It had been careful to leave in its wake something considerably more dangerous than bad smells.
IV
I’m cold.”
Simwan looked over at Amber. During fall and winter, she always seemed to suffer more than any of them, while expanding like a flower in the sun come the warming balm of summer. With a sigh, he slipped out of his flannel shirt and draped it over her shoulders. She smiled affectionately up at him.
“You know, big brother, most of the time you’re just a big pain. But not all the time.” In the absence of his shirt, her words warmed him.
Hugging herself against the rising chill, Rose studied the surrounding trees. The slowly setting sun and the darkening clouds overhead notwithstanding, this early in the evening it still seemed colder than it ought to be. Humidity began to condense around them, uncertain whether to assume the aspect of fog, mist, or actual rain. A bunch of Ord kids might easily have found themselves lost in such surroundings, but not the Deavy offspring. Whenever the path forward threatened to become uncertain, they simply relied on N/Ice, who could see the Way Clear even in the midst of a roaring nor’easter.
Moisture finally made up its mind, and it started to rain.
“Rats!” muttered Rose, drawing the collar of her sweater tighter around her neck. Seeing the startled looks on the faces of her siblings, she hurriedly corrected herself. “I mean, darn. Or damn. Or diamondiferous.”
Simwan frowned at his sister. “What has that got to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” she shrugged. “I liked the alliteration, and if I also happened to accidentally hit on a near-spell, who knows—I might conjure up a diamond.” For emphasis, she scuffed at the damp earth with the toe of her left sneaker. This action exposed a single earthworm, suitably outraged, but unfortunately no diamonds.
Amber found herself shivering, and wasn’t sure it was from the cold.
Riding high on Simwan’s shoulder, Pithfwid was sniffing the air intently. His eyes were open wide, the pupils expanded, and his ears were cocked attentively forward. From time to time his head would jerk to one side or the other, like a gun turret trying to home in on a target. Except for his violet eyes, whose color rarely changed, he had gone entirely gray to match the weather.
“Relax,” Simwan told him. “I’m getting wet, too. It’s not raining hard, and I don’t recall that the weatherman last night said anything about a chance of heavy showers.”
“Isn’t that,” the cat replied. “I sense something else heavy.”
Simwan went into immediate alert mode. Pithfwid was no hypocondricat. If he felt something was wrong, it usually was. “Where?”
“In the woods.” Feline eyes searched, searched.
Simwan made a disgruntled sound. “That’s not real helpful, Pithfwid. We’re in the woods.”
“Tell me about it,” murmured the cat. “And we’re not alone, I don’t think.”
Wordlessly, the girls clustered closer around their big brother. At such times their innate sarcasm took a hike and they were much more his trio of little sisters than they were their usual irritating, know-it-all selves. It was also at such moments that he wished he really was bigger.
On his shoulder, Pithfwid did get bigger, as his gray fur bristled. “Not far away now,” he hissed. “Not nearly far away enough. Keep vigilant, be prepared.”
“For what?” an increasingly sodden and somber Amber wanted to know.
“I smell a Furk a-lurking.”
Cat eyes were not the only ones that widened at Pithfwid’s announcement. As he scanned the dark, dripping trees that suddenly seemed to press closer in all around them, their bark peeling away like flayed skin, Simwan struggled to remember the right words that were to be used when encountering such an apparition. Glancing around, he could see that his sisters were doing likewise. Their lips moved as they recited incantations they dearly hoped they would not be called upon to declaim. Rose was rummaging around in her jeans for suitable charms.
Her actions induced Simwan to check his own pockets. The resulting inventory was less than encouraging: a couple of leftover chocolate bites, three quarters, the Leng army knife his cousin Terious had sent him from Nepal, a paper quip (for binding together several otherwise unrelated words into one smart-ass comeback), a surplus of laundry lint, and some brightly hued rubber bands. Looking down briefly from his scrutinizing of the surrounding woods, Pithfwid examined his human’s puny available resources without comment.
“Oh!” Pulling up so suddenly that Amber nearly ran into her, N/Ice went half ethereal as one hand went to her mouth and she pointed with the other. At least, Simwan realized as he took up a defensive stance just in front of his sister, they no longer had to worry about the Furk stalking them.
It was right in front of them.
If N/Ice hadn’t pointed it out, they might have walked straight into it, Pithfwid’s efforts to safeguard them notwithstanding. This was not because they hadn’t been paying attention, but because a Furk is so extremely hard to see. Found only in forests, Furks are the dark spots that fill up the places between the trees. They’re big, and shadowy, and like trap-door spiders, they know how to sit in one place without moving while waiting for their prey to stumble right into them. Furks are the reason why the phrase, “The forest just swallowed him up” was invented, only these days most people have forgotten the why of it. Or, at least, the Ords have.
Realizing it had been recognized, the Furk let out a roar and charged. Well, not a roar, exactly. The sound that emerged from the opening that appeared in the exact center of the onrushing, dynamic shadow was more of a groan, the sound a breeze makes when it’s been stabbed by an appalling metaphor. In place of arms and legs, the Furk reached out with puffs of gloom. One brushed Amber’s back, causing her to break into a wild sprint. She knew for sure now that what had been chilling her had been a different kind of cold.
“Pithfwid!” Ducking to his left, Simwan saw the cat spring at the onrushing Furk, twisting in midair to avoid a slashing arc of dreary. Landing on all four feet, he flashed sparks from the tips of his ears and paws as he spat a challenging hiss at the lumbering creature. Fully enfurryated, the cat had become a streak of bright yellow fur striped with black: a giant bumblebee with indigo eyes. It was a startling sight.
Startling enough to momentarily draw the attention of the rampaging Furk away from the scattering children. Whirling, it struck downward with surprising swiftness. Swift as the blow was, it wasn’t quick enough to catch Pithfwid, who darted to one side. Roiling darkness struck the ground. The rounded depression it left when it drew back was filled with dead grass and one cluster of murdered wildflowers that had not been alert enough to get out of the way.
From three sides now, the Deavy coubet was flinging every imaginable kind of spell at the amok Furk. It was the sorceral equivalent of the shotgun effect: blast the target with enough of the right kind of bullet, and accuracy was rendered moot.
“Fellay tarmagent oot!” Rose was shouting, her hands writhing over her head in serpentine choreography complex enough to please a plethora of pythons. Coils of purple smoke, impervious to the lightly falling rain, traced a helix around the lumpen mass that was the Furk.
“Serseshawn peretel prestilong!” squealed Amber as she flung at their attacker handfuls of mud gathered from near her feet. Where the intentionally addlepated dirt struck the Furk, anti-smoke began to rise from the dimness that was the body of the creature itself.
“Take a hike, fart-wart!” screamed N/Ice in a voice that was half choir-girl soprano, half thundering pillar of doom. The vibrations alone were enough to cause the Furk to halt in its tracks and turn away from the cat and toward the coubet.
While he continued to dodge and dance and make impertinent faces at the creature, doing his best to distract it from both his sisters and Pithfwid, Simwan marveled at the skills of the cabalistic choir that was the Deavy c
oubet while at the same time desperately trying to think of a way to tender some real help.
“Pithfwid!” he yelled again.
On the other side of the Furk, the cat was leaping and pouncing furiously: darting in when the creature’s attention was distracted by one of the girls’ spells, skittering backward when it returned its attention to him. What with the drumming of the rain on earth and forest, the uncoordinated but enthusiastic spell casting of his three sisters, and Pithfwid’s hissing and growling, it was hard for Simwan to hear himself. Straining, he just did make out what the frenetic cat was trying to tell him.
“Your pocket! Use what you have in your pocket!” As a fist of doom descended toward him, the cat sprang to his left, struck the underside of a tree branch, did a complete backflip while changing color from black-striped yellow to dark blue with gold highlights, landed on his feet, and tore at the Furk with one paw. Ripped away, a puff of solid dark, like congealed pudding gone bad, spilled to the ground. The Furk howled in pain and tried to corner the cat against the base of an especially large oak, but the continuous chanting of the coubet kept it distracted.
Pocket—what was the cat talking about? Simwan still didn’t know how to use his Leng pocket knife effectively. Even if he did, the tools it contained seemed far too puny to do any damage to something the size of the Furk.
Of course—the three quarters! Silver. That had to be it. Digging them out of his pants, he approached the Furk from behind, measuring his step while madly wiping rain from his eyes. Where to aim? At the eyes, surely—except that the Furk had no eyes. At least, none that Simwan could see. Where then? The mouth seemed the most likely target. With luck, the creature would swallow the poisonous currency before it was aware of what it had done. But he’d have to be fast, and get in dangerously close to make it work.
Seeing his human maneuvering for position, Pithfwid surmised Simwan’s intention. Almost daintily, the cat side-stepped another downward blow and darted to his left, toward the crouching, weaving teen. Simwan held his ground, hoping the Furk would continue to focus its attention on the cat. Sure enough, it gauged the distance between them—and lunged. Pithfwid waited almost too long. In the cat’s defense, it’s hard to estimate the speed at which something that’s made of little more than nothing can move. A few tail hairs were lost as the creature’s upper appendages slammed together right where the cat had been standing and bristling a nanoinstant before. The frustrated Furk let out a muted howl of exasperation that echoed through the woods.
Seizing the resultant opening, Simwan let fly with the quarters. He had the great good satisfaction of seeing them soar right down what passed for the Furk’s gullet. The vaporous mouth shut sharply, with a dull, damp thump. For an instant, the creature staggered back on its hindquarters. A smile appeared on Simwan’s face.
It disappeared quickly as the Furk whirled and swung wildly at him.
He ducked, stumbled backward, nearly lost his balance, and found himself standing next to the wrathfully chanting Rose. “I don’t get it—it was a perfect throw!” Collecting itself, the enraged Furk turned toward him and his sister.
Something small but solid bumped up against his legs, bounced away like a pinball off a high-score bumper. “Not the currency, you dolt!” Pithfwid yowled. “The chocolate, the chocolate!”
Dazed and confused, blinking and bemused, Simwan didn’t stop to ponder the apparent absurdity of the cat’s command. Reaching into his pocket, he brought out the couple of pieces of chocolate. Dark chocolate, as if that had anything to do with it. Should he unwrap them first, or just remove the outer paper and leave the inner foiling on?
“Throw it, throw!” Pithfwid was screeching. Looking up, Simwan saw the Furk all but towering over him, both of its massive if seemingly insubstantial upper limbs raised high above its head preparing to strike downward and smash him and his sister into the earth as if they were nothing more than a couple of loose twigs.
He heaved the chocolate.
It struck the Furk high up, right between its upraised limbs. There followed a brief instant during which absolutely nothing happened. Then a dark brightness appeared at the juncture of the Furk’s arms. They rocked back and forth but did not descend. Having snuck up behind it, Amber and N/Ice were casting spells at it as fast as their lips could move: all to no avail.
The dark brightness spread, sliding smoothly across the Furk’s form as slickly as spilled Kool-Aid on a glass tabletop. The Furk began to tremble, then to shake. A high, mystified moan rose from somewhere deep inside the quivering monstrosity. With a sound like bubbles crying, it burst, shattering in all directions and covering everything within twenty feet with fragments of wet, slimy Furk.
“Eewww!” Amber began picking pieces of burst Furk off her damp but otherwise unblemished sweater. Her equally dismayed sisters were doing likewise.
Panting hard, clearly tired by the effort he had expended in distracting the creature, Pithfwid sidled up to Simwan. Using one paw, the cat flicked a piece of Furk off his small, pink nose. “Blech. Filthy stuff. Exactly the sort of being one would expect the Crub to enlist on its behalf.”
“But …” Simwan was staring at the lumpy mess that occupied the place where the Furk had been standing, “chocolate?”
“Chocolate is nothing but sweetness and light. As a human, you, of all creatures, should know that. And if there’s anything a Furk can’t abide, it’s sweetness and light. Not to mention the complex bioflavinoids and other powerful chemical compounds that chocolate contains. Fortunately, those leftovers you swiped from your parents’ last dinner party were real chocolate, not the fake stuff that’s just made with cocoa butter.” He licked his nose. “Seventy-one percent cocoa, I’d say.”
“Huh?” Simwan commented succinctly.
The cat sighed. “Never mind. One day you’ll understand, and be the better for it.” He glanced skyward, blinking away a raindrop. “We’d better get moving. I don’t think this storm is going to get any worse, but I am sure it’s not going to get any better. If you all come down with colds, it’ll make catching the Crub even more of a difficult experience, if not a deadly one.”
“Congratulations, big brother!” Amber was standing on tiptoe to give him a kiss. The other girls had also crowded around him.
“All right, all right!” he exclaimed, shaking them off like so many clinging hothouse flowers. “Pithfwid’s right. Now we’re going to have to really hurry if we’re going to make it home before Mom and Dad.”
“Yeah.” Rose spat in the direction of the mass of Furk mess. It was slowly being dissolved and washed away by the rain. “I hate having to fight beings of insubstantiality. Regular spells just do not work right on them. Can’t get a proper purchase.” Suddenly, she remembered her sister and turned to smile at N/Ice. “No offense, sis.”
“None taken,” the one who sometimes wasn’t entirely all there stiffly replied, at the same time contemplating how best to slip a little itching powder into her sister’s new bra.
Soaked and sodden but reasonably well pleased with themselves, they made it back to the house a good half hour before Melinda Mae returned from her daylong meeting with the opponents of the proposed urban development and well before their father returned from work. The children held the planning meeting in the coubet’s room, not only because there was more space, but because Simwan had a thing about having girls in his room. At least girls who were his sisters.
Having set their respective tablets to start the homework they had missed completing, they considered their next step. Though most excellently enchanted, the tablets were not capable of completing class assignments on their own, only of organizing and beginning them. No spell could compensate for the absence of creativity and originality, both qualities that were prized by the local teachers. N/Ice had been trying to figure out a way to enchant her machine to achieve this. Each time she failed, and it ended up costing her a grade or tw
o on the paper in question. She had been reduced to grumbling and complaining while being forced to actually read books and do some honest work.
“Okay,” Simwan told them, “so we’ll find a way to track down the Crub once we get to New York. We can ask in the right places, and we can ask in the wrong places, and once we’ve run it to ground, we’ll take the Truth back from it. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s probably going to be dangerous, but we have to find a way to do it. One step at a time. The first step is how to convince Mom and Dad to let the four of us—”
“Five,” Pithfwid reminded him.
“Sorry … the five of us, go to New York? Without adult supervision?” Straightening, he stood a little self-consciously taller in front of Amber’s closet. “I mean, I consider myself an adult, but …”
“It must be lonely,” Rose mused solemnly, “to be the sole holder of an opinion.”
He glared at her. “I suppose you think you’re more mature? More grown-up? And that they would let the three of you go without me?”
“Of course they wouldn’t,” N/Ice pointed out from where she was bobbing gently against the ceiling. “But they’re not going to let us go and stay there with just you to watch over us, either. Even if Pithfwid comes with us.”
Amber was sitting cross-legged on her bed. Or rather, an inch above it. That way, she didn’t mess up the covers. “They’d let us go if we had adult supervision while we were there.”
Simwan and her sisters turned to her, and even Pithfwid perked up at the possibility a worthwhile suggestion, as opposed to the usual young human nonsense, might be forthcoming.
“Who do we know in New York who’d let us stay with them, who’d have room enough, and who wouldn’t try to keep an eye on us all the time and report back to Mom and Dad every five minutes?” Rose demanded to know.
The mischievousness in Amber’s voice formed a small pink glow in front of her mouth, as if she was blowing cherry smoke rings. “Uncle Herkimer!”
The Deavys Page 5
