Ghostcountry's Wrath (22 page)

“You called it a Power Wheel. I've seen you use 'em before.”

“And will again, probably. But do you know what they represent?”

“I give.”

“The world, and the four directions which define the world, and the four powers that control those directions, and about a zillion other things. It's a common image in most mythologies.”

“That why you've got one tattooed on your butt?”

In spite of himself, Calvin blushed. “I've got one on my butt 'cause I was young and stupid and irreverent one time. I wanted a tattoo, so folks would think I was cool, and I wanted it hidden, so they'd think I was mysterious, and I wanted it weird so I could feel smarter'n everybody else. But then I found out what it really meant, and came to
believe
that, and—well, I'm just as glad it's fadin' now.”

Brock looked as if he would like to ask a question, but didn't.

“Now as I was sayin',” Calvin continued, “most rituals are properly begun with an invocation to the quarters, each of which has a ruling color and about a zillion gods and/or animals in corresponding colors, each of which has sovereignty over something or other—it's too complex to go into here and not relevant to what we're doin' anyway. East is red, for instance, probably 'cause of the sunrise. North is blue, which makes no sense to me 'cause south is white, and you'd think north would be 'cause of snow, and—”

“And north
used
to be black,” a voice interrupted from the undergrowth behind them. “It changed.”

Calvin looked up, startled. For an instant he thought Sandy had spoken, since the voice had been female. But a check showed her as perplexed as he. Abruptly, he was on his feet—just as a woman walked calmly into the campsite.

Calvin blinked—they all did—but he…
recognized
her! It was—he didn't know her name, but it was the woman from the anetsa game, the one who'd hung around with…
Snakeeyes!
Already wired, Calvin felt his pulse rate shoot up another few notches. “You—!”

“Hello's a more common greeting,” the woman said calmly. “Or hi there, or perhaps…
siyu
!”

Calvin did not reply, but his concentration widened enough for him to note that she was wearing jeans, somewhat torn and muddy, boots not unlike his own, and a red cambric shirt under a multicolored vest. She also sported a knife at her waist and a small backpack. Her eyes looked tired, as if she hadn't slept in a while.

“I'm not your enemy
—Edahi,
”
the woman went on with a weariness that both matched her expression and suggested she had already resigned herself to the opposite assumption.

“A name's a dangerous thing,” Calvin replied carefully. “Yours might be good to know right now.”

The woman smiled. “How 'bout Okacha?”

Calvin puzzled over it for a moment. “Okacha?”

“Creek for ‘wildcat.'”

Well,
that
certainly hit her dead on, Calvin acknowledged, what with that short-cut hair, those enormous dark eyes, and the way she moved. Sandy, he noted, was watching him at least as closely as she was the newcomer. He expected Brock's brows to collide any second.

Okacha was ignoring them. She paced to where the Power Wheel lay scratched into the sand and inspected it for a moment. “You won't find him that way,” she sighed. “He's not in this World, and we
both
know which way the Ghost Country lies. But if you'll help me, maybe I'll help you.”

Calvin could only stare as the woman stood waiting for an answer.

Chapter XIII: Coosa, and More Imminent Legends

“Excuse me,” Sandy inserted, her voice low, cool, and perfectly controlled but full of implicit threat. “I hate to be rude—but who, exactly,
are
you?”

The female stranger—Okacha—stared at her speculatively: an odd expression, combining recognition of comradeship and acknowledgment of potential rival. “Sorry,” she replied wearily. “I'm
really
tired—and when I get like that I kinda tend to forget that just 'cause
I
know who somebody is, that person doesn't automatically know who
I
am. I'm Okacha—like I said.” She extended her right hand.

Sandy took it warily, shook it perfunctorily—and did not break eye contact. “But that's not
who
you are.”

Calvin and Brock exchanged resigned glances. At least
their
pecking order was unambiguous.

Okacha studied Sandy for a long moment, her small, full lips drawn to a thin, grim line. “No,” she sighed at last, “that's definitely
not
who I am.”

“I saw you at the game,” Calvin broke in, mostly for Sandy's benefit, since Brock, by his expression, was more concerned with the arrival of yet another interruption of his quest for magic. “You were with that…tall guy,” Calvin continued, so Okacha would know he was at least partly onto her.

“Not
with
him,” she shot back firmly but without hostility. “I was in his presence, but definitely not
with
him.”

Calvin raised an eyebrow. “Sorry.”

“You'll understand when I tell…what I have to tell.”

“So shoot,” Calvin replied, trying to mask major-league edginess with a veneer of cool. “Grab a log and make yourself at home.” He left her to it and resumed his familiar place between the roots of the live oak, leaning against the trunk. He found Sandy's hand surreptitiously. Brock thumped down to the right, nearer the creek, and commenced drawing designs in the sand with a stick.

Okacha folded her legs under her and sat opposite; her back very straight, her face still and composed. “Do you remember the Legend of Coosa?” she asked carefully.

Calvin's interest level immediately kicked up another notch. “That's the one about the girl who goes down to the river for water—or to bathe, or whatever—right? And while she's there, she meets a mysterious man, or else one of the underwater panthers, and—”

“Hang on!”
Brock interrupted pointedly, looking up. “What the hell is an underwater panther?”

Calvin hesitated, waiting for their visitor to reply. This was, after all, supposed to be her story.

Okacha gnawed her lip thoughtfully. Then: “Lots of folks say they're monsters,” she began. “But that's 'cause they live underwater—in deep rivers and lakes. And since those are traditionally gates to the Underworld,
some
folks”—she glanced at Calvin— “just automatically assume that anything that comes from such a place is by default a creature of the Underworld itself and therefore chaotic or crazy, if not actually evil. Actually…well, they're just themselves, good and bad by turns, like other people. As to what they look like…well, my people—the Creeks—were wrong in thinking of them as being monsters. Actually, the Tunica hit 'em a lot closer: think of 'em as like werewolves, sort of—were-panthers, rather. They can look like men—and usually do when they're on land. But in the water they're like big cougars or panther or mountain lions, except that their paws are larger—and webbed. All of which is gettin' away from the story—which I'll take over, if you don't mind.”

Calvin shrugged expansively. “Be my guest.”

“Thanks,” she murmured, then continued. “Like you said, a woman used to go to the river all the time, and eventually met this underwater panther—in which shape doesn't matter—and as often happens under those circumstances she got pregnant. Well, as you might expect, there were some…odd things about the child, and the people in her village figured out what had happened, and a lot of 'em were afraid, 'cause they didn't want a child in their town who was half monster, as they thought. So they tried to drive the woman away. Well, naturally she complained to her lover, and he told her to ask everybody who was on her side to leave and go with her. And she did, and they all went over a mountain. But a few days later, they came back and found the town drowned, and a lake where it used to be, and no sign of the people who'd given her grief. But you can still hear their drumming under the lake, sometimes.”

“Oh, neat,” Brock cried. “Hey, and there's a story in England kinda like that, only it was a whole country that sunk. It was called Ys, and you can hear the bells, and—”

“Right,” Sandy acknowledged. “I've heard that, too.”

“But what about the girl?” Brock wondered. “What happened to her? And her kid?”

Calvin remained silent, not liking where this was heading.

And he liked it even less when, instead of a verbal reply Okacha simply stretched her hand into the space between them. Her skin was tawny rather than ruddy or tanned, he noted. And her hands were long, smooth, and graceful, though her fingers themselves were oddly stubby. But then she spread them, and Calvin could not suppress a chill, even as he heard Brock yip and Sandy gasp.

Okacha's fingers were webbed! Thin skin connected the joints closest to the hand on all five fingers. And then he
really
got a start, as, without warning, tendons flexed in the palm, and her oddly thick and pointed nails elongated further—and became hooked claws.

Calvin stared at them for a moment, then back at her face. No wonder she looked so feline. No wonder she had such huge dark eyes, such uncanny grace.

“That answer your question?” Okacha asked Brock, smiling at him sadly. Calvin half-expected her teeth to be pointed. They weren't—though she had especially prominent canines.

In spite of her apparent sincerity, the boy paled. “M-made a damned good st-start,” he stammered.

Okacha withdrew the hand and folded it under her other arm, then leaned back against her log, looking more weary by the minute. “I'm the last,” she murmured. “That is, I hope I am. And if I'm really lucky, I won't pass on the curse.”

Sandy could only shake her head in awed perplexity. She glanced sideways at Calvin. “And to think that you deal with this kind of stuff as a matter of course.”

“Not hardly!” he snorted, squeezing her hand. “Not in the last year, anyway.”

“Did you say
curse
?”
Brock inquired abruptly, all alertness, eyes narrowed attentively. “Are we talkin', like, for real badness, here?”

“Not like you mean, probably,” Okacha told him with an ironic laugh. “But in the sense that it's something you live with and endure without desiring, yet can never escape—then yeah, it's definitely a curse.”

“Could you, uh, be more specific?” Calvin ventured politely, though with an edge on his voice. “I've kinda got the feelin' you didn't just
happen
to be passin' through here.”

She gnawed her thumbnail thoughtfully, then nodded, as if she had come to some decision. “It's the curse of otherness, first off; the curse of knowin' everyday you're not like anyone else. Of havin' to watch every tiny little thing you do for fear you'll let something slip and betray yourself, and therefore leave yourself open to ridicule—or worse. And yeah, you're right, I'm
not
here by accident. But I'd rather wait on that, since old Brock here asked a good question.”

Whereupon Brock grinned smugly, looking inordinately pleased with himself.

“What I am,” she confessed in a sad, resigned voice, “is a magical creature in a nonmagical world. No, don't freak,” she continued. “I saw how y'all reacted to my hand and what I've already said. You believe me, and you've all seen enough other things to accept the possibility that some pretty off-the-wall stuff can be true. But why am I trustin' you with this stuff? you may reasonably ask. Or maybe, why am I buggin'
you
with my problems? Because I've seen enough and heard enough and know enough to know I can. But before I get into that, you folks need to know a couple of things. First of all, whatever I tell you, I need to tell fast. And whatever we do needs to be done in a hurry. We've got a little time, but not much.”

Calvin frowned suspiciously. “What's the rush?”

“Snakeeyes,” Okacha replied flatly. “He'll be here sooner or later—probably sooner. I only barely escaped him, and he's bound to come after me—and you, too, now; because you're with me, and because of what you are and what you…have and know.”

Calvin puffed his cheeks. “So what, exactly, is the deal with you two?”

Okacha grimaced, “Okay, I'll lay it on the line. First of all, it's pretty obvious that I'm part water-panther: descendant of the woman who caused the drowning of Coosa, to be precise. But what that means in the real world, besides some neat little biological aberrations I have to work to hide, is that when I'm immersed in water, I change into a panther—or have to work
very
hard not to. In that form, the dark side of my personality becomes dominant: the instinctive side, you could say—it's sort of like that movie
Cat People.
Oh, I can overrule it, to some degree, but I'm extremely susceptible to violence—and to suggestions of violence. My—call it my medicine—increases, too, and I can be used as a source of it for certain purposes, most of which I don't approve of, but which, in panther shape, I can't avoid.”