by Tom Deitz
“Well, the only thing I believe right now,” Brock yawned out of the ruddy silence of the east, “is that it’s good to have mates anytime—and that pizza tomorrow night won’t be shabby either.”
“I’ll buy,” Alec volunteered.
Calvin found that he had nothing to say to that. And forced his limb further into the fire.
*
Dawn found Calvin still awake—as he’d intended—though he’d lapsed into a drifty fugue that was somewhere between a trance, an anxiety attack, and plain old sleep-deprivation fatigue. He’d been gazing at the fire a long time; indeed, had watched its slow collapse into the barely smoking embers that now centered the Power Wheel.
But the sun was kindling those coals with a different sort of crimson now, and it was time to greet the day and get on with the second part of the ritual he was determined to follow preparatory to his… duel, he supposed it was, with Snakeeyes. Which he absolutely did not want to contemplate right now. And the best way to prevent that was by occupying his brain otherwise. Yawning, he stood, stretched, felt his vertebrae crack and pop. A glance around the circle of logs showed his companions all asleep—or faking it. Except David. But even that most loyal of friends seemed to be in the last stages of a holding action, to judge by the way he kept jerking his eyes open, then drifting off again. Calvin prodded him in the ribs with a toe. David blinked up at him, then over his shoulder at the sun, and nodded. While Calvin shook Alec and Brock back to consciousness, David prepared one final batch of black drink.
“Actually, we need to build that up higher,” Calvin advised. “I need to heat rocks for the last stage.”
David obligingly punched up the coals, added more wood, then slid the pot as close to the resulting flames as he dared.
“While that’s cookin’, we can get on with stage two,” Calvin confided.
“Wha’s stage two?” Brock mumbled sleepily. “Uh, sorry, I didn’t mean t’ wimp out on you,” he continued, rubbing his eyes.
“I bet I know,” Alec yawned. “Hey, like, I may get a feel for this stuff yet!”
Calvin grimaced resignedly, but clapped him on the shoulder. “That way, boys,” he yawned in turn, pointing over the hill. “If memory serves, the Middle Oconee’s thataway.”
“You mean, like to swim in?” Brock yipped in alarm.
“No,” Calvin chuckled wickedly, grabbing him by the neckband of his T-shirt and propelling him along, “like to go-to-water in—which is not the same thing at all.”
“Without a suit, I suppose?” Brock groaned wearily.
“Bare-ass nekkid!” David grinned, sounding even more wicked than Calvin.
Brock rolled his eyes. “Seems like I’ve spent half the last week bare-ass nekkid,” he grumbled. “Or hangin’ out with folks who are.”
“Some of whom are even worth hangin’ out with, I bet,” David sighed. “That Okacha’s a fox!”
“So to speak,” Alec chuckled wryly.
Calvin aimed a gentle kick at Brock’s bottom. “Better get used to it, kid—if you’re gonna be a wizard.”
*
It took fifteen minutes of picking their way through underbrush and pine thickets to locate a suitable site for the second part of Calvin’s ritual—which is to say, a place where the water was deep enough to submerge oneself, yet shallow enough to stand on the bottom for the chanting-and-marking part. Fortunately, the chant was the familiar one from Mooney, the one for players before a ball game—which meant that David knew enough of it to sing it with some prompting. And since Calvin was the one going to war, it wasn’t appropriate for him to sing. Thus, David, Alec, and the reluctant Brock found themselves cast in the role of accolytes.
The ritual itself did not take long—again fortunately, for though the stretch of river they had chosen bordered the two-hundred-odd forested acres Calvin’s friends owned, the surrounding territory was fairly populous. Which basically meant that the longer they lingered, the greater their odds of discovery—and potentially awkward questions.
Thus, it was with a considerable sense of relief that Calvin heaved himself out of the water and shinnied up the waist-high bank. David, who had preceded him, gave him an arm up and tossed him the towel. He took it gratefully. “You’d think I’d learn how cold river water is, even in Georgia, even in June,” he gasped between shivers.
“Beats England!” Brock shot back from where he was fidgeting embarrassedly while he waited on Alec to finish drying—they hadn’t counted on this eventuality, and nobody had thought to bring towels. As it was, they were using a ragged pair they’d found in the trunk of David’s Mustang.
Alec flipped Brock the soggy bit of terrycloth and reached for his skivvies. “I guess this brings us to stage three, huh?”
Calvin nodded, already surveying the riverbanks thereabouts. “And if you guys’ll give me a hand, I see just what we need.”
*
Twenty minutes later, Calvin led his companions to the top of the slope beyond which the meadow lay. They did not travel unencumbered, though, for besides backpacks, they each bore two lengths of willow saplings roughly nine feet long and as big around as half dollars. Calvin had just paused to untangle his from Brock’s when Liz’s pickup rolled into view. It parked beside David’s Mustang a couple of hundred yards away, and first Liz, then Sandy, climbed out. Calvin wondered where Don was and bent their route that way.
Sandy met them halfway and took over one of the willows. “Sleep okay?” she asked lightly, with a twinkle in her eye that told Calvin she was forcing nonchalance.
He rose to the occasion. “Let’s just say that my faithful companions here did just dandy. I kinda felt like Jesus did the night he spent in Gethsemane.”
“’Cept none of us had thirty pieces of silver,” David broke in. “’Sides, I stayed awake.”
“And how was your night?” Calvin inquired, as Liz joined them and they trekked toward their camp.
“’Bout like yours, evidently,” Sandy yawned. “We finally got through to Don’s mom ’round eleven-thirty. She’d gone to Brunswick for a movie, which is why she didn’t answer earlier. Don told her he’d just got real bummed out at home and had run off with the idea of connecting with some friends he knew up here, and then got lost, but was afraid to call for help ’cause he was afraid she’d be pissed. It wasn’t much of a lie, actually; he was careful about what he said. And fortunately, his stepdad’s a cop—and I think knows a thing or two about…you know. Like, he saw all that stuff last year. But anyway, he got on the horn and called in a couple of markers, and the upshot of it is that Don’s on his way south in a Clarke County Police car at this very moment. In fact”—she paused to check her watch—“he oughta be rolling in just about now.” She glanced up at Calvin. “He said to tell you thanks, by the way. Said he’ll be in touch when he gets his act together.”
“You think this put the fear of God in his mom?” Calvin asked, with a scowl.
A shrug. “I think it might. I sure think she’ll pay more attention to him now.”
“Good deal.”
“So…what’re these bushes for?” Liz wondered.
“Sweat lodge,” Calvin replied. “You plant ’em in a circle ’bout two yards across, then loop ’em over each other, and—” He paused in midsentence. “You did remember to bring blankets, didn’t you?” he asked Sandy. “Otherwise I’m up shit creek.”
Sandy rolled her eyes. “Of course we did! Jeeze, you’d think I’d never helped you build one of these things before.”
“And I hope you never have to again,” Calvin replied. “Not under these circumstances.”
They had deposited their bundles now, at the western edge of the Power Wheel they’d camped in the night before. Calvin flopped a comradely arm absently across Sandy’s shoulders. She started to respond with a hug, then winced and drew away.
“What’s the matter?”
“Cramps,” she muttered through a pained grimace. “All this shapeshifting and world-hopping’s brought on my p
eriod.”
“It delays mine,” Liz confided to David.
Alec winked at the wide-eyed Brock. “Take notes, kid. I am.”
Calvin, however, felt a sick dread tie knots in his stomach. “Oh Christ, I forgot about that! I mean, you’re serious, aren’t you?”
Sandy nodded grimly. “’Fraid so.”
Calvin puffed his cheeks and gnawed his lip, trying hard not to vent the anger that had just roared to life inside him. She should’ve remembered, dammit! No, I should’ve remembered, he countered. Calm down, kid; you’re tired and stressed out. Don’t say anything you’ll regret.
“I’m sorry,” Sandy sighed wearily. “I shouldn’t have got so close. I just forgot. So did you.”
Calvin took a deep breath. “Yeah, well, there was so much else goin’ on we both screwed up. But now…I think you’d better leave.”
Liz glared at him incredulously. “Calvin! What the hell are you saying? Do you have any idea how much Sandy worried about you last night?”
He returned the glare. “Do you have any idea what’s goin’ on here?”
“It’s like this, Liz,” Sandy interrupted, though Calvin could tell she was fighting to keep her cool. “According to tradition—the tradition of Cal’s people, which I respect—there’re a ton of restrictions on…commerce between men and women. Traditionally, a man’s supposed to abstain not only from sex, but from any contact with a woman before important undertakings, like ball games, or war, or—”
“But that’s just stupid,” Liz broke in.
“So is being shy about going topless—to some people,” Sandy shot back. “And if I’d had my head on straight, I wouldn’t have come here now. Unfortunately, it gets worse. ’cause even worse than contact with a woman is contact with a mensing woman. Calvin’s folks—his ancestors—insisted they stay away from everyone during that time. Which makes sense, given how interdependent everybody was: I mean, having somebody’s temper go ballistic when you live as close to the edge as some of those folks did—well, it just wouldn’t be cool.”
“And there’s also the small matter of women’s magic bein’ stronger than men’s, then,” Calvin put in, with more than a touch of sarcasm. “If we’re bein’ thorough here. In fact, if we’re bein’ thorough I oughta go get another willow sapling ’cause Sandy’s polluted that one just by touchin’ it.”
Sandy glared at him.
“I won’t though,” he added sullenly.
“You’re tired, Cal,” Sandy gritted.
“Yeah,” Calvin nodded, “you got it. I’m tired; I’m half a day away from the most important battle of my life; I don’t have a clue how I’m gonna defeat Snakeeyes—and now I’m polluted.”
“I’m sorry!” Sandy snapped. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”
He did not reply.
Liz gnawed her lip thoughtfully. “So the deal is that a mensing woman—”
“Saps a man’s strength to replace the strength she loses through menstral blood,” Calvin told her irritably.
“Hmmmmm,” Sandy mused, “I never thought about the why of it, just the fact. Now that’s very interesting.”
Calvin simply glared at her and commenced sharpening the first of the saplings prior to sticking it in the ground.
“Calvin, my lad,” Sandy announced a moment later. “You’re worrying too much. C’mon, we need to talk.”
Chapter XXIV: War Among the Shifting Shadows
(Jackson County, Georgia—Wednesday, June 20—just before sunset)
The sky, David decided, looked like war. A study in red, gray, and black, it was; like something out of an Australian film: staged for maximum contrast, maximum effect, with a neon-crimson stain filtering through the thick, layered clouds to the west; light against dark—the eternal symbolic struggle. And even as he watched, the image was reinforced, for the sun suddenly mustered strength enough to send a whole phalanx of beams lancing through the stand of pines just past the opposite crown of the hill. Red and black. Cloud and sun. Sunbeam spears and shields of standing timber.
It was a tad too appropriate, he concluded grimly, given that a far more literal battle was imminent. Still, he preferred to gaze at the heavens, which were distant and remote and untouchable, in lieu of, closer in, the drizzle-damp meadow where the lonely, unlikely hump of Calvin’s asi hunched like a turtle shell clad in motley; a street-person’s shelter wrought of wishes and refuse and Salvation Army quilts.
But the really troubling thing about war was that when you read about it, it was clean. Battles only raged on sunny days because that’s how folks envisioned them. Soldiers died neatly: pierced once through the heart and gone. It never rained; men never slogged through mud, or died slowly, sunk to their armpits in bloody muck while they tried vainly to hold in their own foul-smelling entrails.
In short, one never imagined a duel of wizards being staged in a half-assed drizzle.
Yet that was about to be the case. The pyrotechnics to the west promised either a return of clear skies or the continuation of gloom, depending on how the winds blew. And somewhere between here and there it wasn’t raining.
Unfortunately it was here—almost. The knee-high grass was wet and had soaked David’s jeans halfway to his crotch. And though it was summer, he’d had to slip on a sleeveless khaki vest with a hood just to be able to see.
Not that there was much to see, at the moment—which was why he’d become so obsessed with the sky. Yeah, the sunset was definitely preferable to the sweat lodge that presently sheltered Calvin in the last third of his purification rite. Preferable, too, to the faltering fire that only his own determined efforts—and Alec’s, Brock’s, and Liz’s—had kept going into midafternoon, so that the load of field stones it contained could grow hot enough to heat the inside of the asi and permeate it with steam when Calvin ladled on river water mixed with the last of that which they had brought from Usunhiyi. And very definitely preferable to the glum expressions his companions wore, where they sat on the tailgate of Liz’s pickup, gaining scanty shelter from the half-hearted sprinkles.
Liz checked her watch and snuggled closer to David.
He reached down and patted her arm. “Won’t be long now,” she murmured.
“Official sundown’s at 9:16,” Alec supplied from David’s opposite shoulder.
“All we can do now is wait,” David sighed. “Wait and hope.”
“Which are two of the hardest things in the world,” Liz shot back grimly.
“Yeah, and if we’re havin’ trouble with it,” Brock appended from Alec’s left, “think how poor Cal must feel.”
“I doubt he’s feelin’ much of anything, right now,” David snorted. “That’s one of the points of the ritual: to take oneself out of oneself. To move oneself to a more…spiritual plane, so to speak.”
“Which isn’t cool if it addles your wits and reflexes instead of sharpening ’em,” Liz muttered under her breath.
“Poor Cal.” Brock sniffed—he’d evidently caught a cold.
“And poor Sandy,” Liz countered. “This has to be double hard on her: to have the person she loves best in the world laying his life on the line, and her not allowed to watch.”
“In fact, to have maybe made it worse,” Alec grumbled.
“Hush, McLean,” David hissed. “We don’t need to be reminded.”
“At least they talked it out.” From Liz.
“Reached an accommodation,” David corrected. “Cal didn’t exactly look like a happy camper when he came back from that walk.”
“Yeah, but think how Sandy must look,” Liz persisted. “He knows what’s happening. She gets to sit by the river and worry.”
“That’s as close as tradition’d let her be, though,”
David replied. “And if there’s anything both Sandy and Cal respect, it’s tradition. They don’t necessarily like it—but they respect it.”
It was Alec’s turn to check his watch. “Can’t be long now.”
David pulled the hood furt
her over his forehead. A raindrop slipped from the rim and splashed on his nose. The bill of Brock’s Atlanta Braves cap was beaded with them. Alec wore a wide-brimmed Australian hat, Liz a thrift-store bowler; both were dark with damp.
Alec stared fixedly at the west. “Just a…second longer…”
David followed his gaze back to the conflict in the heavens. The sun, he observed, had won free of the lowest battalion of clouds and had a clear drop to the horizon, which here was the topmost branches of a stand of pines half a mile away.
“Three…two…one…” Alec intoned.
Red disc touched black spear-points.
And the sound of vast wings flapping rode the low roll of thunder from the east.
David jerked his head around—and saw, as he’d expected, a dark shape drop from the heavier clouds on that side and dive toward the treetops. An owl, it had looked like: a very big owl. It lit in the forest a hundred yards to their left and vanished within the dense foliage.
What walked out of the woods went on two feet. But only by technicality was it human.
Oh, Snakeeyes wore man-shape, sure enough: tall and hard and well-muscled—as was revealed by the plain buckskin breechclout that was his only garment, the feather cloak he’d flourished earlier being nowhere in sight. But there was something too tight about his body: the cut-lines of those muscles showed too clearly, the veins and sinews that bound them were too sharply limned—especially for misty weather like this, which tended to soften forms. His waist-length hair—slicked back in a ponytail—was likewise too well-groomed, and too shiny, though not from moisture, David somehow knew.
His face showed nothing at all: no joy, no pain (though he’d been injured the last time they’d seen him), no anticipation, no regret. It was a face entirely devoid of emotion—and therefore of humanity. Only the eyes showed anything, and that was merely a grim yellow coldness: the dispassion of serpents.