by Tom Deitz
And speaking of staying power, Whitehall had ended but the Cranberries hadn’t.
Aikin paused for the stop sign where his road teed into another. The coast clear, he goosed the gas again and roared across the highway into what looked like a private driveway flanking a tree-studded lawn. The brick Victorian mansion on the right had been a gift, with the adjoining woods, to the Forestry School. He saluted it by killing his lights, thinking (as he always did) how lucky the facility manager who lived there was, and how evocative those turrets and towers were this time of year, especially when cut out against such wild skies as had prevailed earlier in the week. Now it loomed above half-bare trees, guardian to what was in some ways a land as remote to the rank and file as Faerie was to him.
A metal-pipe gate blocked further progress, and he halted by a check-post while he fumbled above the visor for his key-card. That located, he inserted it, heard the mechanism click, and watched as multihundred pounds of steel slowly retracted along a fence.
He was through in a flash and into the woods—pines, mostly, the foliage broken here and there by lab buildings, side roads, and a sign pointing toward the deer pens. Once he jolted over railroad tracks. And then he was home.
Not bothering to lock the pickup, he jogged to the darkened cabin and zipped inside. Twin alcoves faced each other across a common room-kitchen that ran straight across to the deck. He took the left, then turned sharp right into the rearmost of the two bedrooms that flanked that side’s bath.
Elmer Fudd’s helmet, he flung on the unmade bed, along with the plywood sword. The cardboard armor he unseamed from nave to chaps with one well-placed yank, but the borrowed chain mail beneath (which had been pretty pointless, given how little of it had been visible) took longer, forcing him to bend double and shake to shuck out of it—and at that it claimed his shirt and a selection of hair. The fringed moccasins puddled on the floor, but he hesitated at his sweat-pants, since they were decent warm-weather nightwear, finally exchanging them for his usual cammos, a black sweatshirt, and a multipocketed vest. He also chose duck shoes over Reeboks and added a hat—a nondescript floppy thing Dave kept threatening to burn. Then, shouldering the knapsack he’d packed before leaving for the ’Watt, he slipped back outside, locked the door, and went in search of magic.
The enfield was asleep where he’d left it: curled atop a pile of towels in the legless remains of a molded fiberglass chair. The cardboard box filled with kitty litter he’d found on one of the shelves did not seem to have been used, but neither were there suspicious odors, merely the pervasive scent of cinnamon. The food—half a pound of hamburger and a can of tuna—had all been eaten, however, and the water bowl was down. The creature had not moved, though, and for a moment he feared it was dead.
“Hey, Ms. Field,” he called softly. “Wake up!”
It stirred groggily, and Aikin realized two things. First, it probably wasn’t nocturnal, or it would’ve been prowling around antsily by now. And second, though most even vaguely wild animals slept with hair triggers and woke like a shot, this one seemed as slow to get going as a frat boy on Sunday morning.
“Hey, girl, c’mon,” he urged again, crouching and slapping his thighs encouragingly.
The enfield rose stiffly, yawned hugely, and sauntered out of the chair. Its talons rasped on the rough concrete floor, its rear claws clicked counterpoint.
But instead of strolling into Aikin’s welcoming grasp, it twisted past him and pranced directly to the door, as though it read his intentions perfectly and was dispensing with unnecessary formalities. “Bitch!” he grunted good-naturedly, and followed.
One thing about enfields, he discovered a moment later—or about this one, anyway—was that they sure could make a beeline when they wanted to. Though this gal had seemed more than willing to choose the crooked road when he’d followed her around yesterday, tonight she forsook trails, paths—everything—in favor of a straight shot to the near side of the dam. That this burst of single-mindedness required him to slide on his butt down a kudzu-covered bank, leap a water-filled ditch at the bottom, slog through a patch of poison ivy too large to circumnavigate, and finally jump ten feet to the old mill road, did not seem to concern her. It was as though the beast were saying, “All right, kid, let’s see how much you really want this thing.”
Trouble was, Aikin had not yet determined for certain what this thing was.
But then why so much effort to do this at midnight? And it wouldn’t matter anyway, if he lost sight of the blessed beast.
It was already halfway across the dam, and he’d barely worked his way through the ruined mill. And though he’d been there at night countless times before, something about this night—the way the moon played games with colors and shadows, washing out red, giving everything a cast or edge of blue, while the rising autumn breeze first dulled, then amplified the cries of insects and the rolling rush of water—cast a pall of strangeness across the mundane world, rendering it as glamorous as any dream of Faerie.
And in that context, the creature calmly strolling across a diminishing, dead-straight line of white-gold concrete above a glittering blackness that might be river or the star-studded emptiness of an inverted sky, seemed completely unremarkable.
The moon had transfigured the night; the enfield, in a sense, had restored normalcy.
And Aikin had gained the dam.
As soon as his feet touched that yard-wide surface, his guide was off again. He followed at a dangerous trot. The dam was like one of those bridges in the myths, he thought: like the sword edge one must run along to win the princess, or the spear points Cuchulain had dashed across to impress his troops.
Faster, and the world whipped by: black and gold, indigo and violet; the river loud below his feet; the wind whistling past his ears. And, louder, the click of dry twigs on the opposite shore.
He had almost caught up with the beast now, and leapt from the end of the dam scant seconds behind it—to see it scamper straight into the laurel hell halfway up the bank. He followed doggedly, navigating by the steady rhythm of mismatched feet upon the ground.
And then he pushed through a screen of waxy leaves and found himself beside the blasted oak and bifurcated maple—beyond which the enfield sat patiently beside what even the gloom revealed to be a stretch of ground without growth. At which point it occurred to him again that perhaps he should distrust all of this. That it was unwise to follow a mythical beast onto a magical road at a dubious time of the year. That some agency beyond his own unruly emotions might be influencing the animal: tempting him with his heart’s desire in order to claim him utterly.
Only that didn’t make sense. God knew he’d puzzled at that enough over the last day or so to last him a lifetime.
No, as best he could figure, the critter had emerged here the day he’d found the Track, sensed his obsession with Faerie and probably his friendship with Alec and Dave as well, along with his intention of visiting them—and followed him (preceded him, actually) to their place, possibly from simple curiosity.
And then, once it had found them, it had picked up all kinds of mixed intentions toward it, become alarmed—and fled. Only it had also sensed his interest, maybe—which was basically positive—and hung around where he was. And once it knew what he wanted, why…the rest made perfect sense.
Besides, he hadn’t known about this place until the ulunsuti had revealed it, and that had surely been in response to his frustration at the failure of Dave and Alec’s scrying. And since the jewel was from the Cherokee Overworld, not Faerie at all, what possible connection could there be between a suspiciously helpful enfield and a hunk of quasi crystal from the head of a serpent two Worlds away?
None that made any sense to him!
Besides, he’d only go a little way, a counted number of strides, and then backtrack. And if the critter returned with him, fine, and if not…well, it had to go home sometime, but at least he’d have joined the select brotherhood of those who had walked the roads between the Worlds
.
All of which assumed the enfield activated the damned thing—which, obsessed with a sudden fit of grooming as it was, it seemed disinclined to do.
“Don’t want your mom to see you scruffy, huh?” he told it.
It paused in mid talon lick and blinked at him. A pause for a yawn, and it rose, carefully twisted through the briars, and leapt onto the Track.
Aikin gasped. The effect had been impressive enough the previous time he’d seen it—and that by light of day, which tended to wash out other forms of illumination.
Now, however, the Track glowed like a ten-yard strip of sand, each grain of which was a perfect sphere of golden neon. Not quite solid, yet certainly less tenuous than air, that surface was; and the haze of light seemed at once to lie on it, like yellow fog eight inches deep, and within it, like rocks that displayed natural fluorescence. The enfield was practically up to its chest in the stuff—and walking westward. To the east, the glow was already fading, even as more brightness awoke in the creature’s path.
Get on now or lose ’em both! he told himself. And with that, he took a deep breath and stepped into the light.
The shock was stronger than previously: that invigorating tingle that pooled around his feet like water through leaky boots. Perhaps that strengthening was a function of the time, he thought, or of the date. Dave said things of Power tended to grow stronger as they approached certain auspicious occasions—like “between” times or cross-quarter days such as Halloween: those days that lay midway between the solstices and the equinoxes. Well, it was Halloween now, given that it was just a trace past midnight. But the true traditional Samhain when all the World Walls were supposed to open wide was still twenty-four hours off.
Meantime, he had a critter to keep up with.
It had moved on again, and was barely visible as a dark blot against the yellow haze. Another deep breath, and he strode toward it, careful to count his paces.
“One, two, three, four, five…”
On three things began to change. The glow of the Track grew…shallower, yet at the same time spread to either side, and commenced to curve upward maybe two yards out, as though defining the bottom arc of an enormous tube or tunnel.
The forest was still beside him, though: the familiar Georgia woods—only they were becoming less familiar with each step, the trees rapidly regaining their leaves and growing subtly larger and more impressive, while undergrowth (mostly ferns) waxed lusher and wilder and more luxurious. He suddenly wished that he could see the stars, but all he could make out when he gazed skyward was a filigree of branches far above, that gave the impression of the vaults of some vast cosmic cathedral with a nave as long as the way between the Worlds.
“…nineteen, twenty, twenty-one…” he counted. Twenty-one: seven times three: luck multiplied by itself and added to itself to create another lucky number. (What I get for reading that Atlantis book.) Twenty-one strides; maybe this was a good place to stop.
The enfield obviously had other plans; indeed, was almost out of sight.
Aikin hesitated, then noted how very thick and alive the whorling briars waist-high around him looked, and was off again.
“…forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine…”
Forty-nine: seven times seven: another lucky number, especially as four plus nine was thirteen, which reduced to four, which was another significant numeral.
He had almost caught up with his guide now—and suddenly felt a need to rest. Perhaps that was the Track playing games with him: making him feel good, when in fact it was sustaining him with his own stolen vitality—which had just run out. Whereupon a troubling thought struck him. The Tracks bent time and warped space, he’d been told. So, was he dealing with perceived time or actual time here? Was his sudden fatigue due to his having walked for hours, when it seemed but forty-nine paces? Would—troubling thought for sure—he step off the Track at the end of this experiment to discover that what he had experienced as minutes had in fact been days—weeks—years, even—in the world beyond the Tracks, and that he had not only missed the deadline for his plant collection, but finals, his graduation, and for all he knew, the Second Coming as well. A sudden chill raced across his body. Maybe this was a good time to retreat. He’d already pressed his luck twice, once by assaying the Track at all, again by daring it this far. Perhaps he should do like the folks in Flatliners and stretch the limits (of clinical death in their case, of strides along a magical road in his) a few degrees at a time. Yeah, best he corral the critter and head for home.
Sighing, he scanned the way ahead—but caught no sign of the beast, no telltale tufted ears and black-tipped tail.
Great!
But did he really have anything to fear? Shoot, he’d simply turn around right here, count forty-nine steps—and hope that put him even with a blasted oak, instead of that lad there, that looked far too much like a silver-barked sequoia.
He had just resettled his backpack (Why had he brought so much stuff, he wondered. “Be prepared,” his Eagle Scout aspect replied) when he caught what could only be low-pitched voices.
He stared around wildly, but saw only the glow of the Track, and the looming trunks of trees to either side, their roots screened by the waist-high loops of briars that seemed to pulse rhythmically, as though their swirls and spirals carried not sap but blood. Their thorns were forbidding too: silver as daggers and as flat, as long as his hand, with tips that glittered like needles and channels in their broader sides like some swords had, to let the blood run down.
Nowhere to go, then, but back along the Track, back to the safety of the real world.
Or perhaps he should stand his ground. He’d wanted Faerie, after all, and though wandering around after magical critters on Straight Tracks was certainly exciting enough by most folks’ standards, they were not, technically, Tir-Nan-Og. And if he’d lost a bit of nerve about going all the way to the actual Faery kingdom…well, at least some of its inhabitants seemed on their way to meet him! Or—he shuddered—maybe inhabitants of somewhere else. Perhaps someplace where sturdy Generation X-ers were considered delicacies.
So what should he do?
Stay where you are until you see who it is, he decided. And if they look hostile, head for the hills and hope you don’t lose count while running.
And then it made no difference anyway, because They-of-the-Voices were in sight.
The first thing Aikin saw was spears: long slender poles bobbing along above the Track haze, which seemed to be waist deep there. He still could not make out individual words, but somehow he did get a sense of the emotions that rode behind them: distress, mostly; sadness, despair; and a strong thread of anger, as though they who trod the Track were not pleased to be doing so.
And then he realized that what he had taken for spears were not weapons at all, but simply yard-long poles from which globes of yellow-white light floated like miniature suns, linked to the staves by silver chains. Banners flew from some, but they were ragged, their colors washed-out and faded.
At which point something occurred to Aikin, which should’ve occurred far earlier, had he not been so caught up in wonder.
The tips of those staves were roughly level with the top of his head (as best he could tell—they were still thirty or forty yards off). Which meant that whoever carried them couldn’t be much taller than his waist.
Which proved to be the case, when, an instant later, the haze thinned about the vanguard of that company, to reveal a very strange sight indeed.
Dave had told him about the Sidhe: the Tuatha de Danaan—the Seelie Court: the old gods of Ireland; how they were man-sized or a tad taller, slender, and far, far more beautiful; and how every garment and jewel and bit of armor they wore was a thing of wonder. But there were lesser denizens of Faerie as well, beings of less-refined nature and lofty stature. The lesser fey, Dave called them, adding that he’d never met one, only glimpsed them now and then; and that the greater Sidhe seemed to hold them in low regard, rather as men considered other prima
tes.
Lesser fey…
Well, none of that score-odd company would have risen above the bottom of his rib cage, and most were shorter. Men and women both, they were, but not beautiful as the Sidhe were said to be. Rather, these beings ranged from plain to downright ugly, that judgment derived mostly from their rough, wrinkled skin and a lack of regularity among their features: close-set eyes or receding chins or crooked noses or too-long upper lips. There was no outright grotesquery, merely a pervasive homeliness, which impression was borne out by their clothes: archaic in cut, ranging from sleeveless belted tunics made from squares of cloth pieced together, through doublets and hose and long gowns, to kilts, plaids, and full-sleeved white shirts—all rendered in heavy, loose-woven fabrics dyed in faded colors. Not a few of those garments were torn and mended, and one or two of that number went unshod.
They were also encumbered, mostly with carpetbags or larger cases, and one pair of women sat the seat of a small wagon pulled by goat-sized horses with leopard-spotted coats. Indeed, the beasts looked far happier, cleaner, and better kept and fed than their more human compatriots.
Which was not difficult, for the company looked very unhappy indeed. Not a squinty eye glittered with joy, not a downcast mouth curved with even a tentative smile.
They look like refugees, Aikin realized, as he stood his ground, dumbfounded. They look like they’ve just fled home with whatever they could carry.
The leader—a sturdy man in a gray-green checked tunic worn above stone-colored leggings and bare feet—froze in place just then, and stared at Aikin quizzically: not precisely in shock, but perhaps caught off guard. He stiffened abruptly, and his fist curled on the hilt of a dagger the length of Aikin’s hand. Eyes black as a mouse’s narrowed in a seamed face above a blunt nose. He ran a hand through shoulder-length hair the color of shadows in an old farmhouse.
