Little Gods (8 page)

Cory and Heather sat together again on the way home. “Do you have Mr. Troublestone?” she asked.

“Yeah, seventh period, for Earth Science."

“Me too, but I've got him fifth. Do you have to do that micro-ecology thing?"

“Yeah. Seems like a pretty simple report."

“Simple, but
boring
. I was thinking it would be fun to write the report about something in the real world."

“Like what?"

“Like that stream in the woods behind my house. There's flies and frogs and reeds and even little fish...” She shrugged. “I thought we could study that. You know how Mr. Troublestone's always talking about old-time naturalists, drawing pictures of animals and flowers and stuff. I bet if we did something like that for the stream, learned about its ecology, we'd get a good grade. And it's more fun than just reading about the stuff."

“That sounds good. You should do that."

“
We
should do it. I bet he'd let us work together, since we'd be doing more than just a report—we'd have drawings and an observation journal and stuff.” She shrugged, and didn't look at him. “You know, if you want to.” She kept her voice neutral.

She's afraid I'll laugh!
Cory realized.
Afraid I'll make fun of her, or think she's a geek!
It was a revelation, to realize that she could fear something like that from him, and it made him like her even more. “It sounds great,” he said. “I'd love to do that with you."

She grinned. “Hope you don't mind getting a little mud on your face."

“I can think of worse things."

They went down to the stream that afternoon and sat looking into the water. It would have been easier to do this project in the spring, when there'd be tadpoles and things, but they could still find interesting stuff to write about. After a while they just sat, tossing stones into the water, already easy and peaceful together.

“I had a weird dream last night,” Heather said, leaning back on her elbows, looking at the leaves overhead. “About that woman we saw ride by on the bicycle yesterday. She had a measuring tape, and she kept walking around me, asking me to hold out my arms and stuff, and she took my measurements. She said she thought I'd be a good fit, and when I asked her if she was going to make a dress for me, she just laughed. She said I'd make one for her.” She frowned. “No ... she said ‘You'll make a good dress for me. You'll fit like a glove.'” She shook her head. “Weird. It freaked me out a little, I don't know why. Scared me bad enough to wake me up."

Cory didn't say anything, because now he began to remember his own dream—or had it been a dream at all? “I dreamed about her, too."

Heather looked at him. “No. Really?"

“I think so,” he said, nodding. “I dreamed she was riding her bicycle around and around the tree in my backyard. Only it wasn't her at first, the—the woman.” He'd almost said “the witch.” Had she called herself a witch, a good witch? He couldn't quite recall.

“It wasn't her? Who was it?"

“It ... I thought it was
you
, first, and then it turned into her.” Saying those words chilled him, as if he'd dropped his heart into the autumn stream running at their feet. To begin as Heather, and
turn into
that witch, what a horrible idea!

But Heather was grinning at him. “You're having dreams about me, huh?"

He blushed, then laughed, forgetting his fear. “Yeah, well, it was a
bad
dream, so don't be too flattered."

“I knew you were a charmer from the first moment I met you,” she said. “I should get going—it's almost dinnertime. Want to come back here tomorrow, and start on this project for real?"

The next day was Saturday. “Sure. What time should I come over?"

“Oh, whenever. My parents usually make a big breakfast on Saturdays, but I don't know if mom will, since dad's still out of town. Come over around ten, I guess, just to be safe."

They made their brief farewells, and Cory walked farther into the woods, taking the scenic route in the general direction of his house.

Something moved in the bushes. He paused, listening. Probably it was just somebody's dog, but there were deer, sometimes, and he always enjoyed getting a glimpse of those. He looked toward the source of the sound, in a thick tangle of underbrush.

Something pushed out of the tangled vines and branches—something red, and black, and chrome.

It was the bicycle, the witch's bicycle, pushing its way through the woods. Its headlamp seemed to consider him, multi-faceted as a fly's eye.

The witch was nowhere to be seen.

Cory, frightened beyond all reason, turned and fled the woods, racing for home.

That night, as the Boy and the Girl and the Rival all slept unquietly, the witch rode her bicycle through their neighborhood. Bad dreams drifted from her like vapors, and she sang “Love is a Many Splendoured Thing,” her bicycle tires humming along. The day before the transference always woke romantic thoughts in her—for without love, without the ancient dance of Boy Meets Girl, how would she keep her youth forever?

She rode her bike through the Girl's yard, her bicycle not bumping at all as it went over the grass, not slowing as it went into the trees, its headlamp dark. She had no need of the light—both she and the bicycle could see perfectly well in the dark.

She'd left off her black beret tonight, and had instead braided her hair with a bit of blue ribbon. Otherwise she looked the same as always, not yet ready to completely give up her resemblance to the bicycle in order to fully assume her resemblance to the Girl. That could wait until tomorrow, when her mind would be fully loosened.

She looked around the stream for a likely spot. The location was a good one, really—in her girlhood, when this little play had been acted out the
first
time, it had taken place in a dark wood, by a little stream not unlike this one. Her young lover (whose name she'd forgotten long ago—she just thought of him as the First Boy) had faced off against his Rival for her affection while she stood by, watching, horrified ... and fascinated. They had both stolen their father's dueling swords, planning to fight for her like grown men. The Rival's blade had snapped against the Boy's, breaking in half. The Boy had stabbed the suddenly disarmed Rival in the heart ... and when she saw the blood, the Girl who would become the witch understood. This murder over a Girl was not an isolated event, it was an ancient thing, enacted time and again in various guises throughout the ages. There had to be power in that, she knew, in that timeless repetition, a power that could be awakened and directed and sealed by the spilling of blood.

She took the bag from the basket and opened it. She drew out the Boy's sword and jammed it point-first into the dirt by a tree. It was a dueling epee, old but newly sharpened. It had taken her ages to find a set that looked even
close
to being right. Then she removed the Rival's sword, identical to the Boy's. She took a rasp file from her bag and sat in the dirt with the Rival's sword across her knees. She filed away at the blade halfway down its length, humming as she did so. Her bike stood nearby, seeming almost wary, standing upright even though the kickstand hadn't been put down.

She'd discovered the secret of eternal youth—one of the secrets, anyway; she supposed there must be many ways, for those willing to walk beyond the lighted paths. She'd survived so long, rejuvenating herself, by staging reenactments of that first fight, when she'd been a young thing in the first bloom of womanhood. She never let her hair turn gray, and in recent decades she rode her bicycle, to make herself seem young. She'd worked with this bicycle for so long that blood and magic had washed over it, making it into something more than a disguise and a conveyance—making it into something alive, something almost like a familiar. She resembled the bicycle, too, dressing to match it, and that further confused the question of her identity. Tomorrow she would drink a potion to loosen her mind, to loosen the threads mooring her spirit to this body. She would put a blue ribbon in her hair, and dress herself to match the new Girl.

But that was only preliminary business, nothing more than clearing the way. The meat of her magic required other people, young people—and blood. Every few decades she found a new Boy and Girl and Rival, and put this little passion-play into motion. Making sure the Boy and Girl got together, seeing the Rival humiliated, driving him to murder. The Boy would face the Rival, and kill him, while the Girl looked on. When the blood spilled, a sacrifice to ignite the spell, the witch would
become
the new Girl, sliding easily into the young body, crowding out the resident mind—taking her place in this new variation on the old drama of love and murder. That was the power of imperative resemblance, the magic of recurring situations—she would become young, as she'd been at that first duel. Her old body would be left behind in the woods, and would cause a stir when discovered, but nothing would come of it.

The witch turned the sword over and rasped at the other side of the blade. She'd have to smear it with dirt so the marks wouldn't be noticeable. She would have a little trouble in the Girl's body, of course. She wouldn't have the girl's memories, or access to her mind—her mind would go wherever such things went when they were crowded-out, probably nowhere, into oblivion. The witch would have trouble dealing with the Girl's parents. In the past, she'd had to kill parents, but things were easier in this day and age. Now, she only had to tell someone in authority that her parents touched her inappropriately, that they invited their
friends
to touch her inappropriately. The witch could press lit cigarettes into her new young thighs, and show the burns to the teachers or the police—that should take care of any disbelief.

The witch hummed happily as she rasped, moving the file in time to her song. Finally she put the file back in her bag, satisfied. She put the filed sword into the dirt on the other side of the stream, half-hidden by a bush. She thought a duel across the water would be very picturesque. She wondered if the Girl would faint at the first sight of blood. That's what the last girl had done, and it had made the transition to her mind
much
easier. No resistance at all, just a simple expulsion.

The witch climbed onto her bicycle and rode out of the woods, into the dark. Tomorrow she would be young again. It had been too long—it had
always
been too long.

Rocko woke up Saturday morning after a round of awful dreams, in which he'd tried to stab a boy by a stream while a dark-haired girl looked on, wide-eyed and helpless. He'd felt strong in the dream, like a conqueror ... but the next thing he knew he was dying, his blood running into the water.

He woke, shivering.

His parents weren't awake yet. Good. He slipped into the kitchen and ate a cold biscuit out of the fridge. Then he dressed, thinking about Cory, about finding the right time to strike.

When he went out the side door, he found the witch's bicycle leaning against his house. He approached it warily, but it seemed harmless and inert. He touched the curved handlebars. Just metal. He looked around for the witch, and didn't see her anywhere.

“You know the way to his house?” Rocko asked.

The bike just sat there.

Rocko took the handlebars and moved the bicycle into the yard. He climbed on and started pedaling the heavy bicycle, wondering how he would know which way to go.

The handlebars tugged under his hands, toward the left, and Rocko went with them.
Like the planchette on a ouija board
, he thought,
moving under my fingers.

For some reason, even though he was not the type of boy to sing aloud, he found himself shouting the half-remembered words to “Love Me Tender” as he pedaled.

After about a mile, the bike started pedaling itself.

Cory walked to Heather's house with his notebook under his arm, thinking about his dream last night. He found Heather in her front yard, smacking balls with her hockey stick, driving them into one of those portable netted goals. She wore jeans and an untucked blue shirt. Her hair was mussed, and her face was red from exertion. She was altogether beautiful.

“Want to take a few swings?” she asked, seeing him.

“Maybe later."

“Any time. Want to head for the stream?” She picked up her bookbag from where it rested by a flowerbed

“Sure."

“Mom said she'll make lunch for us. She wants to meet you."

That both pleased him and made him nervous. “You told her about me?"

She laughed. “I had to tell her something when I went to your house. She made me braid my hair, remember?"

“Right, right.” They ambled into the woods. She swung her hockey stick at pine cones.

“Did you have any—"

“—weird dreams last night?” she finished. “Yeah. No witch, though, just watching a couple of kids I'd never seen before try to kill each other."

“I dreamed I stabbed somebody. There was a girl there, too ... and she came over and stared down at the kid's blood while it ran into the water. She hardly seemed to notice me, even though I tried to get her attention."

“That's so messed up,” she said. “Very weird."

“I saw something yesterday..."

“What?"

“I thought ... I thought I saw that woman's bicycle in the woods. Not her, just the bike, with no one riding it. But that's crazy. Right?"

“I don't know. I just wish the dreams would stop. If it keeps up, I'll be afraid to go to sleep."

They got to the stream and started talking about their project, both of them glad to have something besides bad dreams to pay attention to.

The bicycle took Rocko into a subdivision after about an hour and a half of riding. He hoped the bicycle would be around to take him
back
, because he didn't remember the way. “That sword better be here,” he said to the bicycle when it began slowly coasting toward the woods at the end of the subdivision. “Not to mention that dogshit Cory."

The bicycle did not respond, but a short distance into the woods, it stopped moving, and started to fall over. Rocko stepped off and stood still, listening. He heard water, and, maybe, voices. Did Cory have friends? It didn't seem possible. But if he did ... well, Rocko would do what he had to when the opportunity presented itself, as opportunities invariably did.