by Stephen King
From the bag she brought a gun.
Tim stared at it, wide-eyed. He had seen pictures of them in the Widow’s books, and Old Destry had on the wall of his parlor a framed drawing of a kind called a rifle, but he had never expected to see the real thing. It was about a foot long, the gripping handle of wood, the trigger and barrels of dull metal. The barrels numbered four, bound together by bands of what looked like brass. The holes at the end, where whatever it shot came out, were square.
“He fired it twice before showing me, and it’s never been fired since the day he did, because he died soon after. I don’t know if it still will fire, but I’ve kept it dry, and once every year—on his birthday—I oil it as he showed me. Each chamber is loaded, and there are five more projectiles. They’re called bullets.”
“Pullets?” Tim asked, frowning.
“Nay, nay, bullets. Look you.”
She handed him the bag to free both of her gnarled hands, then turned to one side in the doorway. “Joshua said a gun must never be pointed at a person unless you want to hurt or kill him. For, he said, guns have eager hearts. Or perhaps he said evil hearts? After all these years, I no longer remember. There’s a little lever on the side . . . just here . . .”
There was a click, and the gun broke open between the handle and the barrels. She showed him four square brass plates. When she pulled one from the hole where it rested, Tim saw that the plate was actually the base of a projectile—a bullet.
“The brass bottom remains after you fire,” said she. “You must pull it out before you can load in another. Do you see?”
“Aye.” He longed to handle the bullets himself. More; he longed to hold the gun in his hand, and pull the trigger, and hear the explosion.
The Widow closed the gun (again it made that perfect little click) and then showed him the handle end. He saw four small cocking devices meant to be pulled back with the thumb. “These are the hammers. Each one fires a different barrel . . . if the cursed thing still fires at all. Do you see?”
“Aye.”
“It’s called a four-shot. Joshua said it was safe as long as none of the hammers were drawn.” She reeled a bit on her feet, as if she had come over lightheaded. “Giving a gun to a child! One who means to go into the Endless Forest at night, to meet a devil! Yet what else can I do?” And then, not to Tim: “But he won’t expect a child to have a gun, will he? Mayhap there’s White in the world yet, and one of these old bullets will end up in his black heart. Put it in the bag, do ya.”
She held the gun out to him, handle first. Tim almost dropped it. That such a small thing could be so heavy seemed astounding. And, like the Covenant Man’s magic wand when it had passed over the water in the pail, it seemed to thrum.
“The extra bullets are wrapped in cotton batting. With the four in the gun, you have nine. May they do you well, and may I not find myself cursed in the clearing for giving them to you.”
“Thank . . . thankee-sai!” It was all Tim could manage. He slipped the gun into the bag.
She put her hands to the sides of her head and uttered a bitter laugh. “You’re a fool, and I’m another. Instead of bringing you my brother’s four-shot, I should have brought my broom and hit you over the head wi’ it.” She voiced that bitter, despairing laugh again. “Yet ’twould do no good, with my old woman’s strength.”
“Will you take word to my mama in the morning? For it won’t be just a little way down the Ironwood Trail I’ll be going this time, but all the way to the end.”
“Aye, and break her heart, likely.” She bent toward him, the hem of her veil swinging. “Has thee thought of that? I see by your face thee has. Why do you do this when you know the news of it will harrow her soul?”
Tim flushed from chin to hairline, but held his ground. In that moment he looked very much like his gone-on father. “I mean to save her eyesight. He has left me enough of his magic to show me how it’s to be done.”
“Black magic! In support of lies! Of lies, Tim Ross!”
“So you say.” Now his jaw jutted, and that was also very like Jack Ross. “But he didn’t lie about the key—it worked. He didn’t lie about the beating—it happened. He didn’t lie about my mama being blind—she is. As for my da’ . . . thee knows.”
“Yar,” she said, now speaking in a harsh country accent Tim had never heard before. “Yar, and each o’ his truths has worked two ways: they hurt’ee, and they’ve baited his trap for’ee.”
He said nothing to this at first, only lowered his head and studied the toes of his scuffed shor’boots. The Widow had almost allowed herself to hope when he raised his head, met her eyes, and said, “I’ll leave Bitsy tethered uptrail from the Cosington-Marchly stake. I don’t want to leave her at the stub where I found my da’, because there’s a pooky in the trees. When you go to see Mama, will you ask sai Cosington to fetch Bitsy home?”
A younger woman might have continued to argue, perhaps even to plead—but the Widow was not that woman. “Anything else?”
“Two things.”
“Speak.”
“Will you give my mama a kiss for me?”
“Aye, and gladly. What’s the other?”
“Will you set me on with a blessing?”
She considered this, then shook her head. “As for blessings, my brother’s four-shot is the best I can do.”
“Then it will have to be enough.” He made a leg and brought his fist to his forehead in salute; then he turned and went down the steps to where the faithful little mollie mule was tethered.
In a voice almost—but not quite—too low to hear, the Widow Smack said, “In Gan’s name, I bless thee. Now let ka work.”
The moon was down when Tim dismounted Bitsy and tethered her to a bush at the side of the Ironwood Trail. He had filled his pockets with oats ere leaving the barn, and he now spread them before her as he’d seen the Covenant Man do for his horse the previous night.
“Be easy, and sai Cosington will come for thee in the morning,” Tim said. An image of Square Peter finding Bitsy dead, with a gaping hole in her belly made by one of the predators of the forest (perhaps the very one he’d sensed behind him on his pasear down the Ironwood the night before) lit up his mind. Yet what else could he do? Bitsy was sweet, but not smart enough to find her way home on her own, no matter how many times she’d been up and down this same trail.
“Thee’ll be passing fine,” he said, stroking her smooth nose . . . but would she? The idea that the Widow had been right about everything and this was just the first evidence of it came to his mind, and Tim pushed it aside.
He told me the truth about the rest; surely he told the truth about this, too.
By the time he was three wheels farther up the Ironwood Trail, he had begun to believe this.
You must remember he was only eleven.
He spied no campfire that night. Instead of the welcoming orange glow of burning wood, Tim glimpsed a cold green light as he approached the end of the Ironwood Trail. It flickered and sometimes disappeared, but it always came back, strong enough to cast shadows that seemed to slither around his feet like snakes.
The trail—faint now, because the only ruts were those made by the wagons of Big Ross and Big Kells—swept left to skirt an ancient ironwood with a trunk bigger than the largest house in Tree. A hundred paces beyond this curve, the way forward ended in a clearing. There was the crossbar, and there the sign. Tim could read every word, for above it, suspended in midair by virtue of wings beating so rapidly they were all but invisible, was the sighe.
He stepped closer, all else forgotten in the wonder of this exotic vision. The sighe was no more than four inches tall. She was naked and beautiful. It was impossible to tell if her body was as green as the glow it gave off, for the light around her was fierce. Yet he could see her welcoming smile, and knew she was seeing him very well even though her upturned, almond-shaped eyes were pupilless. Her wings made a steady low purring sound.
Of the Covenant Man there was no sign.
He straightened up cautiously and saw her returning, now somersaulting over and over in the air. His heart was beating fiercely in his chest. He thought he had never seen anything so lovely.
She flew above the crossbar, and by her firefly light he saw a faint and mostly overgrown path leading into the Endless Forest. She raised one arm. The hand at the end of it, glowing with green fire, beckoned to him. Enchanted by her otherworldly beauty and welcoming smile, Tim did not hesitate but at once ducked beneath the crossbar with never a look at the last two words on his dead father’s sign: TRAVELER, BEWARE.
The sighe hovered until he was almost close enough to reach out and touch her, then whisked away, down the remnant of path. There she hovered, smiling and beckoning. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, sometimes concealing her tiny breasts, sometimes fluttering upward in the breeze of her wings to reveal them.
The second time he drew close, Tim called out . . . but low, afraid that if he hailed her in a voice too loud, it might burst her tiny eardrums. “Where is the Covenant Man?”
Another silvery tinkle of laughter was her reply. She barrel-rolled twice, knees drawn all the way up to the hollows of her shoulders, then was off, pausing only to look back and make sure Tim was following before darting onward. So it was that she led the captivated boy deeper and deeper into the Endless Forest. Tim didn’t notice when the poor remnant of path disappeared and his course took him between tall ironwood trees that had been seen by the eyes of only a few men, and that long ago. Nor did he notice when the grave, sweet-sour smell of the ironwoods was replaced by the far less pleasant aroma of stagnant water and rotting vegetation. The ironwood trees had fallen away. There would be more up ahead, countless leagues of them, but not here. Tim had come to the edge of the great swamp known as the Fagonard.
The sighe, once more flashing her teasing smile, flew on. Now her glow was reflected up at her from murky water. Something—not a fish—broke the scummy surface, stared at the airy interloper with a glabrous eye, and slid back below the surface.
Tim didn’t notice. What he saw was the tussock above which she was now hovering. It would be a long stride, but there was no question of not going. She was waiting. He jumped just to be safe and still barely made it; that greenglow was deceptive, making things look closer than they actually were. He tottered, pinwheeling his arms. The sighe made things worse (unintentionally, Tim was sure; she was just playing) by spinning rapid circles around his head, blinding him with her aura and filling his ears with the bells of her laughter.
The issue was in doubt (and he never saw the scaly head that surfaced behind him, the protruding eyes, or the yawning jaws filled with triangular teeth), but Tim was young and agile. He caught his balance and was soon standing on top of the tussock.
“What’s thy name?” he asked the glowing sprite, who was now hovering just beyond the tussock.
He wasn’t sure, in spite of her tinkling laughter, that she could speak, or that she would respond in either the low speech or the high if she could. But she answered, and Tim thought it was the loveliest name he’d ever heard, a perfect match for her ethereal beauty.
“Armaneeta!” she called, and then was off again, laughing and looking flirtatiously back at him.
He followed her deeper and deeper into the Fagonard. Sometimes the tussocks were close enough for him to step from one to the next, but as they progressed onward, he found that more and more frequently he had to jump, and these leaps grew longer and longer. Yet Tim wasn’t frightened. On the contrary, he was dazzled and euphoric, laughing each time he tottered. He did not see the V-shapes that followed him, cutting through the black water as smoothly as a seamstress’s needle through silk; first one, then three, then half a dozen. He was bitten by suckerbugs and brushed them off without feeling their sting, leaving bloody splats on his skin. Nor did he see the slumped but more or less upright shapes that paced him on one side, staring with eyes that gleamed in the dark.
He reached for Armaneeta several times, calling, “Come to me, I won’t hurt thee!” She always eluded him, once flying between his closing fingers and tickling his skin with her wings.
She circled a tussock that was larger than the others. There were no weeds growing on it, and Tim surmised it was actually a rock—the first one he’d seen in this part of the world, where things seemed more liquid than solid.
“That’s too far!” Tim called to Armaneeta. He looked for another stepping-stone, but there was none. If he wanted to reach the next tussock, he would have to leap onto the rock first. And she was beckoning.
Maybe I can make it, he thought. Certainly she thinks I can; why else would she beckon me on?
There was no space on his current tussock to back up and get a running start, so Tim flexed his knees and broad-jumped, putting every ounce of his strength into it. He flew over the water, saw he wasn’t going to make the rock—almost, but not quite—and stretched out his arms. He landed on his chest and chin, the latter connecting hard enough to send bright dots flocking in front of eyes already dazzled by fairy-glow. There was a moment to realize it wasn’t a rock he was clutching—not unless rocks breathed—and then there was a vast and filthy grunt from behind him. This was followed by a great splash that spattered Tim’s back and neck with warm, bug-infested water.
He scrambled up on the rock that was not a rock, aware that he had lost the Widow’s lamp but still had the bag. Had he not knotted the neck of it tightly around one wrist, he would have lost that, too. The cotton was damp but not actually soaked. At least not yet.
Then, just as he sensed the thing behind him closing in, the “rock” began to rise. He was standing on the head of some creature that had been taking its ease in the mud and silt. Now it was fully awake and not happy. It let out a roar, and green-orange fire belched from its mouth, sizzling the reeds poking up from the water just ahead.
Not as big as a house, no, probably not, but it’s a dragon, all right, and oh, gods, I’m standing on its head!
The creature’s exhalation lit this part of the Fagonard brightly. Tim saw the reeds bending this way and that as the critters that had been following him made away from the dragon’s fire as fast as they could. Tim also saw one more tussock. It was a little bigger than the ones he had hopscotched across to arrive at his current—and very perilous—location.
There was no time to worry about being eaten by an oversize cannibal fish if he landed short, or being turned into a charcoal boy by the dragon’s next breath if he actually reached the tussock. With an inarticulate cry, Tim leaped. It was by far his longest jump, and almost too long. He had to grab at handfuls of sawgrass to keep from tumbling off the other side and into the water. The grass was sharp, cutting into his fingers. Some bunches were also hot and smoking from the irritated dragon’s broadside, but Tim held on. He didn’t want to think about what might be waiting for him if he tumbled off this tiny island.
Not that his position here was safe. He rose onto his knees and looked back the way he had come. The dragon—’twas a bitch, for he could see the pink maiden’s-comb on her head—had risen from the water, standing on her back legs. Not the size of a house, but bigger than Blackie, the Covenant Man’s stallion. She fanned her wings twice, sending droplets in every direction and creating a breeze that blew Tim’s sweat-clotted hair off his forehead. The sound was like his mother’s sheets on the clothesline, snapping in a brisk wind.
She was looking at him from beady, red-veined eyes. Ropes
of burning saliva dropped from her jaws and hissed out when they struck the water. Tim could see the gill high up between her plated breasts fluttering as she pulled in air to stoke the furnace in her guts. He had time to think how strange it was—also a bit funny—that what his steppa had lied about would now become the truth. Only Tim would be the one cooked alive.
The gods must be laughing, Tim thought. And if they weren’t, the Covenant Man probably was.
With no rational consideration, Tim fell to his knees and held his hands out to the dragon, the cotton sack still swinging from his right wrist. “Please, my lady!” he cried. “Please don’t burn me, for I was led astray and cry your pardon!”
For several moments the dragon continued to regard him, and her gill continued to pulse; her fiery spittle went on dripping and hissing. Then, slowly—to Tim it seemed like inches at a time—she began to submerge again. Finally there was nothing left but the top of her head . . . and those awful, staring eyes. They seemed to promise that she would not be merciful, should he choose to disturb her repose a second time. Then they were gone, too, and once more all that Tim could see was something that might have been a rock.
“Armaneeta?” He turned around, looking for her greenglow, knowing he would not see it. She had led him deep into the Fagonard, to a place where there were no more tussocks ahead and a dragon behind. Her job was done.
“Nothing but lies,” Tim whispered.
The Widow Smack had been right all along.
He sat down on the hummock, thinking he would cry, but there were no tears. That was fine with Tim. What good would crying do? He had been made a fool of, and that was an end to it. He promised himself he would know better next time . . . if there was a next time. Sitting here alone in the gloom, with the hidden moon casting an ashy glow through the overgrowth, that didn’t seem likely. The submerged things that had fled were back. They avoided the dragon’s watery boudoir, but that still left them plenty of room to maneuver, and there could be no doubt that the sole object of their interest was the tiny island where Tim sat. He could only hope they were fish of some kind, unable to leave the water without dying. He knew, however, that large creatures living in water this thick and shallow were very likely air-breathers as well as water-breathers.
