by Tom Deitz
From a canvas tote, she extracted an Allstate Motor Club World Road Atlas, a yellow legal pad, and a gold fountain pen bearing swirls and flourishes upon its elegant barrel that might equally have been mindless filigree or writing in an unknown tongue. Holding her hand just so, she proceeded to line through certain words and phrases on the screen: those that hinted most blatantly at…otherness. The ink did not so much mark the glass, however, as seep through, into the image itself.
Revision took longer, as she wrote new words atop the old. “Freak Fire” became simply “Fire.” “Difficult to extinguish” became “easily put out.” “Seemed to spread by magic,” became “spread quickly through very dry grass.” And the escaped riders and one-armed man vanished entirely, the missing half column inch being replaced with a scribbled filler couplet by her favorite contemporary poet, John Devlin, set off in a bolder face to further shift attention from the account of the conflagration.
Her editing concluded, she opened the atlas to a certain page, removed the film without rewinding it, stretched the relevant segment on the Formica counter beside the reader, laid her left hand atop it—and stabbed the golden pen through her flesh and into the acetate.
She gasped as the metal slid between her bones, but only a little, for she was used to the pain by now, and had only a few more days of such work left in any case: mopping up the fringes, mostly, in lieu of the major damage control she’d accomplished earlier—like that mess in the Willacoochee Witness two years back, which had required some truly creative rewording.
Which was reflection for leisure, not haste.
Her blood was seeping out now: adding its red to the film’s blue and white. And at a certain moment—instinct told her when—she raised the wounded hand and slapped it upon the atlas—atop a map of the United States on which all libraries and similar repositories likely to retain copies of the article she had just revised or its microfilm surrogates were marked with tiny stars of real gold. A deep breath, an instant’s concentration, and tendrils of blood flowed out from between her fingers and found their way to those miniscule markers. Each pulsed briefly, as though they drank their fill, then dulled back to mundanity. Another breath, when the last bright star had faded, and she was done. Her hand no longer bled, and the map was dry, as was the film.
Quickly, she reinserted the reels, located the suspect article, and read it one last time. Good. Her changes were all there—in print now. Anyone using either the original newspaper or the copies—be they at Emory University or the Library of Congress; the University of Tennessee, Harvard, Berkley, Boston University, Spellman College, the University of Texas at Austin, or the myriad others she’d starred; never mind the National Archives, the British Museum, and the Bibliotheque Nationale—would see a slightly different headline, a subtly altered text.
Too bad she couldn’t track down all the copies, though, like the ones little old ladies tended to squirrel away in trunks and parents stuck in scrapbooks. Still, this was enough—probably. Besides, some things were even beyond the Sidhe.
Nuada, she was certain, would be pleased.
Sighing, Tana recorded the change on her legal pad, then consulted her scribbled list. Her next target was an article about a storm disrupting graduation at Enotah County High School almost a year after the previous occurrence, on which occasion numerous spectators claimed to have glimpsed the ghostly shapes of strangely clad warriors engaged in some titanic battle.
Fixing that would be a challenge.
Chapter I: Autumn Chill
(Nichols Ridge, Enotah National Forest,
Georgia—Saturday, October 24—morning)
“Will you be quiet?” David Sullivan hissed under his breath and over his shoulder at the taller, fog-shrouded form behind him, that might have worn a fluorescent orange cap atop spiky dark hair. “And point that thing at the ground or somewhere. Anywhere but at my butt!”
The damp-edged crunch of forest leaves promptly decreased in frequency—but not, so David noticed, in volume, though the shadowing shape faded farther back into the morning fog, movement all that marked it from the gray trunks around it. “I can’t yawn and stealth at the same time!” came a muttered reply.
“Put a sock on it, McLean!” David growled back. “Better yet, put one in it!”
“It’s socks that’s the trouble,” the soft voice retorted. “You’re the one made me wear two pairs; they’re makin’ me walk funny!”
“You always walk funny! ’Sides, it’s usually cold enough this early this time of year to need ’em!”
“You’re both gonna be walkin’ funny if you don’t can it,” a third voice broke in, from the head of the three-man file. David froze in mid-stalk, cheeks hot with embarrassment garnished with irritation. The fog was thicker here: a shroud of white around what should be bright-leaved oaks and maples, now orange-pink and mauve and pastel yellow. The ground was steep: a mountainside.
McLean—Alec—disappeared entirely, save for the rasp of his breathing. Silence went before—until suddenly a form solidified a yard from David’s nose. He started, jerked his .08 half-around from reflex, then lowered the barrel sheepishly as that shape resolved into a compact, serious-looking youth an inch or so shorter than he. Gold-framed glasses hid hazel eyes, while near-black hair masked the forehead beneath a camouflage cap that was ironic counterpoint to the blaze orange vest Georgia law required of hunters in deer season; wide cheekbones narrowed to a pointed chin below very red lips for a boy. Aikin “Mighty Hunter” Daniels, it was. David’s number three buddy after Alec and Calvin McIntosh, Alec’s oldest friend—and present nemesis.
Black brows furrowed Aikin’s forehead as he frowned. “Okay, guys: five-minute break, then quiet, okay? Absolute quiet! Watch where you put your feet; ease ’em down softly, and try to remember that we’re supposed to be hunting the wariest thing there is ’round here. Something that can smell the soap you washed with this mornin’, and hear when you fantasize too hard about Winona Ryder.”
David discovered an oak near enough to flop against—which he did. Alec remanifested and claimed its twin, propping the old Enfield Aikin had loaned him against the trunk. “I don’t need to fantasize about anyone!” David snorted.
“And I don’t usually have to bitch at you ’bout bein’ quiet!”
“Old age,” David yawned, as he massaged his thighs through cammo fatigues, surprised his legs were so tight. Alec wasn’t the only one having trouble moving, and three miles uphill at o-bright-thirty didn’t help.
“Twenty’s, old?”
“Two years past your sexual peak,” Alec observed.
“Will you get off it?”
Aikin rolled his eyes at David. “This is what comes of watchin’ Emmanuel VII last night ’stead of cashin’ in early. Deer can smell testosterone.”
“So that’s why you were in the john so long this morning,” Alec giggled.
“Put a sock— Oh shit! Forget I said that!”
“You wish!”
Aikin simply glowered. “Why, oh why, did I listen when you asked to come along?”
“’Cause I begged so prettily,” Alec shot back sweetly. “You and Dave can’t have all the fun.”
“Yeah, Aik,” David broke in, from where he was scratching his shoulders against the bark of his tree, “I mean, you and me made this a ritual when we were what? Thirteen? Now we’re college men. That’s long enough to hold out on anybody. We—”
“We take it seriously,” Aikin interrupted. “I don’t have to stop every five minutes to explain stuff to you!”
David shrugged. “It’ll make a man out of ’im.”
“Think of it as advancing my education,” Alec added helpfully. “I learn how to shoot Bambi. I also learn what the big deal is about shooting Bambi, and thereby learn more about my two—present half hour apparently excluded—best buddies.”
“You’ve been huntin’ before,” David reminded him. “Squirrels.”
“Killer instinct’s killer instinct.”
“‘Better A Hunter Than A Gatherer Be,’” Aikin quoted the bumper sticker on his pickup. “And as for the big deal about shootin’ Bambi—yucky phrase—you don’t seem to mind eatin’ Bambi—or his mom, or Thumper, or any of his other furry friends when Dave or me serve ’em up pan-fried! And you were Mr. Brave Guy at the wildlife supper last year!”
“Yeah,” David agreed with a smirk. “Even I won’t eat mountain oysters.”
“I didn’t know what they were, okay?”
“’Sides,” Aikin went on, “you’ve got a vested interest in this one. Whatever I get today’s the main course for my Thanksgiving bash.”
“Presuming you get anything.”
“I may not, if we don’t get on with it!”
“You said five minutes,” Alec noted. “We’ve still got two.”
“Anal retentive,” Aikin muttered. “And anyway, what is this about you wantin’ the blood? You never gave me a straight answer last night.”
David stiffened abruptly and shot Alec a warning glance. He knew exactly why, and the reason was essentially unbelievable. Alec knew he knew, but Aik was supposed to be totally in the dark—and hopefully would stay that way. Watch it! he mouthed, where Aikin couldn’t see. He drew his finger across his throat for emphasis.
Alec patted a thermos-shaped bulge in his vest’s game-pocket. “It’s for a project.” Which was not—quite—a lie.
“You’re a computer nerd! What do you need deer blood for?”
Alec ignored Aikin’s taunt—and David’s warning. “I’m also taking Geology 101, in which I have to do a project, which is to test a bunch of minerals with supposed arcane properties against those same properties under scientific conditions—which should be of interest to you, Mr. GameGod! Unfortunately, I can’t do like the Romans and drink wine from an amethyst cup to see if it keeps you from gettin’ drunk—but I can soak a bloodstone in blood, to see if that’s got any measurable effect.”
“So why does it have to be deer blood?” Aikin asked pointedly. “I can get all the beef blood you want from the animal science folks.”
“Yeah, well, my assumption is that stuff like that arose with Paleolithic hunters, and they didn’t have animal science folks—or domestic cattle. I figure the closer to original conditions—”
“You’re gonna sit naked in the woods with an atlatl?” Alec reached for his fly. “Want me to?”
Aikin grunted, then glared at David. “You got a hidden agenda too?” he asked abruptly.
The question caught David off guard, but he covered with a shrug. “Wouldn’t be hidden if I talked about it, would it?”
“What if I invoke the Vow?” Aikin countered so recklessly that David wondered if something was bugging him that he wasn’t letting on—besides Alec’s presence. Something minor that had caught fire all in a rush, and blazed up past control—which was Aikin’s style on those rare occasions when he lost it. Trouble was, the guy had guessed true.
“I would ask that you not do that,” David replied carefully. “If there was, it’d be personal—family personal.”
“One hint?”
David gnawed his lip. Dammit, why was Aik doing this? He, who a moment before had been urging silence, the most private of the entire MacTyrie Gang. More to the point, why did he have to invoke the oath he and the other Gangsters had made in ninth grade to always be straight with each other, to always answer sincere questions honestly, to hold back nothing that did not violate confidences conferred outside their circle?
Family personal…
Without warning, the memories ambushed him:
…himself, age thirteen (but viewed from without, as by an observer), sprawled on his bed in jeans and sockfeet, reading Dune for the first time, in that down time between afterschool chores and supper. The distant knock on the back door he’d almost tuned out; the low buzz of voices; then his mom’s, very clearly, gasping “Oh, God, no!” And then his uncle (great-uncle, technically) Dale Sullivan, appearing at his door white-faced, and his strange, calm voice saying, “I just got a call from Beirut…”
And then a fast-forward of others:
…a closed-casket funeral in a small mountain church; lots of food, lots of crying; a burial in a hillside cemetery; a pervasive numbness that gave way to a silent, private anger…
…himself, alone, at sunset, with the mountains at his back and the sanguine smear of the Sullivan Cove Road bisecting the valley before him, and Bloody Bald (too much blood, he thought, far too much) catching the rays of a dying sun (dying son, he remembered thinking) to the west. Him in his favorite jeans and sneakers, and a T-shirt proclaiming “Hard Rock Cafe: Tbilisi (Opening Soon),” with this very same Christmas gift Remington .30 in white-knuckled hands, firing twenty-one times into the crimsoning sky, as though to slay an unfair God where he sat on an undeserved throne…
“Seven years,” David whispered finally, blinking away a tear he hoped no one saw, hoping, likewise, that the reference was sufficiently obscure.
Alec—who clearly caught it—vented a sigh of relief. Aikin nodded. “I guess that’ll have to do,” he grumbled. “Now, if you guys are quite finished, I suggest we stand here, very quietly, and think about nothing but the backstrap you will not be eating if we don’t let Homo sapiens neanderthalensis take over for Home sapiens…IBMis!”
Alec fumbled for his rifle.
“And for God’s sakes,” Aikin added, “will you point that thing at the sky!”
(Killing God, the thought recycled. Slaying the author of bad news…)
Alec bared his teeth, but Aikin’s eyes went wide and wary as he raised a hand sharply, signing silence. Alec looked confused, but David nodded acknowledgment.
He’d caught it too: a rustle of leaves in a certain cadence, a rhythm of step and pause. Deer, almost certainly—large, close by, and approaching.
Stupid, too—or deaf—to have ignored the racket they’d been making. Normally one climbed a tree, sat a stand, and waited, silent as the grave, motionless as the dead. Normally the prey did not come to you.
(Normally, good people didn’t get blown to hamburger at twenty-one.)
Having noticed it first, Aikin by tradition had first shot. David, therefore, kept his place, though he likewise shouldered his rifle and drew a tentative bead, peering through the scope.
Alec gawked.
Aikin was a man transformed. David could almost see the veneer of civilization sloughing off his sturdy shoulders as his buddy eased around in place, moving as if in slow motion; so carefully fabric did not rasp against itself as he leaned against an oak, steadied his Winchester .30.06 against a limb, and with calm deliberation set his eye to his scope, steel barrel gleaming damply, poised…ready…waiting. His ears, while small, stuck out slightly, and David could imagine one twitching, as though to catch each loudening rustle.
The softest of clicks, then, as Aikin released the safety with his thumb…
More rustling, closer yet—and a gust of oddly warm wind thinned the fog upslope to gauze, as if a gate had opened and set the silent air to dancing. David caught a blur of movement: a graying of the white; a flash of ivory above, that was surely sunlight on antler tines raised above the mist. He held his breath.
The beast was no more than fifty yards away now—impossibly close, given the ruckus they’d been raising. Any second the buck—for clearly it was, and a fine one—would prance into that patch of brightness that had awakened between those two hickories, and Aik would have a clear shot: uphill and with no brush between.
Soon…
Very soon…
A finger eased to the rifle’s trigger, though David knew beyond doubt that Aik would never shoot at sound alone, never fire at an uncertain target. He looked back at the shadow in the fog. His eyes…
“Shit!” Aikin spat and dropped his rifle.
“Oh shit!” David gulped in turn—as a too-familiar tingle set fire to his eyes, filling them with tears as he lowered his own weapon—
—And they al
l saw a cervine shape bound into the blaze of light between the hickories and pause there at gaze, coat white as winter snow, dark eyes huge and frightened. And far too intelligent, when the buck stared at them, aloof and accusingly—and with one vast surge of muscle, bounded across the ridge and out of sight.
The wind whipped up at that; the warm air shifted. The burning in David’s eyes ceased as suddenly as it had come, but a different fire had awakened in those Aikin turned upon him, as he slumped against his tree. “Goddamn, Sullivan; what the fuck was that?”
“What…do you think it was?” David panted, as he caught his breath and backed away—into Alec.
“Wow, did you see that guy?” Alec gasped.
“I’m…not sure what I saw,” Aikin managed shakily. “It was white, of course, which is rare as hell by itself; but I thought for a minute that— Oh, never mind.”
“What?” David persisted, as a cold clot of sick dread turned to ice in his gut.
“Its rack… You notice anything about its rack?”
“Like what?”
“That it didn’t curve out and around like a whitetail’s is supposed to. That it swept back like a…like a friggin’ elk!”
“Elk?” from Alec.
David ignored him. “We don’t have elk ’round here.”
“Of course we don’t!” Aikin cried. “But if you hadn’t spooked it ’fore I could figure out what was goin’ on—!”
“It also had stripes!” Alec blundered on obliviously. “Stripes—like a zebra. Faint, but you could see ’em—or I could: streams of silver against the white. Like something out of—”
“No it didn’t!” David broke in desperately, kicking Alec in the shin.
Aikin eyed him narrowly. “Yes it did. Only I’d say they were more like what you get on a bongo antelope.”
“Maybe,” Alec mumbled, too late. “I dunno.”
“Or maybe,” Aikin whispered, “on something out of…Faerie?”
Chapter II: Worlds, Tracks, and Blood
