Darkthunder's Way (16 page)

“I’ll tell him,” David said.

“Well, I reckon you and me better be gettin back up to the house, boy. You wouldn’t mind hangin’ on to these here goodies till the crowd’s gone, would you? Might raise some mighty nosy questions. And hey, ain’t that Miss Lizzy’s car a-turnin in there?”

David’s face lit automatically. He grinned. “You tend to your lady,” he said chuckling, “let me tend to mine!”

*

Eventually evening rolled around and the first stars began to show themselves above the valley. The company gradually drifted away, including most of the older relatives, as well as the Terror Twins, who had been so scandalized at Uncle Dale’s lack of cable they had hied themselves back to the relatively more luxurious quarters of David’s house to drown themselves in the MTV Enotah County had finally acquired that month.

Finally only David, Liz, Alec, Gary, and Calvin of the young folks remained on Uncle Dale’s front porch; sharing it with the birthday boy himself (back in khakis again), Katie, and a much mellower Klondike John.

“I remember,” Dale said, gazing westward, “when all that land was farms.”

“What about that mountain?” Calvin wondered, indicating a nearly perfect cone that erupted from the surface roughly a mile away. The setting sun struck red highlights from the sheer cliffs that crowned its summit. “Surely they didn’t farm that.”

“Old Bloody Bald?” Dale scratched his head. “It wasn’t more than half a mile from the house, but we stayed away from there.”

“How come?”

“Spirits, mostly,” he said darkly, though he spared a glance at David and a more intense one at Calvin. “Your people had a burial ground near there, and to be honest, we just never thought of it. It was hard to get to, anyway: had a thick wall of briars all around it that resisted burnin’ and everything. We just sorta give up on it.”

“Haunted, like?”

The old man nodded, and David fidgeted restlessly, realizing for the first time that everyone present except Calvin and Klondike John were initiates to the true secret of Bloody Bald: that in another, taller manifestation which overlapped it in another World, it was heart and center of Lugh’s kingdom. That though here the summit showed shining slabs of quartz that blazed with red at dusk and dawn, there it bore a castle that dwarfed anything in the Mortal World.

Klondike John belched happily and rose from his rocker. “Well, Miss Katie,” he said, “I guess you and me better be travelin’, if we’re gonna get you home before bedtime.”

“I reckon so,” the Trader lady sighed wistfully, unpinning the purple orchid Uncle Dale had surprised her with that morning. “But God help me, now that time’s here, I hate t’ go.”

“You don’t have to,” Dale said softly.

Katie shuffled over to him and patted his head, smoothing the wayward white hair. “Oh yes I do, Mr. Sullivan. But ye haven’t seen the last o’ me, don’t ye doubt it. Why,
I…”
Suddenly her eyes misted with tears.

David touched Liz’s shoulder and rose softly. “Uh, hey, look folks,” he muttered to the others as they started toward the steps. “I think it might be best if the rest of us kinda vanished. I sorta need to spend some time with my lady, anyway”—he stared pointedly at his buddies—“so could you like…?” He did not finish the sentence, but raised his eyebrows expressively.

“Nod, nod, wink, wink,” Alec snickered, nudging Gary with his elbow. “Come on, we better boogie, or Dad’ll be frying us instead of burgers.”

“Yeah, me too,” Calvin grunted. He looked intently at David. “Think your mom’d mind if I dropped by for a snack? I’ve still got one toe that’s not full.”

“Probably wouldn’t even know you were there.”

“Catch you later, then.”

David took Liz’s hand, and escorted her to his car. She frowned at him as he opened the trunk and commenced rummaging through the mess inside. “I promised you a surprise, don’t forget,” he reminded her.

She pinched him on the fanny and grinned.

“
Jesus,
girl!”

“But we were talking about surprises!” Her eyes twinkled so mischievously in the fading light that it was all he could do to keep from laying a good long smooch on her right there.

“Well, I’m afraid this one is, shall we say, a little more complicated.” He snagged his backpack and slammed the deck lid. A nod indicated the scrap of red-clay trail that split off from Uncle Dale’s driveway and ran between his little vegetable garden and the sorghum patch and toward the forest. “I thought we’d sneak off to the lake for a little while.”

Liz raised an eyebrow. “We got in trouble last time we did that.”

“I don’t think we will now, though.”

“I hope not.”

But as they entered the dark lane between the pines, a darker shape slipped in behind them.

*

“Okay, David,” Liz said. “Don’t you think it’s about time you told me what this is all about?”

David squeezed the hand she had joined with his own and shot her a wink, then patted the backpack. “No way, lady; not until things are
just
right.”

“I’m not sure things
can
be just right around here, David.”

“Things can be right anywhere,” he replied quickly, “long as I’m with you!”

Liz squeezed his hand again, and together they soldiered on at a quicker pace. Around them stretched the woods—a finger of the Enotah National Forest that splattered across Georgia’s northmost tier of counties. Second-growth, this was: pines instead of the older ash and elm and oak and poplar. Tall and sparse-branched this low down, the trunks of those trees reminded David of the pillars of Chartres Cathedral he had once seen in an art history book. The scent of their resin was like incense.

It was dark, yet not fully so—especially not to David’s eyes, which could see more than most men, whether by Faery light or his World’s own. And there was enough starlight filtering down between the meshing pinwheels of branches to glitter across the ground for them to easily make their way.

“Jeeze, I’m gonna miss this,” Liz said softly.

“You don’t have to—”

“Don’t spoil it, David. I’m gathering memories.”

“Okay, then—and you’re right: it is neat—and for once it’s nice just to be in the woods with no hint of Faerie. I’m so used to having things suddenly
change
on me, I almost expect it.”

“That why you don’t go roaming around by yourself as much as you used to?”

“Well, there’s at least one
other
reason.”

“Such as?”

He stopped in place, took her in his arms, and gave her a long, slow kiss. “Such as this,” he murmured, feeling his body flush, already tingling as Liz molded herself to him. But he forced himself to draw away, leaving her gazing at him in wonder.

“Just a little further, Liz, I promise.”

Silence closed in on them, yet not silence, for there was a whisper of wind, a hiss of breathing, the soft padding of some animal behind them to the left. As one they found themselves trying to enhance the quiet, placing each foot upon the ground cover with utmost care.

And then David pushed through a man-high tangle of laurel and stepped out onto coarse sand. He heard Liz’s breath catch in wonder.

Before them lay an isolated cove, scarcely more than a quarter mile across. Trees framed it on all but the northern side, which merged with the greater body of the lake, shimmering to the right like a slab of dark mirror. All around rose the soft humps of the mountains, close and comforting, and further off to the north the perilous cone of Bloody Bald. It was a symphony of shape and reflection and subtle shadow, highlighted here and there—upon leaves and treetops and the endlessly repeating crests of shoreline ripples—with silver.

“Oh, David, this is wonderful,” Liz said. “How come you never showed me this before?”

David shrugged. “I hadn’t been here in so long I’d almost forgotten about it. But something made me remember it the other day. You know, like how you can get set in familiar ways and ignore the new or exotic when it’s right under your nose, and all?”

She regarded him skeptically. “I would have thought you’d had enough of that.”

“That’s not what I mean. You can have exotic without resorting to Faerie. There’s more magic in our own World than we can ever know.”

“I know one kind,” Liz whispered, and kissed the nape of his neck.

“So do I.” David chuckled, seizing a wandering hand and bringing it to his lips. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take advantage of the other when you can!”

“Oh?”

“Oh.”

David slipped out of her grasp and deposited his backpack on the sliver of beach, then squatted beside it and pulled out a flat, square box. Holding his breath, he opened it reverently and removed something. The only sound was the slap of the wavelets on the shoreline.

Liz gasped. Starlight glittered off the tiny mast and rigging of the model boat, set rubies to sparkling off the minute shields along the sides. The eyes of the dragon prow glowed softly, as if lit by some inner flame.

From his pocket David drew out the dragon-headed ring and slipped it on his finger. Then, very gently, he placed the boat on the water, knelt beside it, and stroked the head of the silver wyrm. A tiny jet of fire flashed out and brushed the nearest bit of rigging.

“
No
,
David!” Liz gasped.

“Just wait,” he told her. “Wait and watch.”

The rigging began to glow, then erupted into tiny blue flames that quickly spread to mast and spar and sail; to hull and prow and keel. But instead of leaving ash and destruction in their wake, they sucked substance from the very air and mixed it with that of the model so that it began to expand, until scarcely a minute later, a full-sized, full-rigged longship floated silently in a hidden arm of Langford Lake.

“Your barge, madame,” David intoned in a formally British accent.
“
Waverider
awaits you.”

“Waverider?”

“The vessel’s name, madame; the Lady Morwyn told me.

“But how do we get on?”

Drat,
David thought, feeling his face color with embarrassment at a very important detail overlooked. He frowned down at his clothes: new black cords, clean black Reeboks, gray-and-black striped dress shirt over the California Renaissance Festival T-shirt Liz had sent him a few weeks before from San Francisco, the twin of which he knew she wore beneath her own white jeans and oversized green shirt.
Oh well,
he sighed,
can’t be helped,
and commenced tugging off his shoes and socks. A moment later, pants rolled to the knees, shoes and top shirt resting on a stone above the waterline, he scooped a giggling Liz into his arms and waded out to help her over the low gunwale amidships. He followed immediately, scrambling over the side and leaving dripping puddles over the wooden deck. A quick series of Words to the dragon prow, and they were off.

“Excellent!” Liz cried, as the ship slipped silently across the water.

Barely a minute passed before it glided to a stop in the middle of the cove. All around lay forested mountains; above spread the infinite sky; below, its reflection that held its own inborn glitter. Together David and Liz walked to the prow, stood behind the tall curve of carved dragon.

“This is the first time I’ve used it,” David admitted. “I don’t dare try it in the daytime. But tonight just seemed like too good a chance to waste.”

Liz’s eyes sparkled as she took his hand. “And why tonight?”

This was it, then: his trump card. The one final thing he could do to convince Liz not to abandon him. He took a deep breath. “Because I want tonight to be magic.”

“
Any
time with you is magic,” Liz whispered back. “But I’m still going to Gainesville.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“You know it’s the right thing, though.” Liz slid her arms around him and laid her head beside his.

“Is that head or heart?” he murmured into hair that smelled of strawberries.

“Head, this time. I’m sorry.”

For a long time they simply stood there, with David’s face buried in her hair, his lips occasionally wandering to nibble on her neck or ears. But finally he eased himself away, his body afire.

“What’s wrong, Davy?’ she asked softly.

“Nothing,” he said, grinning. “Except that I happen to know there are some furs in the cabin, and I think there just might be some wine!”

“Are you trying to get me
drunk
?”
Liz giggled, the corners of her mouth curving mischievously.

David started. Maybe he was. Certainly he was more than a little buzzed himself, from the steady stream of spiked-punch and moonshine he’d imbibed all afternoon. He shook his head. “You’re enough to get me high.” He laughed, and led the way amidships.

“This is a memory I’ll always cherish,” Liz said, when they had dragged a mound of fur onto the deck and David had found a skin of wine and two silver goblets in one of the cabin lockers.

“Me too.”

“There’s only one thing it needs to make it perfect.”