by Tom Deitz
Yet if it had ever rained here, Calvin doubted it, for beneath the glaze of sand that shrouded the ground lay what seemed to be a solid sheet of rock. No bare patches or swirl lines showed in either, nothing to indicate water had ever run there; indeed, nothing gave any hint nature had ever disturbed it.
—Except the footprints: millions upon millions of footprints. The majority were human, mostly bare. But there were animal tracks as well: panther, squirrel, deer—rabbit. He scowled at that last, and scowled harder when he followed a fresh set half a dozen paces and found them shifting size just in that small distance.
“Tsistu!” Okacha spat beside him. “Shit!”
Calvin did not reply. Instead, completely on impulse, he folded himself down where he stood and commenced removing his boots and socks. Somehow it didn’t seem right that rubber and the designs of men should leave their mark on this place. His companions seemed to sense that, too, and followed his example.
Brock finished first and stood, gazing around. “Are those…buildings, or what?” he ventured in a whisper, which seemed the only appropriate form of vocalization in this land of perpetual gloom.
Calvin followed the boy’s pointing finger along the line of the escarpment to where, maybe thirty yards to their right, the first of a series of buttresses flared out from the cliff base to comprise what looked like a row of roofless, open-fronted rooms, rather like, though he hated the simile, a ruined motel. Whether the partitions were natural or the work of hands, he couldn’t tell.
Absently, he started that way—until a tug reined him back. “Hang on!” Sandy urged through a sudden yawn. “You got to rest back there with the boys; Brock and I haven’t stopped since we got up.”
“Yeah, but we had to run after Tsistu!” Okacha growled back, though her face showed immediate regret at her sudden anger. “Sorry, ’bout that: I’m just real jumpy, I guess.”
Brock giggled. “Jumpy! Yeah, sure. Ha-ha!”
“Hush,” Calvin snapped, then yawned, too, feeling unaccountably tired. “Yeah, maybe we’d better cool our heels a spell.”
“The boys said the dead would find us anyway,” Brock reminded them, shuffling the short distance back to the cliff.
“Good point,” Calvin acknowledged. “I have to say it really is kinda peaceful here.”
Okacha yawned and stretched and, even human, looked very catlike. Calvin suppressed an urge to scratch behind her ears. At least she was wearing clothes again, even if, being Sandy’s, they were a bit snug in places he didn’t want to notice—or be seen noticing.
A second yawn found him. “Jesus,” he groaned as he joined Brock against the rockface and drew Sandy down beside him. “I really am gettin’ droopy-eyed.”
“It’s the air and the warmth and the hiss of the wind so low you can’t really hear it,” Sandy replied. “The wind probably ionizes the air, and—”
“Hush,” Calvin murmured into her hair.
And did not resist when his eyelids drifted closed.
No! he told himself as he jerked them open again. He couldn’t sleep now! Not when he was on the verge of solving the major problem that had brought him here in the first place. On the other hand, it sure was nice just to lie here and rest and enjoy the simple comfort of friends and decent weather and a stomach that wasn’t complaining.
NO! he told himself again, and this time he sat up and blinked. And realized what was bugging him.
He had to take a leak.
Grimacing irritably, he eased Sandy’s hand to the ground, rose as quietly as he could, and padded silently toward the nearest stone buttress, not so much for modesty as to mask any noise that might disturb his friends. He had already unzipped his fly when he stepped around it—
—And found himself in a forest! A tiny wooded glade, to be precise, scarcely larger than the open area around Sandy’s cabin; walled on three sides by oaks so gnarled and twisted they looked like illustrations from one of Brian Froud’s picture books, never mind the moss and shelf fungi and ferns with which they were encrusted. Around them frothed more ferns, waist-high at least, but those petered out in the open area he’d blundered into. There a stream wandered down from some unseen source higher up to tinkle and splash among boulders that were themselves half-hidden beneath a shawl of moss. The very air felt damp. Nor was there any sign of the desert, either before, around, or behind him.
He blinked.
When he blinked again, he saw the man.
He had stepped from behind the largest tree—so Calvin thought, already feeling his heart rate increase as he came on guard. He wished he’d brought the atasi, but it was back with the others. Oh, well, it was probably too late anyway, for the mist that had shrouded the man had floated away and Calvin could see him clearly.
Clad only in a buckskin loincloth, he was perhaps an inch taller than Calvin and more powerfully built, though a looseness softening those muscles and a trace of fat around that still mostly flat belly hinted at middle age and a dissipated life-style. His coppery skin was dark, but whether that was a function of Native blood or white suntan, he couldn’t tell. The hair was shoulder long and black, however, which favored the former.
It hid his face, too, for the man was looking down as he calmly picked his way among the rocks and across the stream. But as he drew nearer, he twisted just enough for Calvin to note a thin dark line on his right side just below his ribs: a line from which a steady trickle of red blood oozed.
And then the man looked up, and Calvin saw his face: Native American for sure; Cherokee, quite possibly. In fact, it looked like…
“Dad!” Calvin burst out before he could stop himself.
“Calvin?” Brown eyes brightened hopefully.
Calvin was at once dumfounded, relieved, and scared out of his skin. The result manifested as inarticulate nervousness. “Uh, jeez, well…uh, how’re you doin’?” he managed finally, serving up the first reasonable phrase that fought its way to his tongue. A lump formed in his throat, all unbidden. His eyes misted—or perhaps that was the humidity. He was briefly dizzy.
“I’m fine—as fine as I can be,” his father replied easily. “You look like you oughta sit down, though.”
Calvin nodded, wide-eyed. “I prob’ly look like I’ve just seen a ghost—or am seein’ one,” he gulped, and felt immediately like a fool.
“Just think of me as your dad,” the man told him. “Think of me as plain old Maurice McIntosh dressed up in funny clothes—or dressed down, I guess you oughta say.”
Calvin chuckled nervously, but managed to grope his way to find a stone of the proper height. The moss prickled beneath his palms as he braced against it. His father chose one opposite. “It’s a lot easier here to think of folks as themselves than as what they are. I mean, how often do you think of somebody alive as a human bein’ ’stead of Joe or Jane or Jeffrey?”
Calvin couldn’t help but smile. “You’ve turned into a poet—or a philosopher.”
“I’ve turned into nothin’ I wasn’t before,” Maurice replied sharply, but with a trace of sadness. “You just never bothered to find out what I was. You were too busy tryin’ to find out what you were to check. All you knew was that I wasn’t what you wanted me to be. You never looked beyond that to see what I was.”
Calvin swallowed hard and had to force himself to meet his father’s gaze. “I—I’m sorry. I never thought of it that way. But I didn’t come here to argue.”
“Statin’ facts ain’t arguin’.”
“No, I guess it’s not.”
“I’ve missed you…son.”
Another swallow. “So I gathered.”
Maurcie stared at him intently. “I’m sorry I deviled you like I did, boy—but I just felt like I had to. I’m stuck here, see; I’m stuck and can’t go either way. There’s ways I could’ve died and it would’ve been no problem—a car wreck, or sickness, or something like that. But the way I died… Well, it’s not a matter of the body parts, exactly—I mean they take things out when they embalm you, and
all. But that part of me was removed in a way that’s part of the heart and soul of our people—and my soul—my real soul—my center-thing—knows it and won’t let me go on. It’s not really the Black Man doin’ it—not his fault anyway. He just knows that I won’t be satisfied long as I know I lost part of myself the wrong way. Which is kinda funny, if you think about it.”
Calvin stared at him perplexedly. “How so?”
“’Cause I never believed that stuff! Shoot, I never liked any of that stuff, never liked bein’ an Indian, which I’m sure you know. But deep down in my center I believed. Deep down in my center I wanted Spearfinger to be real. Deep down I wanted to be everything I tried to keep you from bein’ cause I thought even knowin’ it existed would make you want it—only most folks wouldn’t understand it, and therefore wouldn’t understand you if you wanted it or made yourself part of it, and therefore you’d be unhappy.”
“I…understand, I think,” Calvin whispered.
“I hope you do, boy!” Maurice shot back fiercely. “’Cause I’ve been tryin’ to figure out how to explain it to you ever since you walked out that door when you were sixteen and said you were gonna go find your real self, were gonna be your real self or die tryin’. I let you go ’cause I knew I couldn’t stop you and have anything good come of it. But ever since then I’ve spent every day tryin’ to think of exactly the right way to explain why I’m like I am and why I raised you like I did, so you’d understand without doubt or distance. Why, I’ve probably thought enough words to fill a million books if they was all wrote down—and I still don’t have ’em. But I know you’ve come far since you left, and have made a man like there ain’t been in five hundred years of our people—ever since they got to be our people. And I know that you’re a much better man than you’d ever’ve been if you’d done what I wanted you to. I’m proud of you, son—and I know you’re the one who can help me.”
“I’ll try,” Calvin replied helplessly. “I’m not sure that I can. I—”
“One other thing,” Maurice broke in. “Two other things, that is.”
“What?”
“Like I said, I’m sorry if I bothered you, but you don’t know how lonely it is here when there’s nobody much to talk to; and you can’t go on ’cause the Black Man doesn’t want your pissin’ and moanin’ upsettin’ the folks he’s gotta look out for until they decide to go around again; and you can’t really go back ’cause you just ain’t supposed to. It’s the loneliest thing in the world, son—shoot, in the Worlds!”
Calvin simply stared. “You know about them?”
A shrug. “Everybody does; they just don’t all know they know.”
“What was the other thing?”
“I’m sorry I was a bad father. I’m sorry I didn’t listen and tried to cut out your heart to save your head.”
“It’s fine,” Calvin murmured. “I’m sorry, too.”
“Why?”
Calvin had to blink through tears. “For bein’ a bad son. For not listenin’, for not respectin’ my elders, for payin’ too much heed to the message and not to the messenger.”
“It worked out okay, though.”
A sniff. “Did it? You’re here, and that really is my fault.”
A shrug. “You were tryin’ to do good. You had no way of knowin’.”
Calvin wiped his eyes. “No, you’re wrong there. I could’ve known ’cause I could’ve thought things out more clearly. I was actin’ on impulse, and that’ll get you killed. Except that it killed you and a bunch of other folks instead, and that’s even worse.”
“Folks die, Cal,” his father said simply. “I’d rather die like I did than in a car wreck on 285 or by fallin’ off a skyscraper down in Atlanta. Shoot, ain’t nobody died like I did in two hundred years—not since they moved Galunlati away from the Lyin’ World.”
“Nobody but that woman and those kids.”
“Yeah, but I was the first of our folks. That’s something.”
Calvin started. “You just called it the Lying World? Where’d you hear that?”
“Folks talk—not enough to keep me from gettin’ lonely, ’cause they don’t stay when they cross here, most of ’em. But they talk. The Black Man comes sometimes. Sometimes I talk to Kanati’s boys—when they’re not makin’ thunder.”
Calvin looked at him askance. “Red kid and black kid?”
Maurice nodded.
“I thought so.”
Silence.
“Am I awake?” Calvin asked suddenly.
His father smiled. “You’re too alive for us to meet, with you awake. Sleep’s the closest thing to death anybody alive knows. Figure the rest out for yourself.”
“But you’re still here?”
“The only part of me that matters is.”
“So, how do we finish you up so you can move on?”
“I’ve been wonderin’ about that myself.”
Calvin’s mouth dropped open. “You mean you don’t know? But you said for me to help you! That I was the only one who could!”
“And you can! Only…I don’t know how—’cept that I just know it.”
Calvin gnawed his lip. “But didn’t you say it was mostly in your mind? That it doesn’t matter to the Black Man, except that it matters to you?”
A nod. “More or less. But it really does matter. It matters so far down in my self I don’t even know it matters. It’s like the same way I know you can help me—”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“And I’m not sure I can explain—except, well, haven’t you ever had to act so different from what you really were you forgot what you were and started believin’ your own lies? Like, say you had a girlfriend who liked cats, but you couldn’t stand ’em, only you liked that girlfriend a whole lot, so you pretended you liked cats, and pretty soon you got so used to pretendin’ you liked cats you forgot you really didn’t. Only the part deep down still don’t like ’em. Your head thinks you do, but your heart knows better. Well, my head hated the myths, but my heart wanted ’em: wanted things like liver-eatin’ shapechangers to be real, just so I’d know something most folks didn’t and be a little bit special in a world that says it loves special things but really hates ’em.”
“But,” Calvin began slowly, “how can a…ghost lack a liver when your physical body’s somewhere else? I mean, you were buried; your liver’s— Well, it was in Spearfinger’s gut when she died, so I guess it…dissolved when she did.”
Another shrug. “That’s a hard ’un, son.”
“Tell me about it!”
“I can’t—unless it’s like I was sayin’: it’s the old head/heart thing. My head—my mind—remembers my body as it was supposed to be: complete and entire. But my soul knows what really happened and remembers it another way.”
Calvin puffed his cheeks. “I…think I see,” he ventured finally. “My friend Dave’s talked a little about it. He knows these folks called the Sidhe—they’re the Irish faeries; we’ve got folks like ’em in our folklore, only they’re not myths, I guess, are they? But anyway, the Sidhe live in a World that touches the one we’re from, just like this one does, only somewhere else. And they’ve got physical existence—real bodies—in both Worlds. Only to stay any length of time in any World but the one they’re native to, they have to put on the substance of that World—which I guess means that the soul really is separate from the body and can wear the substance of whatever World it’s in—and has to, to stay there.”
“So I’m wearin’ the substance of Tsusginai, then?”
Calvin nodded. “I guess. Your soul built it. But it’s as physical in this place as your other one was to our world.”
“’Cept that my soul remembers me without a liver, so I don’t have one?”
Another nod. “I—”
“Hang on a minute,” his father interrupted. Calvin blinked at him, startled, as his father reached forward and with a soft touch of his fingers brushed a lock of Calvin’s hair away from his forehead.
�
��What?” Calvin wondered, frowning.
“That scar you got playin’ anetsa when you was a kid—the ten-stitch job up at your hairline:—it’s gone.”
Calvin felt for the tiny ridge that had been there at least ten years. He rarely noticed it because of the way he wore his hair. But now that he probed at it—he couldn’t find it.
And then he remembered.
“It’s the scale,” he blurted out, even as he withdrew the uktena scale from around his throat. “That, or the shapeshifting it lets me do. See, everytime I change back to human and it rebuilds me out of…whatever it rebuilds me from, my genes only remember me as the blueprint says I oughta be, so it puts me back that way: no cavities in my teeth, no eyes ruined by readin’, and all that. I mean, my foreskin’s even growin’ back, and I bet I’ve halfway got an appendix. I had a couple of cracked ribs a day ago, too. And of course it takes care of scars.”
His father was staring at him intently. “And I’ll bet if I shifted back and forth a few times it could grow me a brand new liver!”
A sick dread sneaked into Calvin’s gut: relief and apprehension both. “Maybe,” he said carefully, “if it’s got enough charges left in it. Uki told me to be real careful, that it was runnin’ low.”
“What happens then?”
“You could get stuck in animal shape and not be able to get back.”
“Could be worse.”
Calvin eyed him dubiously, then looked back at the scale. “If you wear animal shape too long, you forget you were ever human.”
His father’s face was calm, but his eyes were on fire. “I’d risk it. It’d beat bein’ like I am.”
“No!” Calvin cried, rising. “I can’t let you. I—” He broke off, for he had noticed something terrible. “This isn’t my scale!” he groaned.