Little Gods (9 page)

He crept through the woods, toward the voices ... and saw Cory and Heather, right across a stream.

Heather. Shit. He hadn't expected her to be here. Still ... maybe it was a good thing. Cory had surely told Heather how he'd made a fool of him, driven off his friends and left him face-down in a shit-filled toilet bowl. They'd probably
laughed
about it, when it should have been
Cory
she laughed at.

Well, he'd show her now, wouldn't he? Show her that he couldn't be messed with that way, not without consequences. She'd
see
.

He glanced around.

And right there, driven point-first into the soil, was the sword. He pulled it out and held it. It felt good in his hand—it felt
natural
.

No feelings
, he reminded himself.
Just do what needs to be done.
He started across the creek.

“Did you hear something?” Cory asked.

“I don't—” Heather began.

The next things happened very fast.

Rocko came out of the bushes on the far side of the stream, holding something long in his right hand—was it a
sword
? He wasn't scowling, or cursing, or smiling, just hurrying toward the stream with a fixed, intent expression on his face. Cory instinctively stepped between Rocko and Heather.

“Are you crazy?” Heather shouted, falling back. Cory didn't know which of them she was talking to.

Cory retreated too, banging his elbow on a tree. He glanced that way—and saw a sword, driven point-down into the dirt by the tree trunk.

What he had to do seemed obvious. He'd done it last night in his dream, hadn't he?

He pulled the sword out of the dirt and held it before him. He'd never held a sword before, but he knew how; it felt like second nature.

Rocko stood on the other side of the stream. “This is for my humiliation,” he said. He nodded toward Heather. “And for the Girl."

“You can't have her,” Cory said, not sure where the words came from. “You'll have to come through me."

“So be it,” Rocko said, and jumped across the stream. Cory waited in
en garde
position, his mind curiously blank. These events seemed to have little to do with him—they were almost formalities, somehow, but essential nonetheless.

Rocko raised his sword, and his face finally betrayed expression—a snarl of total, concentrated rage.

Then Heather hit Rocko with her hockey stick, snapping his sword and driving the broken pieces into his chest. A look of comical surprise crossed Rocko's face, and he looked toward Heather. She hit him in the side of the head with the flat of the stick, and he stiffened, then stumbled backwards and fell in the stream, still holding the hilt of his sword.

“Jesus,” Heather said, breathing hard.

Then, off in the bushes, the witch screamed.

What had the Girl
done
? Her place was to stand to one side and watch the bloodshed, not intercede! The witch had loosened the moorings of her mind, dressed in jeans and a blue shirt to match the Girl, put a ribbon in her hair. She was ready to
become
the Girl, waiting only for the Boy to spill the Rival's blood and ignite the spell—and that had been ruined!

She ran out of the woods where she'd been watching. “Bitch!” she yelled. “You little whore, you little interfering whore!"

It might not be too late. If she could make the Rival bleed, maybe this tableau was still close enough to the original—the imperative resemblance hadn't totally broken down. She was too far away, though, she'd never get to him and kill him in time, especially with the Girl still standing there, fierce as an Amazon, her hockey stick in hand.

But her bicycle—it was closer.

Rocko sat up, groggily, and saw the witch coming, screaming. He looked at the shattered remnant of sword in his hand, and suddenly understood the essentials, if not the particulars, of the situation.

The witch had set him up. She'd meant for him to die here, and had given him a useless sword. She'd probably been behind Cory's impossible feat of strength and speed in the bathroom, too.

He would
kill
her. He struggled to his feet.

Then he saw the bicycle bearing down on him, and froze, pithed by fear.

The bicycle came out of the trees, lumbering slowly at first but then building speed. Rocko stared at the witch's bicycle as it raced toward him. Heather held her hockey stick across her chest, but she was looking at the witch, who was dressed like Heather and grinning horribly.

The riderless bicycle was going to pass by Cory. He saw its ram's-horn handlebars, only they'd twisted, so their points aimed forward, like bull's horns. They would gore Rocko easily, and his blood would pool in the stream...

In one smooth motion, with thoughtless ease, Cory tossed his sword point-first toward the bicycle as it passed him. His sword flew neatly into the spokes on the back tire. The rotation of the wheel slammed the sword against the frame, binding the spokes and making it impossible for the wheel to turn. The bicycle slalomed, and the witch screamed again. The bike skidded for several feet before it fell, then slid into the stream, stopping by Rocko's feet.

Rocko looked down at it, then at the witch, who stood clutching her hair and shouting incomprehensibly.

Rocko grinned. He reached down and snatched the sword from the bike's spokes. The bicycle's wheels spun, but it couldn't seem to right itself. Cory cursed softly. Rocko was going to come after him, and this time he didn't have a weapon of his own. He couldn't run, either, not if that meant leaving Heather to Rocko's mercy, and to the witch.

Rocko lifted the sword and shouted. His face held plenty of expression, now—fury, and delight.

He didn't run for Cory. He ran past Heather, straight for the witch. She hardly seemed to see him—just stared at Heather, and pulled on her hair, and wept.

Rocko plunged the sword into the witch's stomach, driving it in to the hilt, then put his hand on her chest and shoved. The witch fell over backward, her body sliding off the blade. Rocko lifted the sword high, then drove it down into her throat.

He left it there, sticking up, not unlike the way Cory had found it, sticking up from the ground. Rocko looked at Cory and Heather, his eyes glazed, breathing heavily.

“Don't come near us,” Heather said, moving close to Cory, clutching her stick.

“Shit,” Rocko said, his voice thick. “I'm not messing with either of you. I took care of what I needed to do.” He frowned. “Almost, anyway.” He approached, and Heather stepped in front of Cory—protecting him, as he'd moved to protect her.

Rocko didn't come much closer to him, though. He veered back toward the stream, and the bicycle. “
This
thing. I don't know how it works ... but it's got a mind of its own. It might even have
her
mind.” He looked at Heather. “Get that stick over here, and smash this thing up, would you? I'll get a rock."

“He's right,” Cory said. “I don't know what happened, but ... the bicycle is part of it. We have to break it."

“Don't mess with us,” Heather said. “Don't mess with Cory."

Rocko shrugged. “He proved he was worth something. He saved my life.” He flashed a sick grin at Cory. “If Heather hadn't ambushed me, though, and if I hadn't been stuck with a second-rate sword, I'd have finished you."

“We've seen what you can do,” Heather said, looking at the witch's body, then away.

Rocko looked at the witch's body and nodded. “Yeah. I crossed a boundary there, didn't I? I wonder what my psychiatrist will say when I tell her I killed her because she was a witch?"

Cory and Heather didn't say anything. They just went to work on the bike with the stick and some rocks, shattering its headlamp first, then pounding its wheel hubs into shapelessness. Rocko bashed at the seat until it came off. Halfway through their destruction they heard shouting and footsteps.

“Who—” Cory said, alarmed.

“Grown-ups,” Rocko grunted. “Those builders of boundaries. They heard all the screaming, probably. Let's finish this before they get here."

They worked faster, and when they finished, the bicycle was just bits of junk glittering in the stream.

“So much for the micro-ecology,” Heather said. “The water will probably be poisoned forever."

A woman came into the clearing, followed by another woman and a man. “Heather!” the first woman shouted. “What—” She saw the witch's body. “Oh my God!” she cried, covering her mouth with both hands.

“I killed her,” Rocko said, stepping forward. He looked over his shoulder at Cory, then favored Heather with a smile. He turned back to the grown-ups. “I killed her because she was a witch."

The adults looked at one another.

Heather grasped Cory's hand, hard. He squeezed hers just as tightly. This was going to be a long afternoon, and long days ahead ... but maybe, on the other side of it, he would still be able to hold Heather's hand.

Annabelle's Alphabet

(For Adrienne)

A is for Annabelle, who turned ten today. She is on a birthday picnic with her parents, wearing what her mother calls her Alice-in-Wonderland dress, and the warm air smells of summer. Annabelle hears chimes in the wind, but her parents, arguing on a blanket, don't seem to notice. Annabelle might follow the music, later, through the yellow and blue field of wildflowers, into the woods. The chimes seem to call her name, three syllables: “Ann—a—belle.” She laughs and claps her hands. Her parents murmur.

B is for Butterflies. Annabelle sees one now, yellow wings fluttering through the long grass over the hills. She chases it until it lands, then leans over to watch it resting on a blossom. Annabelle thinks it might be looking at her, but she isn't sure if butterflies have eyes.

Her father collects butterflies, pins them down and seals them under glass. She's seen him in the garage, where he keeps his collection, looking at them. Sometimes, when he doesn't know she's there, he rips off their wings, and that frightens her.

Annabelle shivers and waves her hand at the butterfly. “Go on,” she whispers. “Fly away.” It does.

C is for Cages. Once at another girl's birthday party Annabelle saw parakeets, yellow and blue, singing in a cage. She looked at them for a minute and decided to set them free. She tugged at the cage door, but a broad soft woman in a flowered dress stopped her. “No, dear,” she said. “Don't let them out."

“I want them to fly,” Annabelle said, her eyes suddenly hot and full of tears.

“No,” the woman repeated, leading Annabelle back to cake and ice cream. “Their wings are clipped. They couldn't fly anyway."

“Do their wings ever grow back?” Annabelle asked, but the woman didn't answer.

D is for Dreams, of course. Annabelle dreams of green places, and she often dreams of flying, soaring over woods and water, singing as she goes. One morning, when she was five years old, she said “I flied, Mommy, last night I flied!” Her mother's eyes went wide and she made a squeaking noise, as if choking on her eggs.

“In her dreams,” her father said sharply, looking up from his paper. “She means in her dreams. Everyone has that dream."

Annabelle's mother nodded and looked down at her plate.

Anabelle remembers that, even five years later. She has a very good memory, but far enough back it turns to mist and shadows and pine trees.

E is for Earthworms. Annabelle's father is a weekend fisherman, and there's a patch of black dirt behind the house where he digs for worms. Once, young and dirty-kneed, Annabelle watched him dig.

“Catypillars,” she said when he pulled up a long worm, wiggling, and dropped it in the bucket.

“Not caterpillars,” her father said. “Worms."

“Worms?” Annabelle said, scrunching up her face.

“Yes. Caterpillars are fuzzy, and they turn into butterflies. Worms are slimy, and they don't turn into anything. But.” He raised his finger in front of Annabelle's wide gold-flecked eyes. “If you cut a worm in half, both halves go on living.” He took out his pocketknife, laid a worm on a shattered piece of cinderblock, and sliced it neatly in half. There was no blood, and both halves wriggled wildly. “See?"

Annabelle looked for a moment, solemn, and then said “Put it back together, Daddy."

He frowned, picking up the two wiggling half-worms and dropping them in his bucket. “I can't, Annabelle. There's no way to put them together again."

“Oh,” she said in a quiet voice. But she wondered.

F is for Fairies. Annabelle's mother is religious, and there are pictures and statues of angels all over the house, with their white wings and pale, pretty faces. When Annabelle was younger, she called them fairies. “No,” her mother said sternly. “They're angels."

“But they got wings,” Annabelle said.

Her mother embraced her in freckled arms. “I know, darling, but they're angels. I promise. And you're my little angel."

“I don't got wings,” Annabelle said scornfully.

G is for Garden. Annabelle's mother has one, with roses and posies and tulips and other blossoms, and in the summer they buzz with bees. Once Annabelle was sent to pull weeds, but instead she took up flowers and wove them into her red hair, and made chains for her wrists. Her mother squawked and shouted when she saw, but Annabelle was serene, sitting on the lawn with her skirts spread around her. She was a flower.

H is for Hair, sunset-red on Annabelle's head. Her father's hair is sandy blonde and short, her mother's is flat brown and cut in a bob. Annabelle's hair falls in curly waves, nearly to her knees. It has never been cut.

When Annabelle's mother brushes her daughter's hair, as she does every morning, it never snags or tangles. Her mother tells herself it must be the shampoo she uses, but it certainly doesn't do that for her own hair. She chooses not to think about it. Annabelle's mother chooses not to think about a great many things.

I is for Innocence, and today as every day Annabelle is drifting farther from that state. Her father watches her sometimes as she plays, frowning, and sometimes he grins like a jack o’ lantern, but he's never laid a hand on her, even to punish. Sometimes he seems nervous when he hugs her, and he never touches her back for long. Annabelle's innocence is still complete, but today she turned ten, and as she grows through double digits that innocence will disappear. For some things, some reconnections, time is growing short.