by Tom Deitz
More than a little frightened by this, Calvin had commenced immediately, scrawling clumsy iambic pentameter couplets into his junior-high notebooks and committing them to memory over the next several days. It had grown over the years, spread and branched like a tree: separate songs for each unique occasion, and not always with the same rhyme or meter, for as he became more musically sophisticated, there came ballads, laments, lyrics—even rock and country and jazz—and lately he’d been adding to it something he called the “Werepossum Blues,” which detailed the adventures of Dave Sullivan and Calvin’s increasingly important role within them.
But that came late in the opera, and looked like it might be the concluding aria.
Just now, he was having trouble remembering how the damned thing started.
That frigging, persistent thrumming kept getting in the way—coupled with Spearfinger’s song, which he could no longer hear with his ears, but which still seeped up through the ground to dull his brain. It was really hypnotic, too, and for an instant before he realized he was doing it, Calvin had begun affixing words to match the beat:
…deep shit…deep shit…deep shit…
He tried to resist, tried to think clearly, but could not…Uwe…lana…tsiku…su sa…sai……deep shit…deep shit…deep shit…deep shit…deep shit…
And then the rhythm shifted slightly. Calvin puzzled over that a moment, even as the stone’s grip finally ceased growing tighter. The beat had become more halting, which meant—if Calvin was correct in his half-formed theory that the drumming was either Spearfinger drawing on the Power of the earth or sending her Power through it in the rhythm of her steps—that the ogress had resumed an even more halting pace. More interestingly, though, the beat had become distinctly bluesy, so that before he was quite aware of it, Calvin found he was softly humming the “Werepossum Blues.”
“Oh Lord, my name is Calvin, an’ Indian blood run through my veins.
Yeah, my name is Calvin Fargo, an’ Cherokee blood be pulsin’ in my veins.
I’ve had some wild adventures; seen an awful lot o’ wond’rous things…”
He had just commenced the second verse when something clicked inside his head.
Werepossum!
Lord, he’d been a fool. The solution was no farther away than the uktena scale. With that he could shift to a smaller form and escape—presuming the stone shackles didn’t change with him to accommodate. They seemed to have pretty well solidified now, appeared to be holding him rather passively, not with the active grip they had maintained when the song began.
The thrumming had ended, too; had just sort of tapered off without his noticing it. Maybe that meant—troubling thought—that Spearfinger had reached her destination. Or perhaps she’d simply passed out of range. Certainly his head was clearer now.
So he could escape after all—if he could somehow activate the blessed scale. Where was it, anyway? It should have been on its rawhide thong around his throat, but then Spearfinger would have noticed it when she’d laid his torso bare—but no, when he strained his head up to check (yanking at his hair, for the rock had ensnared a good part of it), he felt the scale poke him in the left armpit.
Trouble was, there was no way to activate it. He tried twisting his arm and body and shoulder around within the narrow bounds of his confinement, but that only rubbed his skin raw. He could not reach his knife, nor twitch the arrow he still held enough to bring blood from its point, at least not where it could reach the scale.
That left the technique he had used before: biting himself until he bled. It had worked, after a fashion, though he hated the thought of doing it again because, like everything else involved in shapeshifting, it seemed to require a lot of pain. One thing, though, it would not be his tongue this time. No way!
Steeling himself, he closed his eyes and curled his lower lip over between his incisors, then concentrated, striving to fix on his teeth, not the damp flesh between them, as he bit down. His lip resisted like an alien, living thing; writhing and twisting as the pain increased, and once it hurt so much that he gasped and it slipped him entirely.
He started over.
Harder and harder, and he had to force himself to continue. He felt like a fox he had once found. It had come limping into his grandfather’s yard on three legs, dirty and emaciated and still bleeding from the stump of its right forepaw. Grandfather had cared for it, but it had died soon after. It was more than a week later that Calvin, on one of his rambles, had found a trap containing the gnawed-off foot of that same fox.
And now he was gnawing his lip for much the same reason. Succeeding too, finally, for he could taste blood. He strained his head forward as much as he could, tilted it, half-blew, half-spat between his teeth. Could feel something warm trickling down his chin and onto his throat—and stopping there.
Seeking to augment the flow, he bit harder—and was rewarded with a slight increase, but still not enough.
He wiggled his torso and jerked his head, trying to urge the recalcitrant blood to flow into the hollow of his arm. If he could just get the transformation started, he thought he could manage.
But it wasn’t working! He wasn’t situated in a way that allowed him to feed the talisman enough blood.
Calvin ground down even harder, and pain beyond belief shot through his lip. He felt it trying to free itself, but that only added to the agony that engulfed it from inside and outside alike.
Another, stronger gush of blood, and Calvin spat again, then choked and gagged as too much ran down the wrong way.
Another bite, sliding his teeth back and forth now, gnawing away—
And cutting through! He could feel a section of his lip flop down against his chin, almost bereft of feeling. The very concept made him retch, forcing him up against his bindings as blood fountained across his chest, slid down his throat—and, thank God, ran in a steady stream down his chin, across his neck, and into the hollow of his left arm where the scale lay. He waited until a sticky warmth accumulated there, and began to concentrate:
’Possum, ’possum, ’possum…
’Possum was what he would become, because it was small enough and he had been a ’possum, and thought he could handle a smaller form if it were one he had worn before. He had to fight, though, had to resist the nausea that threatened to overcome him, the agony of his wounded lip, the distancing from his self that signaled the change about to begin. What was ’possum? Small, furry, furtive; pointy nose, beady eyes, long naked tail, and paws like tiny hands.
The change hit him all at once, not gradually like before, and he had to make a conscious effort to maintain control as alien instincts once more invaded his mind and took up lodging there. But the rock was loosening as his body shrank away from it. In seconds he could slide his left hand free, and when he did, he clasped it around the scale and let the points sink in.
That speeded things and smoothed them out. He took a deep breath and let the change proceed, keeping his mind firmly locked on self-awareness as he felt his joints shift, the twitch at the base of his spine that was his tail making its presence known, the strange pulls and tensions, the sudden loosening of clothes as his body altered and they did not.
And then, abruptly, he was free. He had to struggle to escape the piles of empty fabric where most of his body had been, but then he really was loose. Already the pain of transformation had faded, already the agony in his lip was dulled.
Quick now, before the ’possum got other ideas: he fumbled around his throat until he found the scale again. Clamped his paws around it, and thought, very hard, human.
That was accomplished very quickly indeed, in one long upward rush that made Calvin dizzy as his head shot into the air and he found himself crouching at the edge of a wide flat boulder. As quickly as he could, he slipped the scale necklace over his head and gathered up his clothes and weapons. Fortunately none were damaged, and the rock did not resist, though he did have to yank vigorously to free one of his sneakers.
Maybe a minu
te later he was dressed again, and only then did he dare check on his lip. It didn’t hurt as badly as it had initially, that much was clear. But he had done it some pretty solid damage, and in spite of two changes it was still occasionally sending little stabs of bright agony shooting into his chin when he tried to move it. His stomach churned and flip-flopped as he raised a finger to his mouth experimentally—and met, thank God, the thin rough ridge that meant it was already scabbing over.
Satisfied that he was as well as he could be, given the circumstances, Calvin checked his bow once more, turned, and jogged off toward Don Scott’s house.
Chapter XIX: Catching Up
It was strange, Calvin mused grimly as he trotted through the moonlit woods, how radically things could change in fifteen minutes.
This forest, for example. The first time he had emerged from it beside Don’s house, it had seemed friendly, almost as if it were making a conscious effort to assist him. Perhaps it had been, too; maybe so few people paid it any real heed anymore that it had been grateful when Calvin’s rituals had given it the obeisance to which it was anciently due.
But if the woods had aided him then, they overlaid stone and sand, and those were Spearfinger’s allies. And since she now knew he was onto her, perhaps she had pulled rank on him, as it were, and the forest had withdrawn its support and replaced it with hostility.
For surely there could not be so many buried roots snaking along the earth at just the right height to trip him. And surely there could not be so many sharp twigs and broken branches to stab at him as cruelly as that awful finger had. Nor could the terrain itself otherwise have grown so uneven that his feet twisted and slipped at every turn. Already he’d stumbled twice on a series of washboard ruts he could have sworn had not been present earlier, and he had to maintain constant vigilance against the skull-sized stones that seemed to have erupted beside Spearfinger’s mole-mound path like toadstools after a rain. These he gave a particularly wide berth, for they might do anything from snap at his passing toes to communicate word of his approach to the Stoneskin.
In spite of his growing sense of urgency, Calvin took a quick break, leaning against the trunk of a convenient sweet gum—maybe the only thing the worthless weeds were good for. A tendril of Spanish moss tickled his ear and he batted it away, and simply stood for a moment, chest heaving, the air disturbingly full of the heavy hiss of his breathing.
He was dog-tired, he realized, and with good reason: it was getting close to dawn now, and he’d been on the go almost constantly for the past several hours—didn’t even want to think about the miles he’d covered in various skins and guises. Fortunately he was in good condition—excellent condition, in fact; and shapeshifting seemed to have some sort of rejuvenating effect—but even the best of athletes eventually began to wear down, and Calvin thought he was about to. Lord knew his legs were getting stiff, his feet sore, and his lungs hurt like hell. He bent over, bounced a couple of times to try to loosen his spine a bit, did a quick series of waist twists, then laid down the bow and gave his thighs and calves a thirty-second massage.
But he was still not ready to move on. Fatigue and trepidation had replaced energy and elation all in the space of a quarter hour.
Okay, guy, he told himself firmly. It’s only another half mile or so to the house, and you know you can do that. And once there, just a little while sure enough to put an arrow through a witch’s hand—presuming that’s where the old biddy is. Then you can rest. An hour from now you could be curled up asleep beside Robyn.
All of which was probably bullshit, considering that he had no idea where Spearfinger actually was—and that the cops really would be after him when dawn rolled around. Probably there were APBs out on him already.
But that didn’t exempt him from his responsibility.
Calvin took five more deep breaths to calm himself, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth, like you were supposed to do when you got nerved out. They helped, but it was still not enough when he started off again.
Nor was it enough to keep his pulse from racing when he once more emerged from the woods at the edge of Don Scott’s backyard.
He paused there, surveying carefully. It looked the same as before. The mole-mound he had been following was certainly still present and looked, if anything, to be maybe a little rougher around the exit end, though that was the only difference.
Except…there were no lights on.
So what did that imply? Had Spearfinger got wise and turned them off? Had she—appalling thought—actually put on Allison’s shape and gone to bed? Was a Cherokee ogress sleeping soundly between the K-Mart sheets of a south Georgia ranch house?
Calvin had a sudden chill and swept his gaze across the yard again. Or perhaps she was still out here. Maybe she was watching him now—from a bush, from a tree, from a clump of grass. Maybe she was a bush or a tree or a clump of grass.
Maybe he should try to beat her at her own game. Except that to kill her he needed to be able to use the bow.
Still panting slightly, Calvin began a second cautious circuit of the environs. This time, though, he swung left from where he had emerged from the forest and made his way to the logging road on that side, staying within the tree cover as much as possible, even though it meant exposing himself to the hostile woods.
No luck that way: every window was dark.
The other direction now, to much the same effect, and Calvin’s eyes were actually starting to smart from trying to focus on tiny details obscured by the night.
A quick pause for another series of calming breaths, and he made his way across the backyard, flitting from shadow to shadow with as much stealth as he could muster, disturbingly aware of how his muscles seemed much more reluctant to respond than heretofore.
Eventually, though, only fifteen feet separated him from the house, and he made the dash from utility shed to back corner on one held breath, to flop panting against the wall beside the kitchen door. Moonlight shone on a window directly above his head, and, unlike the others, it was cracked open perhaps six inches at the bottom, though there was still a screen. He hesitated with his head inches below the opening and listened, alert for any sounds that might hint at Spearfinger’s presence. Nothing out of the ordinary: only the hum of a refrigerator, the deeper growl of an air-conditioner, the ticking of the grandfather clock in the other room that seemed to synchronize itself with his heartbeat and remind him at once of “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Or maybe “Masque of the Stone Death” and “The Tell-Tale Liver,” he decided wearily, and continued his survey.
His plan was different this time, however. Before, he’d hoped to catch Spearfinger inside and simply shoot her through a window. But since none of them were open, it now looked as if he was going to have to break in and stalk her from room to room—assuming she was even here. He didn’t dare risk not checking, either, since if she was present he wouldn’t get a better chance to do the deed.
Still, he was a little uneasy; it would be just his luck to take the time and trouble to pick a lock and walk in to find himself face-to-face with his adversary. Thus it was with considerable trepidation that he checked the windows once more—with about as much success as previously. He could see nothing clearly through them, and every one except the kitchen was closed and latched—and even that, when he managed to get the screen off, was jimmied, for he could push it no higher than it already was.
Which meant he was reduced to picking the door locks. Okay, front or back?
The front door was one of those thick, solid oak jobs behind a solid-looking screen and had been securely fastened when he’d tested it on his previous circuit. The backdoor screen was much flimsier, though, and in fact had a hole in it right beside the handle that seemed to indicate that someone had pushed through before and unlatched the screen from inside—probably someone in the household, to judge by the fact that the wire ends looked to be a bit rusty. Calvin thought it unlikely it w
ould have gone un-repaired for long otherwise.
Propping the bow against the doorframe, Calvin took a deep breath and worked his hand through the slit and found the hook. As gently as he could with thumb and forefinger, he lifted it free and slid his hand out again, swearing softly when the broken wires gouged him as he went against their curvature. He wiped the blood on his jeans—as far away from the scale as he could, just in case.
Another deep breath, and he eased the screen open.
This door was one of those cheap hollow affairs, once yellow, but with the paint peeling off some kind of veneer. There was only one lock, and fortunately no deadbolt—a little odd for a woman living alone. But then, this was the country, and he’d bet there was a stash of guns around somewhere—a kid like Don would almost certainly have at least a couple.
An idea struck him: the legends said Spearfinger had been slain with an arrow through the hand where her heart had been relocated. But the folks who had originated that story had not known of firearms, so was there any real reason a gun wouldn’t do just as well? He was a pretty decent shot with a pistol, okay with a shotgun, and hell-on-wheels with a .22 rifle. Maybe if he made it inside he’d do a fast search for one and get after-the-fact clearance from Don.
If he didn’t encounter Spearfinger first.
If he didn’t rouse her trying to pick this goddamned lock.
If.
Fortunately Calvin was good at picking locks. Lord knew he’d had enough practice, since his dad had lost the key to the front door when Calvin was twelve and had never bothered to replace it. That had been the same kind of lock as this, too: one that responded very well to your basic paper clip—which was one of the very few pieces of equipment Calvin had with him.