Ghost Point
Page 33
Dennis shook his head. “You got soaked. Wet clothing, winter wind, snowstorm starting—that combination will kill you. Where’s that leave your homeless mother and kids?”
“We go. The snow is God’s blessing, oui, hiding tracks, taking eyes away. And this jacket, these pants, they are some new miracle from Du Pont or Dow. Plastic fibers, Alice can tell you what, but the water, she does not soak in. Feel. Dry already.”
She held out her arm and Dennis touched the sleeve. Dry. Ten minutes in the kitchen—next to the stove, yes, and December air, the humidity was damn near zero—but the fabric felt dry.
Alice kept glancing between Dennis and Susan, a strange intense frown drawing lines between her eyebrows. Jealousy? Then she settled on staring at Dennis and nodded to herself.
“Kate Rowley.”
Aunt Jean nodded. “Oui, she has her grandmother’s blood in her. The House would welcome that one.”
Then the old witch frowned and sighed and her shoulders sagged. “I think you will find pain on that path, my child. Much pain before you find joy. I see this. Do not choose before you must.”
Alice shook her head. “Kate.”
Aunt Jean shook her own head, a wry smile crossing her face before she straightened and looked strong again. With a nod and wink to Susan, Aunt Jean headed out the door. Alice shrugged her shoulders, picked up her backpack, and followed.
Susan cocked her head, listening to the grunts of bodies stooping to strap and buckle snowshoes, the crunch of snowshoes on crust already muffled by the new snow falling. “Did you see Grendel in the spirit lands? Any idea where she is?”
“No. I hope she went wherever that water came from. And that it was the right water. I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
He didn’t think Susan’s mind was on Grendel right now, though. He could tell he’d just about scared the shit out of her. One time in the faint glow of a lantern, after sex, she'd told him that she'd always lost anyone she cared about.
The crunch of snow faded. At last, Dennis couldn’t hear anything but the wind and trees and waves, the creaking of the old wood of the boathouse. She nodded agreement and grinned at him and pulled her sweater up over her head and tossed it on a chair. That still left a second sweater and long underwear before she’d show him any skin. She grabbed the waistband of her pants and all the layers beneath and shoved them down to her ankles and got tangled in her boots and cussed and thumped her bare butt down on a chair and fumbled with bootlaces.
She stopped and glared at them and then flopped back in the chair, laughing up at him. “Sexy, eh? Maine winter—by the time you get all the layers stripped off, you’ve forgotten why you started. You gonna work on your own stuff while I figure out those knots?”
She laughed again. “That old woman has a dirty mind. But she’s right. Now that we don’t have an audience, I think I’ll play doctor with you. First thing on the list, a full physical and cardiac stress-test to prove you’re healthy. And scent-marking my territory.”
Welcome home, soldier.
Dennis looked down at her and grinned back and quit thinking about Grendel, She-Who-Swims. He started fumbling with his own layers.
o0o
She swam. She tasted the water, searching for names, searching for clues. She listened. She lifted her head and shoulders above the waves, into warm wind and sun, and turned, sorting through rocks and trees for any shore she knew.
They’d waited in the dark cave, the one called Dennis with his sharp-smelling club, his pistol, pointed at that place in the air that set her fur on end. The old woman had sung words that almost seemed familiar, not English, not the language the land-dwellers used in that world, and the air turned thick and things came out of it. Loud noises, strong smells, biting, slashing, spinning, screaming, fierce joy washing through her arms and legs with something to fight, to kill, blood hot in her mouth, the Dennis grown huge and strong and furry but still giving his same smell, the things scattering in fear and they’d followed and she’d smelled water, familiar water, the smell of swimmers and water broke around her and she swam deep and the Dennis and all that land vanished.
Smells. Tastes. She had learned a new taste in the water now, the taste of that place between the worlds, bitter and slippery, she’d found that when the spinning in her head passed her into the cold season and pain and loss, she’d found it again in coming here. She could give that smell, that taste, to her nest with a warning.
If she could find her nest. If her nest would know her, after this swim between the worlds. She did not recognize the trees, the rocks, the currents, coming sudden to this place instead of following known to known. She knew direction, she knew smells. She smelled food, and she was hungry.
She dove and sang part of the hunting song, asking leave to hunt a strange nest’s waters. She cast her smell, her name into the water, not coming as a thief.
Challenge came back, soft, distant, the voice of her own kind. She sang her part of the nest song, just the single part, just the single swimmer rather than a full nest of hunters taking food from the teeth of whoever knew these waters.
Silence answered. Even the prey held silent, hiding from the hunters.
A call, her own call repeated but rising at the end, questioning. She sang again, longer, yes, this is who I am. Silence followed and lengthened.
Variation, the call lower in pitch, notes inserted, a new phrase at the end.
Nest-sister!
She sang around the new call, behind it, ahead of it, her form of the nest song blending with Nest-sister’s. Joy washed through her, adding yet more notes, rising and falling, repeating, lengthening. Joy added phrases instead of single notes, songs, music, from the stereo in the nest of Dennis, the nest of Susan, this is who I am, this is where I have been. Those phrases came back to her in a lower voice, a louder voice even though still distant, He-who-smells-of-mating blending his song into the full song of the nest.
She sang. They sang. She swam headlong through dark water, waves overhead, feeding forgotten, sharp teeth of other hunters forgotten, following their songs, voices growing stronger. New voices, faint, high-pitched, one, two, new variations on the nest song.
Nestlings!
She had to stop. She had to rise to the surface, breathe, float, wash the thrill out of her body. Nestlings. They lived. She had found her home, her nest, her family. That was the word, the English word, learned from Susan. Susan, Dennis, Alice, Rick, Aunt Jean, she remembered the sounds, she remembered the smells, she would always remember their smells.
Land-dwellers, but family. Part of her nest, part of her new nest-song.
She dove again, rejoining the song, stronger now, closer, even the nestling songs clear and dancing through the water. She swam and swam and swam and they were there, Nest-sister and He-who-smells-of-mating and nestlings, filling the water, spinning, twisting, touching, diving, rising, songs and bodies blending together, smells blending together, strong enough she almost forgot to rise and breathe.
Home.
-END-
Copyright & Credits
GHOST POINT
The Stonefort Stories
James A. Hetley
Book View Café July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61138-409-3
Copyright © 2014 James A. Hetley
Production Team:
Project Coördinator: Sherwood Smith
Cover Design: Dave Smeds
Cover illustration: Jerryway, Toporskiy, dreamstime.com
Copy Editor: Kathi Kimbriel
Proofreader: Kathi Kimbriel
Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Digital edition: 20140605vnm
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About the Author
James A. Hetley lives in the Maine setting of his contemporary fantasy novels The Summer Country, The Winter Oak, Dragon’s Eye, and Dragon’s Teeth. Unlike many other writers of fantasy, he does not keep a resident cat to critique his manuscripts and interfere with typing.
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