by Tom Deitz
“Uki, go with me,” Calvin whispered, and followed the ridge into the forest.
The thrumming kept up, stronger and stronger, and Calvin increased his vigilance, fearing that, since he knew he faced a shapeshifter, anything he passed might be his foe. Trees suddenly became sinister where before they had seemed almost sentiently benign; stumps could no longer be taken for granted as merely rotting wood. He found himself wondering if the Stoneskin was bound by the same rules of skinchanging he was, then recollected with a scowl that he hardly knew all the nuances either.
But at least he had a trail, and that was something, never mind that it was leading him deeper into the woods; it was also—thank God—leading away from his friends.
And then he heard it: a ghost of the song that had haunted his childhood. “Spearfinger will get you,” his grandmother had whispered. “She will sing you the song: ‘Livers I eat, su sa sai!’ And when you hear that four times, she will have you!”
And Calvin was hearing those words now. Already he could feel the melody insinuating its way into his head, making his thoughts grow dim, his body and reflexes leaden. And how many times had he heard it already?
It didn’t matter; he dared not hear it again, and with that, he dropped to the ground and scrabbled among the mosses on the forest floor until he scraped up enough to cram into his ears as makeshift plugs. He could still hear the song, but not clearly, not as a whole.
But the fact that he had heard it at all meant that he was getting pretty close.
Almost too close, and had Calvin not been alert, he might have stumbled upon his quarry before he was ready.
As it was, he noticed a subtle increase in the amount of light on the way ahead and slowed, slid into shadows, resumed a furtive darting from tree to tree.
And finally peered between the twin trunks of a pine tree and gazed upon Utlunta Spearfinger, the Stoneskin.
She had found herself another clearing in the woods—no more than twenty or so feet around. And once more she had raised up stone monoliths to surround it—the closest, in fact, was scarcely five yards away.
But Calvin’s first actual sight of his adversary almost disappointed him. She looked no more than an old Indian squaw, clad in rags and tatters of coarse fabric and leather; like something from one of Curtis’s nineteenth-century photos—or Dame Judith Anderson’s feisty old squaw from A Man Called Horse. Stooped and bent she was—no taller than Calvin’s chin, if that—and with long gray braids hanging to the ground. Her face he could not make out, for it was veiled by the shawl she wore wrapped around her head and by her crouching stance. But he could see her hands quite clearly—including the great long awl-finger that had begat her appellation. Worse, though, was what she was doing with those hands.
There was no stone in south Georgia; at least not in great slabs like these. But Spearfinger had either wrought stone from sand or had called it from the bowels of the earth and made it rise at her bidding. And now she was embarked on a far more ambitious project, for there in the middle of her circle she was sculpting a life-sized man. It was almost finished, in fact, though every now and then she would reach to the ground and mumble (this disrupted the rhythm of the song a little), and fold her hand around something which she would then affix to the work-in-progress. Calvin was intrigued in spite of himself, and now he examined it more closely, he could see that the manikin was made of lumps of pressed-together stone, augmented here and there with colored pebbles.
The troubling thing was that the statue looked familiar. It was male—that was pretty obvious, since she was making it nude and it was facing toward him. Its build was slender, but there was enough fullness of muscle on arm and chest and leg to hint at a gymnast’s poise and strength. She was still working on the face, but Calvin knew he had seen it before: angular chin, level brows, full lips, a nose that was neither stubby nor yet quite straight.
David!
There was no doubt about it, Spearfinger was making a simulacrum of his buddy Dave!
And that gave Calvin whatever proof he needed that his best friend was the Stoneshaper’s quarry.
It was time to fulfill his mission.
A deep, slow breath; another; and then Calvin slid his hand back over his shoulder, snagged an arrow, and drew it soundlessly from the deerskin quiver. Another fluid motion and he had nocked it, and with another he took aim.
But he could not see her hand clearly from where he was and finally admitted that he really did need another vantage point. He had good night vision for a human—and the moonlight was plenty bright. But he had to hit dead on the first time or he might not get another chance.
Which meant he needed to get closer. He edged to the left a little, but one of the stones blocked the best angle, so he slipped a half dozen steps to the right.
And brought his foot down on solid rock.
The air suddenly filled with a high-pitched shriek like the sound of fresh-broken stones sliding together.
Calvin sprang back reflexively—but found he had fallen flat on his back instead, and then he saw why.
Without skipping a beat, Spearfinger had changed her song, and the rocks had obeyed, had wrapped themselves around his feet and held him fast. He fumbled with the bow, but before he could get his shot realigned, other stony pseudopods had prisoned his arms, forcing him to sprawl spreadeagled on the ground with all his limbs trapped and the stone beginning to twitch beneath his back. Spearfinger was looking at him too, gazing straight between the monoliths and right into his face. He could see her beady little eyes, the cruelly hooked nose: every archetypal witch in the world rolled into one.
She raised that awful finger, then, and stared at it as if she were seeing it for the first time. Her eyes glittered balefully, and there was a look of triumph on her face. With a brief, admonishing pat, she left her sculpting and began slowly hitching her way across the intervening few yards between herself and Calvin. She did not bother to walk around the rocks that stood between; rather, she simply altered her droning song, and they slid aside of their own accord, so that in an instant her dirty bare feet were inches from the stone that held Calvin’s, and she was glaring down at him gleefully.
He got a good look at her then, and this close he could see that her skin had a rough texture to it, like coarse beach sand that had dried hard. Her face was full of moles and warts and excrescences—or were those simply pebbles?—and her eyes looked like nothing so much as lumps of polished coal. She smelled, too: but not the sour stench of a dirty old woman, though there was a hint of musty cloth, and of long-mildewed leather. More it was the odor of fresh mud and sun-baked stone—almost a pleasant smell, if not for what it portended.
For a seeming eternity they stayed that way, with Calvin feeling his legs and arms gripped tight, and her peering down at him with a crooked, almost bemused grin. A puzzled tilt of her head, a frown, and she bent over—and stabbed the awl-finger straight into his face.
Calvin winced, but at the last minute she flicked that dreadful digit expertly aside and with appalling finesse scooped the moss out of his ears, so that the night was suddenly awash with sounds. When she straightened again, Calvin could actually hear her joints cracking and popping.
“You are Yellow-Hair’s friend,” she spat. Her voice was harsh and flat, like rocks tumbling, and seemed to come more from her belly than her lungs. “You are the one who showed him the way to Galunlati; do not think I do not know that! I have seen you there—more than once I have seen you lurking—spying—speaking to that soft-one Uki as if he were a god; listening to the foolish knowledge he would impart to you—as if it were true wisdom! But I tell you, Edahi, Uki knows nothing of wisdom. I was in Galunlati before he came, I will be there after he passes, for Galunlati and I are one bone and blood, and I will not allow anything to endanger it!”
“You’re crazy!” Calvin gasped. “I know what you are! You have no right part in the way of things!”
“You lie—though that is nothing new to one who comes from t
he Lying World. But there is a thing you would know, Edahi, and that I will tell you, and that is the reason I have come here.”
“So tell me then and kill me, and get it over with—since you mean to deny me a proper death.”
“Your death will be as is,” she snarled back. “But unlike your friend, whose liver I will only in part pluck from his living body and slowly devour before I return him to his folks all unknowing, so that he will die oh so very slowly—unlike him, you will die knowing the full tally of what you have done, and with full knowledge of the guilt that is yours.”
“Why bother?” Calvin gritted bitterly.
“Because you are of the blood of the Ani-Yunwiya and have always tried to live true to that. I respect that, and therefore I will not let you die in ignorance.”
“I’ll still be dead.”
The finger flashed down again, and Calvin was certain he was going to find an eyeball skewered, but it did not happen. “You will be alive without a tongue if you do not be silent! Do you think livers are all I eat?”
Calvin bit back a retort, though his glare spoke eloquently. “Revenge is what I seek, Edahi! Listen, while I tell a tale.”
And Calvin had no choice but to listen.
“In hilahiya, in the Ancient Times,” Spearfinger began with the traditional formula, “Galunlati lay close to the Lying World—so close that most men could not tell where one began and the other ended. We of Galunlati were free to come and go, as were the men of the Lying World. Sometimes they hunted our folk, but we did not begrudge them that so long as they thanked their kills for their lives and covered their blood. Sometimes we hunted their folk, too—by we, I mean myself, the Raven Mockers, the Underground Panthers, the Water Cannibals. They feared us, as men do, but we too had our place beneath the sky. And then came the white men, like your yellow-haired friend. They brought lies, they brought deceit, they brought disease. ‘Give us this piece of land,’ they would say, ‘and we will ask no more.’ And so the Ani-Yunwiya would give them the land—since it was everyone’s, how could they begrudge it? ‘But that land is not enough,’ the white men would say again; ‘give us more.’ And then, ‘Give us more yet,’ and finally, ‘Give us all!’ And all the time the Ani-Yunwiya kept their word, and all the while the white men lied. Worse still, the Ani-Yunwiya tried to be like the white man: they wore his clothes, they spoke his language, they lived in houses like his and tilled the land as he tilled it. They even took his names in preference to their own, Calvin Fargo McIntosh!
“And they turned away from Galunlati. Magic could not be, the white priests told them, and so the Ani-Yunwiya ceased to believe. ‘Sorcery is wrong, witches all must die!’ This they came to believe.
“Finally it became too much. This World had been tainted beyond healing by the white men, but Galunlati most of them could not see. Yet still their lies reached there, and so it was decided by the Chiefs of Galunlati that the Land Above must be removed from the Lying World. And so it was made to be.”
“But what does this have to do with me?” Calvin protested. “What’s it got to do with Dave? He may be white, but he respects the land. He thinks more like one of us than many of our own tribe.”
“Your own tribe! You and I are not of one blood, do not forget that!”
Calvin simply glared.
Spearfinger nodded with a touch of amusement. “Your friend knows of Galunlati, he has taken others there, his words seduce even Uki, even Yanu the Bear and Tsistu, the Rabbit-Chief. How long will it be before he returns, and with him others? How long before the lies begin again?”
“He’d never do that!”
“How do you know? Knowledge is Power, Edahi, and David Sullivan knows a great many things.”
“But he’d never use it, I promise you.”
“No, he will not,” Spearfinger agreed gleefully. “For within a hand of days I shall feast upon his liver.”
“No you won’t! If I can’t stop you, someone else will. Dave’s got more powerful friends than you know!”
“Who are forbidden to enter this World! Do you think Uki is the only one with an ulunsuti? Do you think he is the only one who can watch between the Worlds?”
Calvin gaped incredulously. “It was you! You’ve been blocking the Barriers Between! No wonder I couldn’t get in touch with Uki!”
“Silence!” Spearfinger hissed. “I will leave you here for a while, Edahi, to think on things, and to fear. It will make your liver oh-so-toothsome!”
“Is that what you did to that little girl, too?” Calvin spat. “Did you make her cry, make her beg, fill her with fear before you killed her?”
“It would have spoiled her,” Spearfinger chuckled. “It is a warrior’s flesh that fear seasons best.”
She hunched around until she was at Calvin’s right side, then squatted and ran a hand along the arrow he still gripped ineffectually. Then with great delicacy, she slipped the finger into the waistband of his jeans.
He closed his eyes at that, gulped, fearing to be emasculated before he died.
But Spearfinger was a true expert at her craft: she simply hooked the stony nail a fraction and yanked upward, ripping Calvin’s wolf-mask T-shirt open to his neckband, and laying his belly bare. A further series of deft flips and yanks, and she had exposed his entire right side.
Calvin gritted his teeth and waited, but the expected pain did not come. Instead, there came a gentle prickling along his ribs, and he realized that Spearfinger was simply drawing the nail of the terrible finger gently along his flesh, so precisely, so carefully, that it sent chills and shivers stampeding across Calvin’s body. He could feel goose bumps forming, and tried to twist away, but still Spearfinger continued stroking him. It was torture, that’s what it was: she was toying with him, playing his body like an instrument, making it feel tickle and itch and pain and even a pleasure that was almost sexual, all at once.
And then she stopped, rose, and stared back down at him. “The next time I examine your liver, it will be as bare as the flesh I have just caressed above it,” she cackled. “I must go now, and finish my poppet so that I can send it to find your friend.”
“No!” Calvin groaned, and wished instantly that he had remained silent.
“Yes, Edahi,” Spearfinger croaked offhandedly, “you are correct: I do not know where he is. But wherever Yellow-Hair goes, there will be earth and stone close beneath him, and wherever they are, I can follow. My man of stone can follow too, and much more quickly, for while I can swim in stone, he is stone.”
“One question,” Calvin cried desperately. “You’ve said you want me to die in knowledge, not in ignorance: why livers? And why pick on Don and his folks? You say you don’t want attention paid to Galunlati, yet by killing an entire family, you’re raisin’ suspicions that make that even more likely to happen.”
“No, I make them suspect you!” Spearfinger cackled back. “I am more wise about this World than you imagine. And when they find you with your liver gnawed and your knife in your hand where you have carved it out and feasted on it, they will think you have gone mad with remorse. There will be no more questions.” She paused then. “As to why livers? Why is it that some beasts live on fruit and others flesh, and cannot exist either on the other? But I grow hungry once more—perhaps it is time I sampled the boy.”
“Bitch!” Calvin shouted helplessly.
But Spearfinger was through paying him any need. She turned and shuffled back to the clearing, where she resumed to work on her statue. All the while Calvin lay prisoned, bound by stone around both legs and arms.
*
How long he lay in helpless fury, he didn’t know, for Spearfinger had started up that damned song again, and with it came a resumption of the thrumming. Calvin knew what it was now; he had no choice but to see: it was the Stoneskin keeping rhythm with her feet upon the earth while she worked her craft. Every pat resonated through the ground like an immense, ancient drum.
And then, abruptly, the song and the thrumming stopped. S
pearfinger stepped back from her handiwork and admired it critically. She muttered a word that Calvin did not catch, and then to his utter amazement, simply melted into the ground in front of the statue, whereupon the thrumming started up again with renewed vigor, but in a subtly different form—like sound heard under water, not in air. For its part, the manikin turned an exact stone-and-pebble copy of David Sullivan’s face toward him, grinned wickedly, then spun about and started walking north. But, Calvin realized, it was also slowly sinking into the earth, which produced a softer thrumming of its own. Unbidden, the lines from the Book of Job came to him: “Going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it.” He also remembered who it was that had said them.
Chapter XVIII: Sweating Bullets
Calvin lay flat on his back on the dully thrumming slab of ensorcelled stone—still struggling against his rocky shackles, though there seemed nothing he could do to free himself. He was therefore also trying—with little success, because the damned vibrations made him muddle-headed—to remember his death song.
He had started it long ago in the comfort of his grandfather’s cozy cabin up near Qualla, still remembered that gloomy December day he had begun:
“You should always be ready,” the old man had told his twelve-year-old grandson, puffing on one of his hand-rolled cigarettes. “You are a man now. Already you take life from the world in the creatures you hunt, but now you can give life as well, and that is a wondrous thing. But do not become so proud that you forget Life’s twin: the Black Man of the West, Lord of Tsusginai, the Ghost Country in Usunhiyi. Him you will meet when you least expect it, and when you do, you should know the words to say: your name, the tale of your life, the things you have accomplished, and the people you have affected. Know them all, commit them to memory, for the Black Man may not give you time to sing them all with your tongue, maybe not even the first word. But by thinking on it, you have sung it. Beware, though, for the Black Man will not be fooled.”