The Summer Country

by James A. Hetley

  "I curse you by the forest, I curse you by the meadow, I curse you by the mountain and the river. I curse you by the bog and by the well and by the roof-beam of your fucking house!"

  "Such a lovely tongue the lass has in her head," mocked Sean. "And I was thinking the Celtic blood ran thin in her."

  Dougal spat, just missing her bare belly. "Padric, cut a pole."

  She saw Padric hesitate before tying her ankle-leash to a tree, with a glance at her that might have been fear if she could read his face clearly through her tears. He moved slowly and carefully, selecting a slim tree well free of any others. So a curse could truly bite, in this world?

  Sean stepped away with a negligent wave of his hand. Frown-wrinkles ringed his eyes, though, as if even his mockery was troubled by the words using her throat. Suddenly, she saw blood in his eyes and strangling green fingers wrapped around his throat. His vision-mouth screamed in agony.

  The vision faded even as she drank it in.

  "Dougal, my friend, I will leave you to your lady-love. I must prepare a greeting for my beloved brother. You will remember to tell your pets to let me pass?"

  The gnome chuckled. "If you are such a mighty mage, friend, none of my pets should be a threat."

  "Oh, I just don't want to hurt them. You might be angry with me. Some of them would be so hard to replace."

  Padric returned with a thick pole, stripped of limbs. No matter how she thrashed against the jerking chains, she couldn't fight them as they slipped the pole between her wrists, between her ankles. And then she was swaying, hanging, bumping against rocks and tree-trunks and clawing thorns, with the cold iron rings gouging fiery pain into the skin of her wrists and ankles.

  Warm blood trickled down her wrists, and she concentrated on the feel of it, struggling to block out the pain of its source. Fire stabbed at her shoulders as if muscles or tendons had torn loose in her struggles, and slowly ripped further with each bounce and swing of the trail.

  "Pain is optional," Brian had told her, one time while she re-taped his ribs. "You can overcome pain with an effort of your will and mind. Concentrate on something greater, on survival or on revenge, and the pain will go away. Pain is optional."

  Bullshit, her critic answered. Pain is nature's way of telling you that you just fucked up.

  Her head throbbed along with the beat of the trail--a dizzy, nauseated migraine of a hangover like her worst morning-after ever. Was it from Sean's glamour, or from her own thwarted Power, or just her raging hatred? She twisted sideways against the agony of her shoulders and vomited in great racking spasms.

  Dougal and Padric walked on, ignoring their burden. They followed a clear trail, beaten as if well traveled but by men or horses only. It was too narrow and rough for carts.

  Watch the path, the voice in Maureen's head ordered her. Ignore the pain; ignore the rampage in your belly. You are going to escape. You'll need to know your way through this forest.

  She marked down a rounded lump of rock through the woods, here, a massive grandfather beech, there. The path dropped into a gentle valley or glen, down to a brook crossed by a ford, the feet of the men splashing quietly. Then the trail rose again, through switchbacks on a steeper pitch, the ground rising as if Dougal set his keep upon the heights, for a view or for defense.

  Padric's foot slipped, and he cursed. Maureen matched him word for word and topped him, as the jerk lanced through her body and struck fire from wrists and ankles and shoulders and head. She vomited again, the twisting of her belly just adding to the white heat agony.

  Pain is nature's way of telling you that you just fucked up.

  Fucked up, big-time.

  Maureen cursed between the jolts and the spasms in her belly, silently but fluently. She wouldn't believe one man who was kind of nice, wouldn't obey a rational warning. Now she was trussed up like an animal for a zoo. Now she was helpless, a slave to men who wanted to breed her like she was some kind of fucking cow.

  No, pig. Cut the mixed metaphors, Maureen. Hanging from a game-pole like a gutted pig, the bastard said. Pig-headed Maureen.

  Heads floated into her nightmare.

  She saw heads by the trail, skulls, on poles. The bastard decorated his path like a cannibal, for Chrissakes. They stared at her with sightless hollows for eyes, the same bleak stare her vision had placed on Sean's head just before he left.

  The head was where the soul lived. She remembered Grandfather telling tales out of Irish legend, of heads talking even when severed from their bodies, living on for years and carried across the seas. Telling of trophies, the heads of enemies preserved and handed down from generation to generation as treasures of the family.

  Maureen remembered Grandfather's face, the Dies Irae face when he'd seen the bloody welts across her back and couldn't do a damn thing about them because he was old and weak with the drink and had no place else to live. I'll take some fucking trophies, dammit, she swore to that helpless angry god. I'll jam Sean's head on a stake shoved through his asshole. I'll nail Dougal's skull to his own goddamn gatepost.

  Hack it off like Brian hacked Liam's head free from his shoulders to roll around the alley in the snow. Before it burned.

  Would the bodies burn, here in the Summer Country? She remembered the uncanny fire. That would rob her of her trophy.

  She vomited again, racking dry heaves trying to rid herself of something that was not inside her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "Shit," Jo repeated. "It's a goddamned dragon."

  She closed her eyes on the blasted impossible forest and counted to ten, and opened them again.

  It was still there.

  "There ain't no such animal," she whispered to herself.

  The beast was all hard and glittery and black, armored with scales as sharp as obsidian flakes. It wasn't a flying dragon, no sign of wings--at least her hallucinations weren't trying to get her to accept something physically impossible. It was just a snake with four stumpy legs about as thick as trees, a tail that went on forever, and a sharp head filled with even sharper teeth.

  She stared at it, willing it to go away--willing the entire world to go away and dump her back in the stinking slush of Naskeag Falls. The world refused, listening to the part of her mind which said that warm was nice, that green was nice, that it was about damned time Maureen's psycho brain came up with something useful. If only her delusions didn't include so many teeth . . .

  The dragon kept coiling and uncoiling like one of those garter snakes Maureen used to catch in the back yard--a garter snake sixty feet long. With teeth to match.

  Maybe it only ate virgins. Different taste or something. Then she didn't have a thing to worry about.

  Her palms were telling her otherwise. She wiped the sweat off of them, smelling her own fear, and then gritted her teeth at the stupidity of moving and attracting attention. The dragon lifted its head slightly, but it wasn't the jerk of a startled animal.

  It knew she was here. It was smelling her, with that long forked tongue as red as a fire truck and damn near half as big. If it wanted to eat her, she'd only be a burp by now. What the hell was it waiting for?

  Hey, Lent just started. Maybe it's an old-line Catholic, gave up red meat for Lent, virgin or otherwise. She knew she teetered on the edge of hysteria and clamped down on the images.

  The dragon coiled and uncoiled like an Escher puzzle, no beginning and no end, wrapped around a huge moss-covered boulder and some ancient trees bearded with lichen. It stared at Jo as if it meant to freeze her with its slit-pupil lizard eyes. She saw a mind lurking behind those eyes. Maybe she should try talking to it.

  "Look, I was just following my sister, didn't mean to trespass, never owned a sword or lance in my life. Nice meeting you." She backed away, down the trail.

  {How did you get here? The Master says you must stay with him.}

  Its voice hissed in her mind, cold but curious, as the creature moved to cut her off. Scales glittered like black opals as the dragon flowed between the trees,
as fast as running water, much faster than she. It looked like the slow-motion replay of a striking cobra.

  She dodged away from the trail and through the forest, stumbling over roots, branches slashing across her face. The glistening ebony snake blocked her, never touching her, never hurting her, seeming everywhere at once. Once she thought she'd spotted a gap, only to run headlong up against the scaly nose itself. Jo smelled its breath, moist and acrid, and barely dodged the forked tongue. One tip was as big as her arm. The damned beast still didn't bite her.

  {You must go back.}

  Jo leaned back against another tree, panting, the coarse bark reassuringly solid. Sweat poured down her back, and it wasn't all fear. The forest was way too hot for her to be running around in a winter coat and sweater and insulated boots.

  Sister mine, maybe I owe you this for Buddy, but I don't think I'm going to follow you into your dreams again. I thought your fantasy world was more fun than this.

  She started to dump her useless jacket, then hesitated and held it like a matador's cape. The tongue flicked out, and the dragon's head lowered as if it was puzzled. Maybe dragons didn't shed their skin, the way snakes did. She shook the jacket and then trailed it on the ground, offering it as bait.

  "¡Toro, aqui! ¡Toro! ¡Toro!"

  The beast's head was as big as a car. She flipped her jacket over one of its eyes and ran. Cloth ripped behind her. She hoped the dragon would stop to worry its prey a little, before it realized the filling of the sandwich had run off.

  Something smacked her to the ground, and the forest spun around her in a burst of green stars. She couldn't get up. A tree-trunk lay across her body--a warm tree-trunk, pulsing with life, ridged with coarse dry scales. It ended in fingers each as big as one of her hands, and those ended in claws like steel meat hooks. Eyes squeezed shut against the sudden brightness of the sun, she gently explored her ribs. Nothing was broken, and she still wasn't eaten.

  {You must go back.}

  It sure was a single-minded critter. Jo stared up into a single yellow cat-eye bigger than a dinner plate. Jurassic Park, that's what the scene was. The T. Rex looking through the car window. Only thing the scene needed was night and rain. Who was going to be eaten next?

  T. Rex didn't say. Her brain raced. How good was she at riddles? Dragons were supposed to like the riddle game. Something she'd read said so. Win the game and she went free.

  "How many Republicans does it take to change the lightbulb in the Statue of Liberty's torch?"

  The eye blinked, first some kind of transparent membrane and then the charcoal-gray lid. It looked as smooth as velvet, delicate, like the shoulder-wrap for an evening dress. She felt a crazy urge to stroke it.

  "None. They've turned off the power to save tax dollars."

  No effect. Okay, so it was a damn poor joke. Jo tried to slither out from under the dragon's paw but found she'd have to leave her pants behind. One of those claws hooked right under the waistband, cold and hard along her belly.

  "Look, you keep telling me to go back, and I'm trying to. I may be lost, but I think that's the way I came in."

  {You try to deceive me. You may change your skin and disguise your smell, but I still know you. You must return to the Master's keep. These woods are dangerous. He will be angry.}

  Maureen.

  T. Rex thought she was Maureen. Just like the slimeball in the Quick Shop, just like dozens of people they'd spoofed since Maureen reached Jo's height and grew breasts. Maureen had come this way with the dude she was kissing.

  She's at his castle. Safe. The watchdog was told to keep her safe. That's why I'm not looking at the wrong end of an after-dinner mint.

  "Okay. Okay. Just get off of me, you scaly St. Bernard. I can't get to the keep lying flat on my back."

  Weight lifted from her belly, and she scooted away from that golden eye. It watched her, suspicious. "Go the right way," the eye said. "Try to leave and things will get nasty. I could use a snack."

  The frigging animal acted more like a prison guard than a watchdog. Something smelled fishy here.

  Her hands stung. They were covered with fine lines of blood, like paper cuts--must have tangled with those scales. She found the shreds of her ski jacket and wiped the blood away, winding strips of fiber batting over the cuts like bandage gauze. The dragon still watched her like a cat with a cornered mouse.

  {The trail is clear. I must not leave our territory, or the Master will be angry.}

  The dragon blocked one direction. The keep must be in the other. Like T. Rex said, the trail was clear.

  Our territory, it had said. There were more of them? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

  Jo's hands shook. Hot and sweaty or not, her teeth kept trying to chatter. She could only keep them still by clenching her jaw so hard it hurt. Funny thing was, she also had this urge to laugh like a hyena. If she gave into it, she'd probably never stop. Hysteria.

  So she had decided to add manic-depressive tendencies to the family portfolio? Jo groped for a tree to lean against. She was going nuts. It had been months since she last smoked pot, ten years since that stupid mistake with acid. Nothing stronger today than coffee. She couldn't blame this scene on chemicals.

  Dragons, she thought. Talking dragons.

  She unwrapped one makeshift bandage and stared at the razor-thin lines of red. Fresh blood beaded up when she flexed her hand. Did hallucinations cut people?

  But she could imagine the cuts, yes? Imagine the blood?

  She shuddered. Find Maureen, that was the priority. Find the way out of this frigging nightmare. Ask her sister for a nice calming hit of Thorazine or whatever the latest chemical tranquility was called. Hey, Sis, know any good shrinks?

  Back to "Find the Sister." She was somewhere up ahead, both the Genetic Resonance Imager and the dragon said so. The dragon also said the forest was dangerous. Jo had to catch up before something with less brain or more appetite decided this "Master" was far enough away to forget about his orders.

  Jo heaved herself up from the tree and blinked, waiting for the world to stop spinning. She shook her head and blinked again, trying to snap out of the funk. Scared was one thing, paralyzed was another. She just had to keep her eyes moving, keep her feet moving. At least she had boots on, instead of sneakers. This wasn't a sidewalk.

  Branches, brambles, tree-trunks, rocks--the forest poked and prodded at the trail, trying to reclaim it from the touch of man. Jo felt tension in it, felt an edge to either side of her, as if the trail was a wandering, wavering line through hostile territory and the bushes on either side were mined. The dragon might have left, but Jo could still feel eyes out there in the shadows. They weren't friendly.

  Paranoia?

  Just shut up and keep walking. How far was it, to this place the dragon called a keep? Her legs needed to firm up for swimsuit season, anyway. Or no-swimsuit season, if they rented the Long Lake cabin again this year. God, wouldn't having David at the lake be great: swimming nude, making love on the dock by moonlight . . . swatting mosquitoes by moonlight . . .

  She grimaced. At least that was one menace Maureen's hallucinations seemed to have left back in the Great North Woods. Jo sure didn't miss the cloud of biters that could turn a Maine forest into the seventh circle of hell--black flies, mosquitoes, moose flies, no-see-ums . . .

  Living in the middle of a lot of water had its downside.

  Lakes. Creeks. Water. Jo's mouth felt dry--maybe it was fear. This place looked clean enough, but the New York tourists caught Giardia every year, thinking the pure mountain streams and lakes in Maine were clean enough to drink. Maureen had explained it: moose and bear and beaver don't use outhouses, see. Jo thought she was going to get a little thirsty if she didn't find Maureen and her man.

  A flash of yellow gleamed up ahead. She bit her lip and wondered what was next--a golden dragon? Maybe the Sphinx, since she'd offered to play riddles? Whatever it was, it wasn't moving.

  Maybe it was waiting. Waiting for lunch. Come into my parlor, said the
spider to the fly. It was right on the trail.

  Jo clenched her fists and forced herself to go on. The pain from her cut palms served as an anchor, a handhold on reality. She giggled, half-hysterically, at the unintended pun.

  Just shut up and keep walking.

  It was a coat. Maureen's stupid ski jacket, hanging on a branch stub. It proved Jo's psychic nose still worked. Maureen had come this way, got overheated just about as quickly, but didn't have an argument with the guard-dog.

  She checked the pockets. Yep, Maureen's. There was the stupid gun, stupid speed-loader with five extra rounds.

  And that was proof little Mo was happy here, walking off and leaving her gun behind. When a paranoid tells you there's no problem, you can fucking believe it.

  Jo thought about guns, thought about dragons, and sphinxes, and griffins, and all the other dreamscape animals. She shuddered with a sudden chill. A lot of characters in fairy tales ended up as lunch.

  The gun felt solidly comfortable in her hand. If she was going to pick up Maureen's delusions, maybe she should go for the whole package. Jo felt like she'd slipped through the Looking Glass, where Little Sister was sane and Cynthia Josephine Pierce was the whacko.

  She tucked the gun into her waistband. Odds were, she'd need a smart bomb or guided missile to take out that dragon, but maybe some of the other nasties didn't come with homegrown armor plate. Some of the men in legends were mean sons-of-bitches, too.

  Maybe she'd better take the jacket, too. There was no guarantee she was going to be sleeping under a roof tonight, and her sweat was starting to chill with fear.

  The trail wound on through the woods, under low hanging branches that seemed to clutch at her, past the startled tree-faces formed by old branch scars. She passed through patches of sour foulness in the leaf-mold smell.

  Probably animals.

  Does a bear shit in the woods? She shuddered. She didn't want to even start to think about bears--this damned forest already had enough teeth and claws. Gnarled fingers of wood pointed back the way she came, roots twisted under her feet and stubbed her toes, the gentle breeze pushed against her face and seemed to whisper warnings into the summer leaves.