by Tom Deitz
“Brock!” he gasped. The boy’s hands reached out to brace him as Spearfinger’s thrashings became so vigorous wild he almost fell.
“That’s me, man!”
“Mind tellin’ me what the hell is goin’ on?”
Brock shifted his grip and began. “Well, when you flew off there wasn’t anything I could do but follow, was there? And when I finally saw there was something I could do, I just did it. Them rocks ’bout got me, though,” he added. “But soon as I got loose I ran for Robyn ’cause I knew she had a gun. Figured I’d get it for you. Trouble was, the cops showed up right as we got back—’parently they’d heard your shots, or something.”
“And now they won’t dare shoot for fear of hittin’ you!”
“Robyn’d shoot them if they even tried!”
“There just the four of ’em?”
“Yeah,” Brock replied. “The stupid skinny one and the stupid fat one and the police-guy—he’s on your side, I think. Oh, and that coroner-fellow—he’d have helped, ’cept he twisted the shit out of his ankle just as he got here.”
“I’d surrender, if I was you!” Abner called ineffectually. “We’ll get you sooner or later!”
“Later’s all I need,” Calvin shouted back. “Sorry. guys, but I know what I’m doin’.”
“Don’t be a fool, boy; put that woman down!” That had been Robert.
Calvin ignored them. The ground had grown mushy and was lowering toward a scrap of sand at the edge of the creek. Spearfinger was almost frantic with terror: shrieking and kicking furiously, but Brock had seized her feet and was dampening her more violent gyrations, though she rained threats on top of threats upon their heads.
And then sand squished up between Calvin’s toes, and an instant later, he was wading into the water. It was neither wide nor deep—maybe ten feet across and barely past his waist at the center, where he halted.
“Get back” he told Brock—whereupon he heaved Spearfinger off his shoulder and plunged her into the stream. He lowered himself, then, grasping her firmly by the elbows while he braced her back across one knee and gradually secured his hold—rather like an old-fashioned baptizing, until Calvin began to force her head down.
The ogress screamed piteously, as if she had been plunged into boiling oil, and Calvin was startled to see steam rising around them, steam that he felt hot against his skin. Utlunta was flailing more than ever, but he clearly had the upper hand and the strength to restrain her. Brock backed away a few more paces and stood with his arms outstretched, shielding Calvin from the bank, but he could hear shouts and the sound of running and knew the cops would not be long in arriving.
A deep breath, a fast decision, and he thrust Utlunta’s head beneath the surface. More steam rose, and he could actually feel her weight decreasing, as if she were dissolving, melting away, washing downstream with the water.
A sudden convulsion so startled him that he would have lost her had he not yanked her back by a strip of leather thong that bound part of her garment. Her head broke water, though, and his gorge rose, for the ogress really was partly dissolved: her lips were in tatters and her cheekbones showed through her skin. Their eyes met, but where before those stony black orbs had been filled with hate and arrogance, now there was only fear and pain. And Calvin realized that he truly did not want to do this. Spearfinger was his foe, a monster from his childhood nightmares made manifest. But she was a sentient creature, too: had a brain, feelings, cognizance of her own mortality, and more on her conscience to make her fear death than many. Lord knew he understood how she might feel about that, had she any feelings left. He had deaths on his conscience, at least four of them. She had many times that number across uncounted years. He wondered if they came back to haunt her as his already were doing not a day old.
Did he want another death on his conscience?
“I’ll let you go” he gritted. “I’ll raise a fog and send you back to Galunlati if you’ll give me your word you won’t come back to this World.”
“They will kill you, boy; you know that.”
“Maybe; but that’s not your problem, is it? I don’t want to kill you, Utlunta. I just want you out of this World, I want you where you belong.”
“You want to save your friend, that is all.”
“Isn’t that enough? But you’re wrong there; I want to save more than him; I want to save all your victims.”
“I will have victims in Galunlati!”
“But you’re part of Galunlati.”
“Death is death, and life is life. Do you trade lives here for lives there?”
“I have no choice,” Calvin choked. “But there’s a thing you should know, and that’s that even if you remain here, even if I’m jailed and you go free, others’ll still be after you. Maybe Dave’ll even bring the folk of Tir-Nan-Og to hunt you, sealed borders or not. And if our folk catch you, Utlunta, then you’d really better watch out, ’cause they won’t imprison you in chains, they’ll imprison you with science. They’ll find out that you’re not like anything they’ve ever seen, and then they’ll begin to wonder about you and where you come from, and they may find out about Galunlati, and then men from the Lying World will go there in such numbers that everything that makes Galunlati special will cease to be! Do you want that, Spearfinger? You came here to save your World. If you don’t return you’ll destroy it, more surely than the secrets Dave knows ever will.”
“You lie!” Spearfinger shrieked. “All men are liars!”
And with that, she broke loose and floundered toward the shore. The force made Calvin fall backward, and when he surfaced again, it was to see Spearfinger almost to the beach. Brock was there, and Don as well, both gaping incredulously. But then two more figures loped into view behind them: Abner and Adams, both with naked .38s.
They took in the scene in an instant, and though Abner’s revolver wavered briefly toward Calvin, it soon shifted toward the ogress. She seemed to be totally insane now, and leapt straight toward the startled deputy.
“Uwelanatsik—” she screamed, but as she did twin barrels spat lead into her and she staggered, one leg apparently shattered. But she was not so easily cowed, and somehow found strength to stumble another few steps toward shore before guns blazed again and the other leg collapsed. She fell with her left hand on the bank and her body in the stream. Nor could she rise, though she tried. Calvin splashed over to where she lay, while the boys hung back and the two deputies made their way down the bank, guns still drawn and cocked.
But they were too late: for the water had finally eaten its way through Spearfinger’s right wrist, and even as they watched, it separated and swirled away in the tannin dark waters, and with it went her hidden heart. The pace of her dissolution accelerated then, and Calvin glimpsed three more faces at the top of the bank: Robyn and Robert, who together were supporting an obviously limping coroner. He had a video camera on his shoulder, and with it he taped the final dissolution of Utlunta Spearfinger, the Stoneskin.
When nothing remained but her left hand and her tattered dress, Calvin hauled himself to shore. Robert passed him his black leather jacket, which he tied around his waist by the sleeves before slumping onto a rock, where he stared vacantly at the forest on the other side of the creek. It was over. He had won. But he was in nowise free of either guilt or responsibility.
Robyn flopped down beside him. She took his arm, laid her head against his shoulder, then removed a black and white bandanna from her pocket and began to try to pat him dry.
Someone joined him on the other side: the round-faced coroner. “I reckon we’re gonna need to talk to you some,” he said. “But I reckon I saw what I saw, and I reckon I’ve got witnesses, and I reckon this here camera ain’t gonna lie.”
“What’d you get?” Calvin asked dully. “How’d you know how to find us?”
The man grinned broadly. “Well, first there was that eagle where there shouldn’t have been any eagles, and then two Abners in one place was a little more than even I’m willin
’ to take for granted, so I just had to find out what was goin’ on. And I’m a little better tracker than some of these folks, so I just followed your trail away from the Scotts’ house until it ran out. Lost you for a while there, but then I looked up and saw that eagle again, only this time it was flyin’ along with something in its talons and beak that looked a whole lot like a bow and arrow, and I just climbed up in a tree and followed it with my binocs till it dived down behind some timber, and then I guess I just trusted to luck and headed that way.”
“He’s spry, for an old guy,” Robert inserted.
“Not spry enough, though.” the coroner laughed back, though there was a trace of pain in his face was well. “Just about the time I got to where I could see something—you’d just jumped stark naked outta that tree—I tripped and fell. Twisted the hell outta my ankle, but by then I wasn’t goin’ nowhere anyway, not with what I was seein’ out there in the meadow.” He patted his camera like he would a favorite dog. “Fortunately I had me a walkie-talkie, and Robert had seen me leavin’ and wanted to ask me something, so he followed. I radioed back for help and got him—and Adams and Moncrief.”
“And the camera?” Calvin wondered. “Did you…?”
The coroner grinned broadly. “Not everything, but I got that whole fight on tape—got proof that thing could change shape. And I’ve got proof she washed away. Also,” he added, resting a plastic bag carefully on his knee, “I’ve got her hand here with that finger on it. And I bet it’ll match samples we’ve got off at least four bodies.”
“Four? So that woman in Jefferson too…?”
“’Fraid so—but I think we’ve got enough between ’em to clear you, if you’re willin’ to make a deposition. And if these kids are willin’ to answer some questions as well.”
Calvin eyed Don and Robyn and Brock curiously. “Don will, I think; won’t you?” he asked, and Don nodded eagerly, but his voice cracked when he spoke.
“For Calvin, and for my sister,” the boy said. “And…and for Michael.” And with that name his eyes misted and he finally gave vent to the last of the anguish he had so long suppressed, burying his face in Robyn’s shoulder when she rose to comfort him.
“What about you two?” the coroner inquired. “I ’spect they’d like statements from you as well.”
Calvin could see Robyn stiffen. “That may be a problem.”
“No it won’t,” Brock interrupted. “We’ll tell the truth, and the whole truth. We’ll tell it about everything.”
“No,” Robyn cried again. “Brock, we can’t. It’s too awful.”
“What is?” the coroner asked, taking Brock’s chin in his hand and forcing the boy’s eyes to meet his own. Robyn looked desolate. “I…I’m pregnant!” she wailed. “My stepdad knocked me up. I tried to tell ’em, but nobody’d believe me. That was the final straw.”
“Oh Christ,” Calvin groaned. “Why didn’t you let me know?”
“Why? Wasn’t your fault. Nothin’ you could do.”
“Yeah, but…well, maybe I’d have been a little more considerate.”
“One person’s as important as two,” Robyn countered. “And besides, you were pretty damned considerate—I just didn’t know you were.”
“Georgia law allows DNA evidence,” the coroner inserted. “A couple of samples, a test or two, and you’re home free.”
“Not quite,” Robyn replied flatly, her hands still patting Don absently.
“Never home,” Brock appended. “One thing, man: we ain’t goin’ home again.”
“Well, I certainly can’t guarantee that,” the coroner replied, somewhat taken aback, “but I kinda imagine they’re gonna want you to stick around up here a day or two, anyway. After that, we’ll see. And now, if you don’t mind, we need to get this circus moving.” He cast a glance at Calvin. “You okay, boy? Well as can be expected?”
Calvin nodded wearily and rose, then knotted the jacket sleeves more tightly around his waist and joined the party at the bank. There were more cops there now, but none seemed disposed to harass him, though Abner definitely looked more than a little disappointed.
“You know, this could get to be a real mess,” Calvin told Robert confidentially. “This can’t go far, or there’s no tellin’ what’ll happen.”
Robert raised an eyebrow in reply. “It won’t go no further than it has to, that’s for sure! Still, most of what’s happened, we can chalk up to some poor old bag lady gone insane. Sheriff’s boys had to shoot her. Got physical evidence to link her to the murders’ that oughta be enough.”
“What about me?” Calvin wondered.
“We’ll need you to talk some,” the coroner said, joining him on the other side, with Robyn helping him along and Brock proudly lugging the camera. “And then I’ll need to find some way to arrange a power outage to destroy the files. I understand your little friend here might be of some use there—hear he’s got quite a knack for managing those kinda occurrences.” He grinned at Brock and cuffed him. “Not much for Southern hospitality, are we? And if I was any of you, I’d think a long time before I come down here again, and longer before I fooled around with magic.”
Calvin started at that. “How’d you know?”
“I’ve read some books,” the man chuckled. “And a coupla days ago I was down at Cumberland to tape the storm—that’s kinda a hobby of mine—and right in the middle of the worst part I seen a fleet of ships sailin’ in the air. That enough for you?”
“It’s enough,” Calvin agreed, for the man had obviously witnessed the Faery naval battle that had marked the end of his and Dave’s previous adventure—the one he had come here to sort out. “Don’t ask me any more,” he added. And then they started across the meadow.
The sun came out then, and cast Calvin’s shadow dark beneath him, but he was not surprised when two more joined it: winged ones, darting in to flank him on either side. And then two more, and then two more, and then dozens.
“Peregrines,” somebody exclaimed. “Thought they ’uz gone from here.”
“Wrong season anyway,” someone else decided.
“Not this time,” Calvin told them, and bent over to whisper so that only Brock and Don and Robyn could here. “Not when they’re your totem.”
Epilogue I: Road Trip
(east of Whidden, Georgia—Friday, June 20—mid-morning)
It was not, Calvin reflected as he wandered through the oak woods east of Whidden, an optimum day for magic. But that conclusion was not based on any consultation of signs or portents, not on a reading of auguries in sheep entrails or the position of planets and stars. Rather, it was founded on the simple assumption that there was no way on earth that magic could have improved on the world around him that particular morning.
It was warm, but not enough to provoke a sweat. And the humidity was as low as it ever got in Georgia, so that for once he didn’t feel sticky when engaging in a moderate amount of exercise.
And there was the land itself. It was as though the whole natural world was thanking him for the destruction of some plague the best way it knew how: with bright light and clear weather, with oak leaves so transparently green they looked too fine to be silk, with palmetto fronds glossier than any wax candles, with tendrils of Spanish moss so delicate that the finest carded wool could never hope to match them. The very sky had a polished look about it, and the air was almost too fresh-smelling to be entirely real. Even the dragonflies flitting above Iodine Creek like tiny jeweled stealth-fighters seemed to sparkle more brightly in the slanting sun. And the animals, too, seemed to have abandoned their usual reserve, for on his trek overland from the hearings in town Calvin had seen three deer, including one with the rare piebald coat; more squirrels and rabbits than he could count; and even a sleek furtive flash of grayish-tan that he was almost certain was a panther, though there were officially none left in Georgia. Certainly he’d never seen cat tracks that large left by anything else.
As for birds, there were red-cockaded woodpeckers and pileated wo
odpeckers, great blue herons and green-backed herons, snowy egrets and bobwhites, blue jays and red-tailed hawks. And peregrine falcons, of course. Lots of those.
Yeah, it was a beautiful morning. All that was lacking was Sandy—but Calvin’d be seeing her soon enough; she was already on her way down to pick him up. After all, he still had a wedding to go to in less than twenty-four hours, and there’d be a few more days tying up loose ends down here after that.
Meanwhile, he had to retrieve some things from his campsite. He paused to rest on a fallen log and thought back over all that had transpired since Spearfinger’s fall.
As soon as the authorities—mostly Police Lieutenant Robert Richards and coroner William Roach—had gotten affairs in order at the meadow, they had escorted Calvin and the runaways to town and put them up in a motel at county expense. He wasn’t certain what had become of Robyn and Brock after that, but he had spent the remainder of the afternoon and a good part of the evening matching reasonable questions with unreasonable replies—and without hostility on either side, though what he told the very select number of state and federal investigators, some of whom had choppered in all the way from Atlanta, certainly strained their credulity and elicited lots of shrugs and whistles and sighs and upcast eyes. But every time the grilling threatened to get out of hand, good old Bill the coroner would simply run his tape again and inquire, very calmly, if there was any other explanation.
There was not.
And fortunately, no one had thought to inquire how Spearfinger had come into this World to start with—apparently the notion that such a being was from Somewhere Else and could actually be summoned (whether by accident or design) was beyond their comprehension. Calvin was just as glad, too, for that would have opened up far too large a Pandora’s Box for even him to try closing. Telling the exact truth had saved him more than once, but he was tired of being forever on guard.
As for Abner Moncrief, he had been sent packing along with most of the rest of the sheriff’s department once proof of the secret interrogation room had surfaced (its usual guests were low-life out-of-towners who’d never heard of either law or lawyers). There was even talk of opening it to the public, for it really had been used by the Underground Railroad two courthouses ago. Sheriff Lexington himself, already scrutinized by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for nepotism, procedural violations, and general corruption, had been suspended pending further investigation, with Robert Richards swapping uniforms to assume his duties. There were advantages, it seemed, to the fast-moving justice of small rural counties.