The Deavys

by Alan Dean Foster

  True to their word, none of the girls had ever done much work with boats before, there not being much cause for them to do so while attending a landlocked school or living in a landlocked town. As they waved and intoned and gestured, he felt himself tense. A wary Pithfwid took temporary cover behind his lower legs, his vivid violet eyes widening slightly as he observed the coubet at work.

  Something was happening, anyways.

  A ball of light began to emerge from the water, swelling and intensifying in time to the sisters’ steady sing-song. No, not from the water, Simwan saw. From the boat. Concerning the toy itself, the light soon grew much too bright for him to look at directly, even when he squinted. As the soundless golden globe continued to expand, lines began to appear within it. The girls were wholly into their work now, having entered into a trancelike state that was half theurgic, half sisterhood, and all coubet. As was usual during such times of powerful application, Rose and Amber remained firmly grounded while N/Ice could not keep from rising several inches off the ground.

  Shafts of light like lambent ropes trailed from their fingertips as they wove the words and conducted the magic. Within the golden sphere, distinctive lines continued to solidify. Shading his eyes, Simwan found that he could now make out the first glimmerings of gunwales and tiller, mast and sail. It was the same toy ship they had found, greatly enlarged and doubtlessly more than a little transformed. How much more transformed he would find out in a moment or two.

  The coubet’s steady susurration slowly faded away, leaving the only sound the slight plinking noise produced by accumulated moisture falling to the ground from nearby branches and benches. As the girls went quiet, the golden sphere dissipated swiftly, the waves of light melting into the welcoming wavelets of the Reservoir. In their wake stood the model sailboat, enlarged enough to carry them all and, as Simwan had expected, more than slightly altered from its original design. Approaching, he looked it over from stem to stern, shaking his head critically. Pithfwid leaped lithely up onto the Reservoir barrier to study the result of the coubet’s combined effort.

  “Girls!” Simwan made a disgusted sound. “Honestly, can’t you fix anything without overdoing it?”

  A tad embarrassed, Amber looked over at Rose. Rose lowered her gaze as she glanced at N/Ice. N/Ice did her best to face down their big brother.

  “Look, we’ve never modified a boat before. We’ve done ponies, and bikes, and skateboards, and even helped Dad with the car, but never a boat.” As this threadbare reasoning sounded feeble even to her, she hastened to add, “Besides, this is New York.”

  At least it looked seaworthy, Simwan decided reluctantly as he stepped up onto the concrete barrier that held back the waters of the Reservoir. As Pithfwid made the short jump onto the boat’s deck, Simwan extended a hand back toward his sisters. Still favoring her left leg, Rose accepted his offer of assistance without hesitation. A moment later, and they were all aboard.

  Since no one else seemed inclined to take the position (or the responsibility), Simwan sat down in the stern and draped his right forearm over the hardwood tiller that controlled the rudder. As soon as he straightened it out, the boat began to move forward, away from the wall and out onto the gray expanse. As was to be expected, progress was smooth and steady, since there was virtually no wave action. The only sense of motion was forward.

  With the fog once more snugging in around them and the inexorable advancement of evening, he could see nothing in the way of landmarks. Not even the western or eastern boundaries of the Reservoir, much less any of the concrete and steel and glass towers that ringed the park. He was not concerned. North to south, the Reservoir was only ten blocks in length, extending from 96th Street to 86th. They were crossing a portion of north Central Park, not the North Central Pacific. It was pretty much impossible for them to get lost.

  He peered off to the west. There was no sign of angry Madoon patrolling the distant bridle path, or of recreational Ord riders. Reality had become too stable for the former, too late and damp for the latter, he decided. He allowed himself to relax, his right arm resting lightly on the tiller, holding the magically modified craft on its steady northward heading. The watery tranquillity offered an opportunity halfway through their quest to take it easy for a moment or two. If only his sisters hadn’t, in the course of their otherwise estimable exertions on behalf of critical toy boat renovation, decided to go and overdo things. The ostentatiousness of their work risked drawing dangerous attention. Fortunately, it did not appear as if there had been anyone around to bear witness to the results. So far, anyway.

  Why don’t you just relax? he chided himself. This was New York. With all that implied and promised, as N/Ice had defiantly put it. What were the girls doing, after all, but having a bit of fun with their magic? He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Of all people, when charged with making the model sailboat suitable for use, he more than anyone ought to have expected his sisters to go a little—overboard.

  What more was wanted than what they had produced? As well as hewing to a steady course, the enlarged toy boat floated sufficiently high in the water to keep them nice and dry and well above any shallow patches. He did not understand how this could be so, given the apparent weightiness of its transformation. Idly, he wondered which of his sisters had succumbed to the notion of making the hull solid gold. Probably Amber. Of them all, she was the one most prone to garishness.

  Though daylight was fading and the heavy fog reduced the ambient light still further, Simwan still found himself having to squint occasionally when a stray shaft of light bounced off a diamond fitting to temporarily blind him.

  “Really now,” he asked N/Ice, and by inference her sisters, “even for New York, don’t you think that as a piece of fey this is maybe a little bit over the top?” With a wave of his left hand he indicated the boat’s interior. “I mean, come on now: diamond bolts and silk sails?”

  “Hey,” Amber protested from where she was relaxing on the silken center bench, “like N/Ice said, we’ve never worked with a boat before, y’know?”

  Since they could no longer see the southern edge of the Reservoir, Simwan felt it reasonable to assume they were at least halfway across. Though there wasn’t much in the way of wind, or even a breeze, he kept the boat moving steadily forward by sculling back and forth with the rudder. There being neither current nor wave action, their situation was comparable to going for a peaceful sail in a bathtub.

  They landed on the far north shore of the Reservoir without incident. Night made the air seem colder, though in fact there was as yet little change in the temperature since it continued to be moderated by the heavy cloud cover.

  Their first order of business upon setting foot on dry parkland was to retransmogrify their sturdy but entirely too flamboyant little craft. It wouldn’t do to have some idle Ord runner come jogging along the path that paralleled the Reservoir’s north shore and stumble upon a full-size sailboat fashioned of gold and platinum and precious stones. Awkward questions might be asked. If more than one Ord happened across the craft, fights over discovery could well ensue. Worst of all, lawyers could become involved. Having determined to recover the Truth, the Deavys were not about to leave behind a creation of their own that would invariably generate less of that rare and valuable commodity.

  Once again Simwan was able to stand back and play spectator as his sisters proceeded to deconstruct their magic. Gold vanished, platinum evaporated, silk turned back to cotton, and within a couple of minutes their garish vessel had been reduced to its original size, shape, and status. They left the toy craft there, by a bench, with nothing to indicate the remarkableness of the short but eventful journey it had just concluded. Hopefully, its young owner would return and recover it.

  Their fight with the Madoon and the stress of crossing the Reservoir, coupled with the lateness of the hour, had left everyone famished. The north shore, however, proffered no invitingly illuminated, conv
ivial snack wagon of the kind that had supplied drinks and nibbles to them prior to their watery crossing. There was nothing in the way of an evening restaurant or fast-food booth, nor did the rolling reaches of the North Meadow that lay spread out before them offer guarantee of anything more nourishing.

  To the west lay the Upper West Side and the temptation of upscale neighborhood bistros and fast-food eateries. But getting there would mean having to recross the Bridle Path, a prospect no one cared to contemplate. To the east lay the culinary environs of the Upper East Side. But leaving the park meant, as they had already determined, having to abandon their search and start all over again another day. There was nothing for it, it was decided without argument, but to press on.

  But not until something had been done to alleviate their hunger.

  Simwan didn’t argue. As badly as he wanted to hurry onward to the Crub’s lair and maintain as much of an element of surprise as possible, he had to admit that to rush into what could be a potentially serious situation on an empty stomach was downright foolish. In the absence of restaurant or pushcart, they would have to find a way to feed themselves. Remembering the stories Grandpa Deavy used to tell of crossing the Tibetan Plateau on foot in the company of only a single Yeti, Simwan decided he and his sisters would find a way to get by.

  That didn’t mean any of them were happy about it.

  “I’m cold.” Rose flopped down on a nearby bench, her scrunched expression illuminated by the soft glow of the overhead streetlight. “And my leg hurts.”

  “I want a hamburger.” Amber pulled her coat tighter around her upper body and tugged the lip of her hood further down over her forehead. “With everything.”

  N/Ice could not keep from commenting. “Better be careful what you wish for. This being New York, no telling what you might get on a hamburger if you ask for it with ‘everything.’ In Australia, you’d get it with a slice of beetroot and a fried egg.”

  Rose and Amber looked at each other and, in perfect unison, responded with a heartfelt “Eewww!” Simwan had to smile. His sisters might be cold and wet and discouraged, but they still had the energy to complain. Clearly, there was no lack of the traditional Deavy spirit among the tired, damp expedition.

  “Come on,” he urged them. “We’ve dealt with everything else that’s come our way so far. Surely, we can manage dinner.”

  N/Ice lowered her gaze warningly. “By ‘we,’ I take it you mean us? You’re not implying, are you, big brother, that we twee three should be responsible for conjuring up dinner just because we’re girls?”

  Simwan met her gaze evenly. “You’ve tasted my cooking, both Ord and otherwise. Are you sure you want me involved in scaring up our supper?”

  “Don’t provoke him, N/Ice,” Amber interjected hastily. “Remember that time when Mom and Dad were out and he tried to make marshmallow crispies for all of us?”

  Rose nodded in remembrance. “Yeah, and he confused the spell for egg whites with the one for a certain other kind of powder, and ended up making them with cement instead of marshmallow.”

  “Fine, then.” N/Ice was convinced, if not necessarily mollified. “We’ll figure out something for dinner.” Suddenly, she brightened. “Actually, I think big brother may already have helped.”

  Her sisters eyed her uncertainly. “How do you mean?” Amber asked.

  “He said something about ‘scaring up’ supper.” Rising from the bench, she turned to gaze out across the misty, dimly lit expanse of the rolling North Meadow. “Maybe that’s just what we ought to do. Can you imagine how many cookouts and picnics and barbecues people have scarfed down in this place?” She turned back to face her sisters. “All we have to do is call up their ghosts.”

  “What good will it do to call up the ghosts of deceased picnickers?”

  “Not the ghosts of the picnickers, silly.” N/Ice’s fervor warmed the air around her. “The ghosts of their food.”

  Amber blinked. “I didn’t know food could leave behind ghosts.”

  “Well, not all food.” N/Ice wavered slightly in her conviction. “Just food that goes unappreciated. A fried chicken that doesn’t get eaten, for example, perishes unfulfilled. In that case, the chicken died for nothing. Or take a hamburger that just gets a bite taken out of it and is thrown away. Somewhere, somehow, a steer died to give birth to it, and all that beautiful cud-chewing life is just wasted. I imagine it’s also true for vegetables that are cooked but discarded.”

  Simwan found that his appetite, which moments earlier had begun to verge on the all-consuming, was fading rapidly. “I dunno about this,” he muttered uncomfortably. “I mean, eating ghost food …”

  “Better than eating food intended for ghosts. It’s bound not to be very fattening.” Rose was thawing to the idea. “And since it’s already been prepared, we wouldn’t have to do any cooking.” She smiled at her other sister. “You might even be able to get your hamburger.”

  “How do you ‘scare up’ ghost food?” Amber looked questioningly at N/Ice.

  Finding herself on the spot, N/Ice straightened and declared with more assurance than she actually felt, “I’ve heard that a good chef always knows how to improvise. So that’s what we’ll do: We’ll improvise.”

  Once more, the girls linked hands. Instead of chanting in unison, they allowed N/Ice to take the lead. She did so with inspiration born of appetite. Simwan didn’t catch all the words—Amber, for one, sing-songed something about N/Ice being “the hostess with the mostest toastest”—but he was right there when the ectoplasmic egg salad sandwich materialized out of nothingness. It was only half visible and half solid, but it was undeniably an egg salad sandwich.

  He was not surprised that it was the first specimen of ghost food to come forth in response to the coubet’s chanting. If he had been at a picnic where hamburgers and hot dogs and barbecued ribs were sizzling on a grill and someone had offered him an egg salad sandwich, he would have thrown it away uneaten, too. Present circumstances being somewhat different, however, and having not eaten anything since lunch at Tybolt the Butcher’s, he snatched the spectral sandwich out of the night air before it could drift away or dematerialize and unhesitatingly took a big bite out of it.

  As expected, there wasn’t much to it. The lettuce in particular had little substance and less taste. But the faint, or in this case ghostly, tang of egg salad was unmistakable. Chewing something so insubstantial was almost an afterthought, and it slid down his throat without much effort on the part of his teeth and jaws. Once settled in his stomach, however, it felt right at home.

  He finished the sandwich as other wraithlike nourishment started to materialize in response to the coubet’s spell-cooking. Only when the girls felt they had called forth sufficient sustenance did they release one another’s hands and scramble for their share of the drifting, itinerant bounty.

  As the last of the lonely lunch meat faded back to nothingness, they cleaned themselves as best they were able and headed out across the damp greensward that comprised the gentle rolling hillocks of the North Meadow. They were in the northern quarter of the park now: the home stretch of their quest. Surely, Simwan felt, it could not be long before they encountered someone or something that could point the way straight into the Crub’s lair.

  Turns out he was right.

  Unfortunately.

  XX

  By now they were—all of them, coubet, cat, and boy—mightily encouraged. They had made their way northward through most of the park and must surely be closing in on their quarry. True, dusk had fallen (or more accurately, given the steady mist and drizzle, seeped), catching them out later than they originally planned. But having made as much progress as they had in the course of a single day, Simwan was feeling more and more confident they would be able to catch the Crub by surprise. With luck, they would recover the Truth and be out of the park and back in the Ord part of the city before the repulsive thieving rat-thin
g knew what had hit him.

  It was dreadful dark out on the meadow. A group of Ord youngsters would have huddled together uneasily and hurried toward the nearest well-lit paved pathway. Not the Deavys. They were not afraid of the night. There is a very real difference between being wary and being intimidated by something. Simwan was alert, but he was not scared. From time to time the coubet would break into a skip and a song, though they kept their voices down. Any hint of moon was pillowed behind the persistent rain clouds. Patches of denser fog danced and ebbed around the advancing Deavys like waltzing wraiths. The appearance of sentience was a coincidence only. Fog did not think. A foog, now—that was a different matter entirely.

  “I smell something.” Slightly in the lead, N/Ice slowed her pace until she had fallen back between her sisters.

  “Take more baths,” Rose suggested snidely.

  Ordinarily, this response would have provoked an ancillary comment from Amber as well as a suitably snotty comeback from N/Ice, but this time neither girl replied. That, in turn, piqued Rose’s interest as well as that of their brother.

  “I smell it, too.” Head tilted slightly back, Simwan sniffed at the damp night air.

  What he was smelling was all wrong. It smacked of something burning. Aside from the fact that there was no source in sight, the odor was all wrong for where they were. He struggled to identify it. It did not arise from burning newspapers or cardboard, as might have been expected if a couple of resident tramps had built an illegal campfire somewhere nearby. It did not reek of charcoal, as it would if a bunch of college students were toasting marshmallows around a fire-filled metal barrel. There were no overtones of pasteboard or plaster, wallboard or cured wood, so it couldn’t be coming from a burning structure.

  It took him a few more minutes before he could place it. More than anything else, the burning smell reminded him of the special desserts they enjoyed on their all-too-infrequent visits to Great-Aunt Erica’s house up in the mountains of Vermont.