by Tom Deitz
Somewhere in the brief time since his keepers had departed he had dozed off, scrunched into the blind arcade with his back to a pillar of rough-hewn stone. He had not dreamed, that he knew of, but when he had awakened, it had all come rushing back to him with such force that it almost overwhelmed him.
Last night was not a dream. None of it was. The sun was up—battling it out with bouts of shower and winning. The air was clear and tasted fresh and well-scrubbed, and for once was free of the underscent of sulfur.
And his best friend and baby sister were dead.
That was an absolute. But every time he forced himself to think about it, his mind sort of slipped sideways from accepting it. Fact: he would never see either of them again. Fact: he would never fight with Allison over the dishes; had had his last tickle-battle with Michael. Fact: there’d be no more arguments over the TV set on Sunday night with his sis; no more exchanges of confidences with his almost-bro. Fact: no more sister’s first date to ridicule (but secretly look forward to); no more forestry school with Michael. No, he had to face it now, look it straight in the eyes and not flinch: all those ifs and maybes and mights were gone. Absent. Finished. Over. And he was alive, but so empty he might as well have been dead, because he felt as if someone had reached into his chest in the night and scooped out two enormous holes that could never be filled.
No more…
No more nothing.
For a long time Don stared out at the railroad tracks and the river beyond, all lit by the sun of what was turning into a remarkably pretty morning—and tried to think of nothing. He didn’t know whether he was hot or cold, wet or dry. He cared riot a whit if the wetness on his cheeks was rain or tears. He simply wanted with all his heart not to be.
At some point he closed his eyes and actually tried to accomplish that: to merge his body back into the stone pillar, to will his legs to melt into the ground, to send his spirit floating off into space. That way he would not have to confront the hard fact that eventually Brock and Robyn would return, having succeeded or failed, and that sooner or later he would have to leave this island of security and find out what was going on with his mom (she’d need him, he supposed, now that her favorite was gone), and that not very long after that he’d have to go to a pair of funerals. Somewhere in there, too, he’d be asked some questions that he knew absolutely he would not be able to answer and be believed.
Maybe they’d just decide he belonged on the funny farm and lock him up, and maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Maybe that would be very close to not being, and would save him from ever having to make decisions again.
Maybe—
It was then that Don noticed that the ground was very softly, very gently, beginning to thrum once more, as if someone, miles distant, was pounding on a drum whose skin was the whole wide world.
For a moment he sat very still and listened, but then, so suddenly he could not have anticipated it until it actually happened, the vibrations that were slowly filtering their way through his bones somehow merged with the fear-born chills they had awakened, so that, quite abruptly, he leapt to his feet—and yelled.
The pain was an edge of reality in his throat, a paean of life in his ears. But it was not enough.
He had to get back home, had to check on Mom, had to have more comfort than Brock and Robyn and Calvin could provide…
Without consciously willing it, he found himself trotting toward the railroad tracks that had brought him into town.
An instant later he had crossed the river on the trestle and was confronting the woods, oblivious to Brock’s frantic cries far behind.
The thrumming grew louder, and with it came a suggestion of melody…
Chapter XXV: Changing Times
(the jail—Whidden, Georgia—mid-morning)
Calvin had about decided he believed in luck after all. What else could explain the fact that Brock had actually managed to contact him, and even more remarkably, that Robyn had beyond all expectation succeeded in retrieving the uktena scale?
Trouble was, luck had two sides: good and bad; and no sooner had he managed to snare the talisman and secrete it in his pocket than he heard irate voices, and footsteps were once more clumping up the hall toward the stairs—which meant that he didn’t dare change right then—not and risk losing the scale all over again, never mind the questions his peculiar concern for it might prompt his captors to ask. Indeed, too much of that could very well exchange one sort of captivity for another. No more jail (if they believed his explanation, or if he actually changed in front of them); but years, perhaps, of being poked and prodded by frustrated scientists would certainly be just as bad.
Which meant he had to hide the damned thing, and do it fast.
Someone was on the stairs now—which gave him about ten seconds. He scanned the bare room frantically.
Not on his person, that was for certain; they’d be sure to check there first, and ditto the bed. The corners? Still too obvious, and likewise the window.
No, wait: the window was open beyond its grillwork (it was summer, after all), and he didn’t need the thong and wire loops, so he could dispose of them that way. And fortunately the cell, though clean, was not in perfect repair, so that occasionally globs of gum or cement or plaster dotted the walls, at least one of the former of which was relatively fresh and ready to hand. Moving as quickly as he ever had in his life, Calvin untangled the scale from the silver wires that bound it, smeared it with gum, and smacked it into the corner of the doorway directly above a hinge, then dashed back to the cot, leapt atop it, and tossed the thong and binding through the high window above—just as he heard the hall door being unlocked. (They’d rightly gotten paranoid about that, now that it was too late to do them any good).
He had barely gotten himself composed in the chair when Deputy Moncrief sauntered into view beyond the bars. He glared at Calvin, trying to look threatening, while Calvin simply tried to appear alert and expectant and guileless, and tried not to let his gaze drift toward the scale. One good thing, at least; if they were searching for something, they wouldn’t know what it was, so he might have the upper hand there.
“You ain’t had any more visitors lately, have you?” the man inquired in a tone that indicated he already knew the answer.
“No,” Calvin replied, choosing to interpret visitor in the narrowest possible definition, and ditto for lately.
The deputy regarded him dubiously. “You sure ’bout that?”
“No.”
An eyebrow shot up.
“You wanta explain that?”
“No.”
The other eyebrow joined its fellow, and the man’s lip stuck out so far he looked like a Ubangi woman. “Well,” he drawled, glancing sideways, as if fearing observation, “I reckon I don’t have no choice but to check you out myself, then, ’cause we sure did have an unexpected visitor just now—that makes two, if I can count. So,” he added, as he fumbled out keys with one hand and his revolver with the other, and somehow managed to get the door open between them, “why don’t you just start by gettin’ outta them clothes—just in case you might be, you know, hidin’ something?”
Calvin rolled his eyes but complied, starting with his shoes and scooting each article toward the guard with a foot as he removed it. The man would pick them up, knead them carefully with one hand, and toss them to the floor behind him, but his eyes never left Calvin, and the revolver never wavered. Finally, for the second time in about an hour, Calvin was as bare as the day he was born, and stood staring at the man quizzically, hoping thereby to keep him as off base as he could.
“Raise ’em and spread ’em,” the man barked. Calvin did, and suffered the less obvious regions of his body to be inspected with the cold barrel of the .38.
“Open your mouth!”
Once again, Calvin acquiesced, thinking maybe this guy was sharper than he’d first thought—and knowing he was a lot more sadistic.
“Well, I reckon you are empty,” the man muttered finally, as i
f disappointed. “Now why don’t you just get yourself over there in the corner while I check out the rest of this shit?”
Calvin could only watch helplessly while the guard stripped the cot of its single sheet and blanket, upended the mattress, examined all the seams, then shone his flashlight along every edge of the room, including the corners of the doorway. He almost caught himself holding his breath then, which would probably have been a dead giveaway, but the man’s eyes passed right on over the glob.
Finally satisfied, though still suspicious-looking, the deputy turned and glared at Calvin. “I ain’t convinced,” he spat. “But I reckon we’ll just keep a real close eye on you for a while. Won’t be here long anyway, so I’ve heard; seems they’re transferrin’ you up to Atlanta.”
“Can I get dressed now?” Calvin asked, not having to fake a chill, for the front that had brought the rain was still heaving the odd gust of wind through the window.
“Not till I get outta here,” the deputy grunted.
And that was not quickly enough for Calvin.
As soon as the door clanged behind the man’s khakied back, Calvin picked up his skivvies and slipped them on, then reached for his jeans. So they were onto him, huh? Knew something was up? That meant he’d have to act fast, and never mind what Brock had told him about the ground trembling, or what he already knew about Spearfinger’s intentions, which only added to the urgency.
But still, it was probably wise to hold off a little while, in the event his captors reappeared suddenly, hoping to catch him at whatever it it was they suspected him of.
So Calvin returned to the chair and began to count backward from three hundred, and prayed no one else would have business with him.
It was the longest five minutes of his life.
When he had finished, he rose nonchalantly, sauntered to the door, and peered out, letting his hand slide absently up the doorjamb to the wad of gum, like he was just sort of casually leaning up against the stonework there. Good, he had it, and there was no one in sight. Now if his luck would hold one more minute…
Not bothering to undress again, for the shape he had already chosen would be small enough to slip out of the clothes with ease, Calvin sat back down on the bed, took three deep breaths to calm himself and clear his mind, then folded his hand around the scale.
Cat, he thought, because he had to be small, and something domestic would attract the least attention. (The caveat about having to change into creatures one had eaten—presumably so you could absorb their genetic imprint—didn’t apply because he’d at least tasted just about everything there was, including, on a dare when he was a kid, a bit of roadkill tabby.)
The only alternative had been some sort of bird—a partridge, say. But he’d have had to become a very small one to slip through the grillwork on the window (his customary falcon, for instance, was too large). Of course, he could also have flown through the building until he found an open window or door, but something about that likewise gave him pause. Too many ceiling fans for one thing, too many moving objects that could break fragile bones—too many unfamiliar reflexes to assimilate in too close a space. He was also—he forced himself to admit—extremely leery of becoming anything that small. Something cat-sized he thought he could manage.
Cat…cat…cat…
Small and sleek and soft-moving; pointed ears and slitted green eyes and exquisitely sharp teeth—and claws that were even sharper. Calvin tried to imagine himself on all fours with a fine furred plume sprouting from the base of his spine and his body twisting and arching.
Cat…cat…cat…
Calvin squeezed harder, until blood ran from his fist, but the pain of transformation did not come.
Cat…cat…cat…
More pain, and a tighter squeeze, and the roots of the scale grated against bone.
But no change.
The scale wasn’t working.
Finally Calvin gave up in disgust.
*
Fifteen minutes later Calvin was still staring skeptically at his hand. The scale was secreted in his shoe now, but he wondered why he’d bothered, since it obviously didn’t function anymore, even after he’d removed every trace of gum from it, in case that was what had been preventing it from effecting the change.
Which left him back where he had been half an hour ago, except that then he’d had hope and now he had none. He was stuck here, forced to sit helplessly while people he cared about were in serious danger. All because he had trusted too much to magic, and not enough to the law of the land. The police chief seemed to be a reasonable guy after all, and he suspected that Robert fellow might give him a fair hearing as well. Maybe he should have had faith enough in one or the other to tell them the truth and where to find evidence to back up his assertions.
Of course, he reflected, he would have looked pretty stupid explaining to them he was a skinchanger and then offering to prove it if they’d only give him the scale—whereupon he would have failed and looked either stupid or crazy, and have provided even more grist for any one of several unpleasant mills he could already hear grinding.
But that brought him back to the scale and to curiosity. Why had it failed? Was there a limit to how much it could do, or how many times it could be used for a certain purpose? Perhaps it was like a battery—and like any battery, it had only a certain amount of magical fizz and then would run no more. That it worked at all was something of a surprise, in fact, given that it had its origin in Galunlati—though now he thought of it, Uki had once made some reference to the uktena magic being born partly of this World.
But this World had magic, too; you just had to be receptive to it. After all, Calvin had been born in this World and yet had changed skin. Sure, he’d had magical aid, but it had been his flesh and blood, his iron/calcium/carbon oxides that had undergone that metamorphosis, his thoughts that had altered his bones, his genes that had reconstructed him more perfectly than before. He knew how to shapeshift, dammit. He just needed the proper stimulus.
He searched his memory frantically. What had he been doing differently those other times? Well, for one thing, he’d been under duress each time, and—No, he hadn’t, he’d been perfectly relaxed that time by the river when he’d tried to change only in part, so that wasn’t it.
So how was that different from what he had just attempted? How was it unlike wishing to be a cat?
Well, he had been wishing, for one thing, and perhaps that was important, because while he thought he had been wishing to be a cat, he was beginning to discover that your mind sometimes had its own hidden agenda, and if you thought you were desiring one thing, you might in fact be hoping for another (like simply to be out of a situation), which could probably screw you up real good if what you were attempting involved much concentration—as it did to become anything significantly smaller.
So where did that leave him? Either the scale really wasn’t working; or it was working and he just wasn’t going about it right.
But was there something else, something obvious he’d overlooked? Well, he’d never been a cat; that was one thing. But he’d never been a ’possum either, the first time he had changed—or a deer, or a falcon…
But he’d hunted those animals! In one form or another he’d pursued them all. And he’d never done that with a cat. Maybe that was it! He’d been thinking like a white man again, had forgotten what bound him to the land and the beasts that roamed it. He hunted them, and they gave him their blood willingly; and the scale took his blood in return. But the cat he had sampled had been a simple roadkill. No one had asked it for its life; no one had covered its blood…
It was a tenuous supposition at best, but time was short, and at least he had something to shoot for now.
So Calvin retrieved the scale and flopped back on his bed, then clenched his fist over the talisman and closed his eyes again. But this time he did not think cat; this time he prayed, very fervently, to become a ’possum.
’Possum…’possum…’possum…
He let the word sink into his consciousness, tried to turn off as much of his intellect as he could, tried to center on only two things: his desire to become that beast, and his memory of how it had been when once before he had been one.
Nothing happened at first, but Calvin did not panic. He simply slipped deeper into himself, tried not to think of himself as a man on a mission at all, but as a ’possum wanting to escape a confinement it certainly would not like. It was scary, because he still had to retain some hold on his humanness—it would do no good to go ’possum and not be able to remember his goal.
’Possum…’possum…’possum…
And then, very slowly, Calvin became aware of the change.
It did not hurt this time. Rather, it swept over him in a tide of warmth, almost like going to sleep and then reawakening. He was distantly aware of the thrust of his tail returning, of his skin crawling and twitching, of the odd tensions and loosenings of the clothes as he shrank within them. Before he knew it, he was blinking out at the world through the eyes of a middle-sized and decidedly russet ’possum.
In no time at all he had wriggled through two sets of bars and was scampering down the stairs, the scale clutched firmly, if awkwardly, in one paw. A skittering instant later he had reached the archway at the bottom and was navigating the hall beyond. The second door to the right was open, and he found himself peering into the sheriff’s office, gratified to see that it was still operating without benefit of electricity, a situation exacerbated by the intermittent clouds that at the moment seemed to have plunged the whole room into an almost-twilight gloom. No one noticed him at first: the loathsome Abner Moncrief was drinking coffee, a secretary was repeating a string of numbers into the phone, and Old Hardface was glaring at them both. Fortunately the outer door had been cracked open for ventilation, which solved a problem he had not anticipated. That was just as well, too, because he could already sense the ’possum getting nervous at the presence of so many people. Fight or flight: his body was awash with both instincts, and he could feel his fur bristling out around him and was finding it almost impossible to resist a desire to hiss.