by Tom Deitz
It had rained like hell Monday and Tuesday, and sprinkled again briefly Friday afternoon. There was, therefore, plenty of damp earth around—certainly enough to show the tracks of a four-footed beast that had obviously jumped off the porch and headed south toward the river. A beast with the hind paws of a fox and the forepaws of an eagle. Aikin’s prints ran beside them and sometimes on top.
David paced them.
Aikin might have been called Mighty Hunter, but David was no slouch himself. And one of the many wood skills David-the-Elder had taught him was how to follow a trail. And if that trail was made by a guy in a hurry and a mythical beast with distinctive footsies, why, that was even easier. Besides, he quickly realized, the route was absolutely dead straight. He lost it briefly, when he was forced to skirt a patch of poison ivy, but found it again with no trouble: both sets of tracks (newly muddied) heading onto the dam—which had but one exit. And sure enough, more prints showed on the other side, angling directly into the woods.
A moment later, David found the Track.
He should’ve known!
Tracks went everywhere, though they didn’t coincide with this World all that often. But it had never occurred to him that one might run near Athens. On the other hand, an enfield had obviously entered the Lands of Men somehow; and if he’d bothered to listen to his own arguments a few days back, he’d have known they weren’t coming through the World Walls. Plus, those two Faery women he’d seen at the ’Watt last night had to have come from somewhere, and now, he thought, he knew where.
A Straight Track four miles from Athens. And more to the point, less than half a mile from the cabin of the one person in the whole town who would most appreciate that fact—and just possibly be reckless enough or frustrated enough to get on it.
Especially if it was activated.
He examined the ground thereabouts. Sure enough, the enfield’s prints showed clear in a sandy patch near the obligatory veil of briars. Aik’s were there too: facing the Track. Or more accurately, were there, and then weren’t; as though he’d simply disappeared. A check twenty feet either way along that strip of barren ground showed no sign anyone had stepped off again.
He stared one last time at the enfield’s spoor, and straightened, willing the Sight to come, as it sometimes would. But all he got was an intensification of that itchy tingle the presence of magic always evoked.
So what now? Aik had obviously followed an enfield onto the Tracks, probably the previous midnight, if David knew his buddy. He had no means of accessing them any more than Aik had—without the enfield.
But there was a way he could locate the guy pronto.
Right. He’d just call up old hung-over Mister Dream and get him to drag his not-so-fuzzy butt over here with the ulunsuti. They’d do a scrying—close to the Tracks would be best—and that’d determine their next course of action. He already had an idea what that would have to be, but didn’t want to think about it—mostly because there was bound to be a row.
But if Aik had got on the Tracks at midnight, and it was pushing noon now…well, that was an awfully long time for simple adventuring. And while David trusted his friend’s resourcefulness—and his theoretical knowledge of things arcane as well—there was just too much risk when one stayed too long in Faerie.
And the longer Aikin stayed, the worse that risk would be.
All at once he was running.
*
The trouble with magic, David grumbled five minutes later, was that you couldn’t talk about it to just anyone. Or in front of just anyone. That was why he’d resisted pounding on cabin doors back at Whitehall, and instead was calling from a pay phone in a shed by the gate. Happily, no one was about to inquire what a suspiciously long-haired nonmajor was doing hanging around the Forestry School’s Holy of Holies. And certainly not one so wired he was dancing from foot to foot.
He was getting the flip side of his own telephone, too: having to suffer through all six rings. Which probably meant that Alec was still zoned—and might mean that he was going to sleep through the whole thing, message included. In which case he’d have to call Liz and get her to roust his roomie—which he didn’t want to do, because then he’d have to explain everything all over again, which would take time he might not have. Plus, Liz would certainly want to be present for anything that happened, and while he knew logically that she could take care of herself in arcane situations, he’d become protective lately, and wanted to spare her as much of that as he could.
Only it didn’t matter anyway, because she was the one who picked up between ring number five and six. He could tell by the way her voice quivered when she answered that something wasn’t right.
“Liz, it’s me. What the hell’re you doin’ over there?”
“Alec,” she shot back breathlessly. “He’s…gone.”
“Gone?”
“He left you a note saying he’d gone onto the Tracks, and he’s not here.”
David slumped against the wall; his empty stomach turned a long slow cartwheel. “Oh Christ, no!” Then: “You’re sure? He was sound asleep when I left less than an hour ago.”
“Well, he’s not in the house, the yard, or up and down the road; I’ve looked. I was writing you a note in case we missed each other, and then I was gonna come looking for you. What’s up over there?”
“Aikin’s gone too!”
A pause, then, “You’re kidding!”
“’Fraid not. He evidently caught up with that enfield again and followed it to a Track I just found and—”
“Wandered right on out of the World,” Liz sighed. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Right—so I was callin’ to get Alec to bring the ulunsuti, so we could use it to locate him. I couldn’t think of anything else—”
“It probably is the only thing…but there’s a problem with that.”
“What? You know where he hides it, so you can bring it, and we can use it to look for both of ’em. And—”
“It’s not that simple, David; if you’ll just listen!”
“What?”
“It’s gone! The ulunsuti’s gone! I came over with some hair of the dog for you bad boys, and let myself in, figuring I’d surprise you—brunch in bed, and that kind of thing. But when I got in, there was smoke coming from the bathroom, so I checked, and there was a little fire dying out in the tub—and stuff around it to indicate Alec had made a World gate. So I kinda panicked—’specially since you were gone too. But then I found your note—it had fallen off the door; I don’t think Alec had seen it—and the one Alec had left as well.”
“Why didn’t you think he’d seen mine?”
“’Cause I don’t think he’d gate off somewhere while something was going on with one of his friends.”
“I dunno, Liz, you saw him last night. He was pretty fried over the Eva thing. Maybe he just woke up and couldn’t stand wondering about her any longer. You know how that’s been eatin’ him. I think seein’ those Faery women last night put him over the top.”
“I didn’t see ’em.”
“Which is not our problem.”
Another pause. “Still want me to come over?”
“I guess you better. But read me Alec’s note first, okay?”
“Sure. He did it on the computer,” she added. The rattle of paper ensued, then:
11:17 AM
Dave,
Thanks for looking out for me last night. I hope you’re not too pissed, ’cause you’re probably gonna be a lot more pissed when you find out what I’ve done now. If I’m lucky, I’ll have finished my little quest and be back before you can do anything about it, anyway—which I guess renders this note redundant, unless something’s gone wrong. Oh well! I’m not gonna tell you more ’cause I know you well enough to know you’d find some way to come after me, and this is my battle. You’ve probably figured out by now that I’ve taken the ulunsuti and gone “tracking”—and that’s as much as you need to know. If you’re reading this, I’ve succeeded, at least as far a
s getting where I wanted. If I’m telling you this, I’ve succeeded all the way. And if someone else is telling you this, God knows what’s happened, but you probably ought to plan a wake. But either way, I figured we were both better off if I wasn’t sitting around beating my meat. I didn’t tell you about this, ’cause I knew you’d either try to talk me out of it, or try to come along, and it’s not your battle; it really isn’t.
So take care, bro, and…pax.
(P.S. You must have my hangover, ’cause my head’s clear as a bell.)
(P.P.S. Thanks for making coffee.)
Alec
“Well,” David groaned, pounding the clapboard wall beside him. “That’s just great.”
“Yeah,” Liz sighed. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t know,” David replied flatly. “I just don’t know. I can’t think straight right now.”
“Are you okay?”
“More or less. Why?”
“Just wondered. I don’t need to lose you too.”
“Thanks.”
“Know what I think we should do?”
“I’m…open to suggestions.”
“Okay, then. We need to get both our friends back, right? And they’ve both done things that were really stupid. But Alec at least sort of knows what he’s up against, and he’s got magical whatsits to protect him, if he bothers to use ’em. Aikin doesn’t, and he’s been gone longer. He’s on his own and probably in over his head, since he’s not back yet. So we deal with Aikin first, and then look for Alec. Besides, Alec might be back any minute.”
“So might Aikin.”
“Yeah,” Liz said, “but we can’t be certain, can we? So hang tight, I’m on my way.”
Chapter XI: Off Track
(Near a Straight Track—no time—dusk)
Okay, Daniels, get your act together, Aikin told himself. You wanted this; now deal with it! You’re an Eagle Scout! You did Outward Bound…
Only…Outward Bound didn’t exactly prepare you for being dumped into another World. And there was no merit badge, last time he checked, for Straight Track Manipulation or Faery Realm Survival.
If he even was in Faerie. That was an interesting question, too: Was this murky, misty country part of Tir-Nan-Og at all—or one of the pocket universes that lay beside the Tracks—or some other place entirely? Another locale on good old terra firma, maybe? In which case he was still in deep shit, but one escapable by phones and credit cards—assuming, of course, this was also his own time, which, given the fact that it’d been a shade past midnight when he’d left Whitehall and it was now something resembling twilight, was definitely not a given.
No! He wouldn’t think about that—dared not! First things first—and first had to be figuring out what sort of land he’d blundered into. And with that, he wiped rain (he hoped it was only rain now; no way he wanted to meet the Lords of Faerie crying) off his cheek, cleaned his glasses, and took stock of his surroundings.
Well…the drizzly, twilight landscape looked a very great deal like Scotland, and he knew how Scotland looked, because he’d spent part of one summer there with his mom, who was a globe-trotting archaeologist. Actually, it looked like the highlands of Scotland; had the same desolate rolling hills with hints of higher ones beyond; the same scruffy, low-grown vegetation—gorse and heather and who knew what. There was also the same pervasive dampness, as if rain lay always in wait, even when it wasn’t actually falling, or fog lurked just beyond, eager to assert itself and fill up the hollows with weirdness. The foliage around his ankles was wet even now, and from more than the fading drizzle; the moss below it felt squishy. To his right, a runnel of water tinkled between banks that were even parts rocks and heather.
And there was the looming sky: wild and storm-tossed like something from a Romantic painting, showing but the faintest tinge of sunset fire along the backs of clouds that roiled and tore and shifted like a movie on fast-forward. It was a sky at once awesome and grim: dark and brooding, with flashes of silver among the layers that spoke of unseen lightning. And yet, so quickly did those cumuli roll and tumble that an instant later the drizzle vanished and stars winked through rents to his right, taunting him with a brightness borne of clean air far from the Lands of Men. It was frustrating, too, for those distant suns were revealed too patchily to resolve into any patterns that might possibly provide some sense of location.
But then a vast sheet of cloud straight overhead tore asunder, as though it had read his wish and acted on command, and he saw a great many stars indeed. His astronomy merit badge was no help at all, though, because every one was strange. Certainly, the sky he knew never held five sparklies in a straight line, each as bright as Sirius and equally spaced. No way they could be planets, either, because not a week gone by he’d pointed out Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars to Cammie—and they couldn’t possibly have shifted to so precise an alignment in the interim—nor added two accomplices.
“I’m in another World,” he told the wind—which was picking up even as the moor—heath—desolation—whatever it was—grew darker yet. “I’m in a fucking other universe!”
Alone—so far as he knew, since the enfield had gone AWOL—and with no agenda in place to ensure survival. Oh, he had food in his backpack, a change of clothes, matches, and a couple of plastic garbage bags that would help when it came to shelter. But he’d never given much thought to what he’d do if he actually got to Faerie. His assumption had always been that he’d get the lay of the land, sightsee a bit, then make a beeline to Lugh’s palace and rely on name-dropping—David, Alec, or Liz (or Fionchadd or Nuada, if he was brave)—to get him by. And of course the Faery folk would be so amazed at his arrival and so bound by the laws of hospitality, they’d show him a good time and send him on his way, and he’d be satisfied.
He had not counted on being alone on a cold, wet, windy moor with true night quickly drawing nigh.
Fortunately, he felt just fine—his earlier fatigue having vanished—so he supposed first priority ought to be getting a bearing on his location. And since he was presently standing at the foot of a long steep ridge which lay to what, in his own World, would have been the north (assuming directions hadn’t twisted around along with time when he abandoned the Track), the reasonable solution was to climb it, so as to command a wider range of landscape.
That decided, he resettled his pack, took a deep breath (the air tasted wonderful here, though it smelled faintly of decay) and set off up the hill, wading through calf-high heather. The only sounds were the hiss of his breathing, the rasp of foliage against his cammos, the faint slop/suck/squish of the saturated moss, and the pervasive moan of the wind.
Abruptly he longed for music. David had often accused him of requiring a sound track for his life, wondering why someone who craved solitude as much as he did needed to have U2 or Enya or Tori Amos along for the ride. But now he really did need them—or somebody—and found himself wondering what would be most appropriate for this climb. Something dark, of course, but with drive; and definitely with a Celtic twinge, since this place had a strong air of the Isles. The theme to Far and Away, perhaps? Only that was a little too light to complement the wild sky. And then he had it: from The Last of the Mohicans—the part that orchestrated the battle on the mountainside. That scene had been filmed near his old home turf—over in North Carolina (doubling for the too-commercialized Catskills)—and the rolling, relentless grind of what was either fiddle or hurdy-gurdy was perfect. He tried to imagine it, as he trudged along: the repetitive melody slowly swelling in volume and acquiring dark undertones of bass that seemed to evoke the infrasound of the very earth itself, both rising to merge in a burst of brass.
He tried to whistle it, but his thread of tune sounded frail and thin in the rising wind. Scowling, he contented himself with regarding the height above, and soldiered grimly on, noting that his legs were getting sore, and his fatigues were soaked to the knees. It was colder, too: as though summer and winter battled in the air. In fact, there were actual hot and cold
spots, like ones found in bodies of water, only these were all around him.
And as he continued on, more land came into view, and he noted that many of the surrounding summits were studded with standing stones: singly, or in pairs, groups, or circles. They looked familiar, too—conceptually—and he recalled how, on a trip to Ireland, he’d scrambled atop the lone menhir that crowned a hill in Connemara National Park and quartered the compass with his gaze without seeing one obvious token of modern man.
And then he reached the ridgeline—and felt at once exalted and dismayed.
It was a hell of a view, that was for sure: a country as wild and full of latent magic as any he could imagine, for all that every element it contained was sufficiently mundane to exist in his own World.
But it went on forever! Saving the megaliths, there was no sign of man at all! No lights—not so much as a campfire. Nothing!
So what did he do now? Good sense said go back down the ridge, locate the Straight Track, and see if he could contrive some way to activate it. Shoot, if he was lucky, the enfield would return; and if he was very lucky, the beast might even sense his need and trigger the Track itself.
But before he did any of that, he’d check out the view one last time, to imprint it indelibly on the romantic part of his soul. So it was, then, that he began a slow circuit of the ridgetop, surveying every quadrant in turn. And so it was, too, that a flash lightning to the possible-east revealed something he’d missed before, that now stuck out in stark relief as sheeted brightness lit the clouds there.
It was a tower—or the ruins of one. Nothing big, and certainly not as imposing or other-looking as Lugh’s place in Tir-Nan-Og. But it did offer two tokens of hope: human-type life had lived here once, and shelter was available—which he would need if the storm that had exposed the tower moved closer. Already he’d felt new darts of rain against his cheeks—and he had no desire to be caught outside by a downpour on these moors.
