Ghostcountry's Wrath (38 page)

He leaned against the boulder he had filed default claim to in his father's enclave and concluded his sentence with a shrug.

Brock surveyed the sky warily. “Uh, guys, when exactly
is
sunset? I mean, I haven't
seen
a sun here.”

“You won't either,” Maurice chuckled. “It's something you feel, not a thing you see. And it's not far off—not if Calvin's gonna move that Scott boy before we try it.”

“Right.” Calvin sighed, rising. “I'd best be at it. And don't you dare start anything without me.”

A moment later he (
one
of him; he was never sure which was which here) had gathered Don Scott's sleeping body into his arms. Though the boy made an awkward bundle, he wasn't as heavy as Calvin had expected. Grimacing as he rose, (and feeling his back tug painfully), Calvin made his way out of the south Georgia idyll Don had dreamed for himself and stumped through Maurice's as well. Sandy and Okacha still slept where he had left them, though both had altered positions. He wondered if they also dreamed, and into what dream-world they had ventured. Still, Don was too cumbersome to lug around while speculating, and so (with assistance from Brock), Calvin eased him to the ground. Brock restored the boy's cover.

Calvin slumped down beside Sandy, suddenly dog tired. A westward glance showed the same familiar murkiness, the same half-seen mountains, the same sheet lightning. But a ruddiness tinted the pervasive gloom that had not been present before. Maybe it
was
close to dusk.

God, but he was tired!
Sleepy too (and something told him he ought to be concerned about that). A glance at Brock showed the boy already zoned out, though he sat bolt upright with his head against the cliff. Good enough: the kid surely needed to catch some z's. Himself, he'd just close his eyes a minute, try to center, and get himself psyched for overseeing the ritual Mike and his dad had worked out. Lord, but he hoped nothing screwed up. He'd had enough of this, enough of adapting to alternate realities…

*

Maurice McIntosh sat cross-legged in the eastern quarter of the Power Wheel he had scribed in the sand with Calvin's atasi. Calvin wondered how he knew that design—but now was the time for seeing, not speculation. Mike occupied the western equivalent. The two looked more alike than Calvin would ever have suspected, now that both wore their hair long and were dressed the same. A wind from the west stirred that hair, sent it slithering across their shoulders like serpents, black and fair. It bore the scent of rain, too, and the electric tingle that presaged a storm. Thunder boomed obligingly. Or perhaps that was drums. Calvin still wasn't sure, as he sat three paces out and waited.

The elder McIntosh stared west, and finally, at some obscure point he had determined, reached to the hollow he had made in the center of the pattern and withdrew the uktena scale. Mike tensed immediately, gasped, then grew quiet. A hardening of the muscles in Maurice's wrists was the only sign that he had clamped down on the token. His eyes closed, and yet Calvin sensed that his father still saw him. He tried to remain calm—he had no idea what form his father might choose, though he'd given him the standard list of precautions, strongly recommending they both pick something close to their own mass and mammalian.

He was not prepared for what he witnessed, however—for though his father's shape did blur and twist, it did not actually
change
much at all. He did not grow fur, nor feathers, nor scales; he put forth no antlers or tail. Instead, he became a younger version of himself.
No!
He became…
Calvin!

But that meant his father had tasted his blood!

“I was there when you were born,” came his own voice in his father's cadence. “When they cut your cord, some of it splashed into my mouth and I swallowed it. And in the years since then, you hurt yourself more than once and I tended you. Wouldn't you guess that somewhere in there your blood got in my mouth again?”

“And you've been huntin' me since I left!” Calvin whispered.

“I have—but that rule don't matter here—nor in the Lyin' World, if you
really
want to change.”

Calvin didn't reply for a long moment. Then, simply: “I am honored.”

“Mike?” Maurice prompted. And passed the scale to the boy.

Once again Calvin waited breathlessly until he saw Mike's face go hard and intent as he fisted the talisman between his fingers and squeezed. Blood flashed brightly.

Again no fur or feathers. Rather, the shape of a teenage boy, slim and dark-haired.

“We were blood brothers once.” Mike sighed softly. “We cut each other's hands and tasted each other's blood. Maybe by usin' Don's shape to save myself, I can save him.”

Whereupon he passed the scale back to Maurice.

Calvin didn't watch this time, for he suddenly felt a strange distancing from himself, as if he were stressed-out or drunk. He closed his eyes to fight it.

When he opened them again, it was to see his father in his own shape, and Mike in his. Neither showed any sign of a wound.

…and when he opened them
again—
for
already he realized it had been his dream-self that had witnessed the ritual, that, perhaps, had dreamed even while he dreamed—it was to see quite another shape glaring down on him.

An ancient, weathered hag.

“I have
found
you!” the crone cackled loudly, capering about in a swirl of gray hair and buckskin that raised clouds of dark dust around her gnarled bare feet. She laughed shrilly—more a scream, really—and certainly loud enough to rouse his companions, who blinked up at her in groggy perplexity. Even Don mumbled and twitched, but did
not
open his eyes. Calvin tried to get to his feet, but an artfully “accidental” blow from the old woman's foot caught him in the ribs and knocked him down again. He staggered, winded, only barely managed to prop himself upright against the cliff. No one else moved, still half in thrall to sleep as they were. Only Okacha looked alert enough to act. He hoped she didn't.

Abruptly the crone ceased her capering, swept forward, and stuck her face in his, nose inches from his own. “They call the place you come from the Lying World,” she shrieked. “But it ought to be called the Deceiving World! You've led me a merry chase, boy—and were it not for the rabbit, I might never have found you!”

“Rabbit?” Calvin managed to croak between ragged gasps.

“He has passed by me twice since he tricked your friends,” the crone snapped. “But I caught him the third time, oh yes, I did! I caught him, and I told him I was tired of him, that he had made me angry. I threatened to make a pouch from his skin. I even pulled out my knife. But do you know what happened
then,
boy?
Deceiving
boy, from the
Deceiving
World?”

Calvin could only gulp and shake his head dazedly.

“I will
tell
you what he did!” the crone cried. “He told me that if I would spare him he would bring me to you!”

“We're, uh, sorry,” Calvin choked out, wondering what was keeping the others from getting the hell out of there, given that he was obviously the target of the old biddy's ire. “Like I said, we're sorry. But…uh, well, we're ready to leave anytime now. In fact, if you'd show us the way…”

“Which
way?” the crone spat sharply.

“Uh, the way we came, I guess.”

“You cannot go back. Not that way!”

But Calvin had no time to protest, for even as he slapped his hands against the cliff in anticipation of pushing forward, he felt his fingers go…
through!
It was as if he had punched through a thin sheet of Styrofoam into…nothing.

A thin scream broke from Sandy. A frightened yip was Brock. A growl rolled from an Okacha, who was flailing wildly as the earth itself dissolved beneath her and dragged her down.

Calvin looked around frantically, saw the sand fading like ice dropped into hot water.

And then he was falling…

…falling…

With
nothing
all around.

PART FOUR

Tskili

and

Adewehi

Chapter XX: Nothing to Crow About

(Jackson County, Georgia—Tuesday, June 19—sunset)

…a twisting, tearing sensation that was not pain because pain was too specific to exist where
nothing
was, where the senses had
no
guides: no sights, no sounds, no smells—no anchors for nerve-endings at all…

…and then that twisting reversed, and stimuli flooded back so fast Calvin had to close his eyes as he staggered headfirst into heat and noise and color. It was like having his breath knocked out, he thought dimly, even as reflex flung his arms forward to stave off a fall.

He fell anyway, and felt his right hand stab into something soft and crinkly instinct told him was leaves, while the left scraped and slid along a surface rougher and utterly unyielding. It brought more pain—but a kind he understood.

He rolled with the impact, heard the rustling crash of similar encounters nearby, punctuated by grunts, groans, muffled curses, and one angry female voice yelling,
“Shit!”
Eventually his back caught against something superficially soft yet stable enough for his eyes to dare showing him a blur of green and flashing lights. It
oofed
in a young male tenor, then went silent. Perhaps it too had realized it was still alive and was content to savor that fact.

But where?

The woods for certain, to judge by the tree trunks that surrounded them. But beyond that…?

He sat up carefully, brushing twigs off his T-shirt and jeans, noting that he had fetched up against Brock, who was sprawled on his stomach, face crammed into tan-brown humus, one leg athwart a rotten log. Beyond the boy, Okacha was already standing, likewise taking stock. A glance to the left showed a wild-eyed Sandy blinking at him in something between bemusement, confusion, and relief. Leaves cluttered her hair—oak leaves. A dark furry shape just past her was the bearskin-shrouded Don. A sneaker slipped from Calvin's hip as he grunted to a crouch—from which position he finally found sufficient sense to assess the landscape.

They had come to rest—if
rest
was the appropriate word—on a wooded slope maybe ten yards above a narrow creek that threaded the defile between two forested hills. Separating them from the stream lay the piled stones of what, in the last century, might have been a bridge abutment or the foundation of a mill. The slope above them continued until it was lost in a tangle of low summer shrubbery, mostly dogwoods and sweet gum, which, along with the hills themselves, placed this probably in middle Georgia. Which was comforting, because it was at least familiar, but also disconcerting, since it meant they were a couple of hundred miles from where they'd left—and, more importantly, from Sandy's R.V. As for the larger trees thereabouts, most were oaks and maples, though hickories and poplars were also in evidence; all in the same full leaf as had prevailed when they'd left their own World. By the ruddiness of the light and the lengthening shadows arrowing toward them from atop the hill, he judged it near sunset. What sky was visible between branches looked gray-white, but the air smelled of thunder—which linked this to the place from which they'd just been evicted.

He shuddered at that. Brock evidently felt it, too, which prompted the boy to roll onto his side. His face was dirty. “So where are we?” he asked brightly.

Calvin started to shrug, but then something tickled his memory. He scowled at the piled stones again—and knew. “Jackson County,” he croaked, his voice still stiff and thin from where he'd been winded. “Jackson County,
Georgia,
that is. And unless I'm even crazier than I think, that oughta be Bloody Creek down there.”

“You know this place?” Okacha murmured warily, eyes narrow with suspicion.

Calvin nodded, even as he made his way toward Sandy, who, true to her practical nature, was groping toward the still-unconscious Don. “It belongs to some friends of mine,” he continued. “'Course I've only been here once, and that was a few years ago. But I was close to here last summer. In fact, me and Dave and Alec and Liz camped on a knoll just over this hill. These are the woods where I summoned Awi Usdi.”

“And got Spearfinger,” Brock grumbled under his breath.

Calvin ignored him, except to note that he was likewise up and functional. Instead, he hunkered down beside Sandy, who had rolled Don onto his back and was checking his pulse. The boy was breathing steadily, which was good. “How's he doin'?” he asked in a low voice. Scramblings behind him were Brock and Okacha joining them.

Sandy shrugged. “I'm not even sure how
I
am right now—besides cramping like mad. But as best I can tell, he's fine. His breathing's okay, he's got good color, and his pulse is calming down. I haven't checked his eyes for dilation yet.”