Brock was down to skivvies by then, and Calvin scooped up his and Okacha’s clothes and stuffed them into one of the packs. Okacha took it in her teeth, growled once—and leapt toward the low arch of light.
“Two more times,” came Tsistu’s voice.
Sandy was wearing only her long-tailed shirt now, having crammed everything else into the other pack. And she intended to retain it as long as she could. Calvin had removed the scale from his neck and was holding it in his palm. “You know how to do this, don’t you?”
“I do,” Brock volunteered, snatching at it.
Calvin ignored him. “You cut yourself with it—it’s very sharp, and I tend to just make a fist over it—and when you feel yourself start to bleed, you think very hard about the animal you’d like to be: what it would be like to have that shape. It hurts like hell. And for God’s sake, whoever goes last, remember to bring the scale! Hold it in your mouth if you have to, but bring it.”
“Hurry!” From Tsistu.
Calvin grimaced again, closed his eyes, and folded his hand upon the scale. His lips twitched, and his brow furrowed, but Sandy could not bear to watch the change occur. Instead, she heard Brock’s startled “Oh, gross!” and then the groans and grunts of whatever was happening to Calvin. Not until Brock muttered, “It’s cool,” did she turn around again.
Calvin was gone, but in his stead a panther crouched. It blinked up at her, switched its tail nervously, then eased aside to slide the scale from under its left front paw.
“Go!” she told it, kicking at it in the direction of the gate. “We’ve no time to waste on chivalry.”
An instant only it paused, and that to retrieve the second pack, into which Sandy had reluctantly wadded her shirt, and then it too dived for the gate and was gone.
“Ladies first.” Brock laughed edgily, passing her the scale.
“Children first,” she countered.
“More folks depend on you than on me,” Brock told her solemnly. “Now do it! We don’t have time to waste.”
“I—” But then she realized the truth of what he’d said. Wordlessly she took the scale, folded it in her hand, and closed her eyes.
Rabbit, she thought desperately, even as she clenched her fist around the scale and felt the edges bite—an unexpected pain. She knew the warm gush of blood, and then a…drawing, rather as she had experienced when they’d empowered Alec’s ulunsuti only two days before.
Rabbit, she thought again, and tried to think the pain away, to focus only on rabbit: small, hunched over (and did she hunch over at that
, or was it only her imagination?), furred, clawed—long ears (how must it be to feel them grow?), small mouth, small eyes, small…everything.
Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit…
And then all she thought of was how she was going to stand the pain, as her whole body warped and twisted and realigned.
And then it was over. When she opened her eyes again, it was to gaze at short range on Brock’s bare ankle, and beyond it at the comfortably high arch of the gate. She was instantly afraid. That was a human here. Humans were the enemy, and this place was full of the odor of snakes and cats and other things that hunted. She had to escape—toward the light: that’s where she had to go; toward that sliver of light that even now was growing lower.
Something moved under her paw as she leapt that way, something vitreous she slid out of her grip, even as the boy’s hand swooped toward her. She moved quickly then—toward the light.
—Ran.
Faster, as the light brightened, and the gate began its slow decent. But…something was wrong! The air was too thick! It was like running in water—water she could breathe.
But behind was the snake-place and the boy and the smell of cats. Here was no odor save burning and something she only knew as death. All she had to hope for was light.
And with light ahead and growing brighter, she ran faster.
Chapter XVI: Beyond the Sky
Air!
Cold, sweet air!
Sandy couldn’t believe how great it felt just to be able to breathe again. For a long time she simply lay where she was: sprawled on all fours on what looked like a mix of sand and gravel, and smelled like a million things besides. Her sides heaved, her half-starved lungs dragged in breath after blessed breath. Unfortunately, each inhalation also brought more scents—and they were but part of the stimuli that besieged her, that insisted she ought to run, that it was folly to lie thus exposed, that a thousand predators were waiting to—