by Ginn Hale
Another time, when Lucky had failed to dowse fresh water for a new well, she’d threatened to turn him over to the local theurgist herself, commenting, “Not that a yellow heathen like you would be any use to Bernard Swaim. I reckon he’d just crack open your skull, stick in a knife and spread your brains on his toast like butter.”
That image returned to Lucky in nightmares even after both his adoptive parents—Ma and Pa Spivey—had gone six feet under. That came of having too much imagination. That’s what Effie always said.
Lucky scowled, thinking of his youngest sister. He’d done all he could to save Effie, he told himself, but he couldn’t quite believe it.
He hated the way his thoughts returned to the past more and more. It was a world of regret and sorrow that he wanted to leave behind, and yet this year that he’d lived all alone, memories had become his only companions. Some days he felt as if ghosts walked beside him through the marshes.
A shape at the edge of his vision caught his attention. The shadows near the base of a big oak looked like a man hunching in wait. There was something excitingly familiar about the angular profile. Lucky squinted into the gloom. The wind shifted, rustling through low growing branches. The shape broke apart into a tangle of leaves, and Lucky laughed quietly at his own credulity.
Three years on and here he was, still looking for Dalfon Elias’s profile in dark shadows. And the funny thing about that was that he wasn’t even certain he actually remembered what Dalfon looked like so much as he remembered the feeling of him—his rough chapped lips, the heat of his naked flesh, and the musky taste of him. He’d been taller than any man Lucky had ever laid eyes on, rawboned and inclined to smile real sly, like a fairy-tale fox. Lucky supposed his memories of Dalfon were colored by his intense recollection of not knowing what to do in the dusty alley behind the saloon and then sinking to his knees, flushed with urgent desire and ninety-proof courage.
Maybe Dalfon had really been common as dirt. Just a gunslinger out to get all he could from other men. He’d only come to Edgewater to gun down Jo “Killer” Curtis. Once he’d collected the bounty, he’d lit out across the Inland Sea for his home in West America without so much as a goodbye. Never mind all those other promises he whispered to Lucky in the brief languid minutes after they’d fucked. No one had seen hide nor hair of Dalfon in three years and no one expected to either. Gunslingers didn’t live long—not even sly, handsome liars like Dalfon.
No point in thinking on him for one more moment.
Lucky picked his way around a tangle of prickly holly and stopped.
Under the dogwood, another silhouette appeared. This time Lucky could almost swear he made out the silvery shape of a pistol in the man’s hand. From behind came the deafening crack of a rifle. Lucky spun to see three mounted men clear a small rise. One held a lantern that illuminated all three of their faces.
The Swaim brothers: butter-blond, rich as cream and cruel as cats. They rode real, grain-fed horses, not the headless clockwork automatons that sharecroppers rented once a year to pull their plows.
“What in the hell do you think you’re shooting at, Harry?” came Frank Swaim’s acerbic voice. Obviously the man with the rifle up to his shoulder was flashy, young Harry Swaim. And the brother gripping the lightning-lantern looked like the eldest, Bernard—the judge and theurgist.
“I heard something in the bushes.” Harry pulled at his horse’s reins, wheeling the animal back towards his brothers. “If you think you could make a better shot in this gloom, go ahead!”
“I don’t see the point of shooting at all,” Frank replied. “If he’s not dead already, he will be in an hour’s time. I hit him straight on.”
“Shut up.” Bernard lifted his lantern and cranked the key at the base. The lightning captured within the lantern flared.
Lucky lunged into the cover of the dogwood as shafts of blinding light swept through the woods. A pheasant took flight. Harry fired again. The shot boomed like thunder. The pheasant plummeted to the leaf-strewn ground in pieces.
Lucky stared at the bloody hunk of wing lying only feet from him; his ears rang. Those weren’t common hunting cartridges in Harry’s rifle. More likely contraband spell-ammunition that rangers were rumored to use when they came up against big dinosaurs in the Rocky Mountains.
“Damn it, Harry! You’re going to deafen me,” Frank shouted.
“That’s what you get for letting him overpower you and escape,” Harry bellowed.
The lightning-lantern dimmed to a pale glow.
“I’m telling you, there is no point in finding him when I’ve already cast a crushing curse,” Frank snapped. “He was dead the moment it hit him.”
“He’s covered a lot of ground for a corpse!” Harry yelled back.
“Both of you shut up.” Bernard nudged his horse ahead a few steps. He glowered at the holly bramble where Lucky had crouched moments earlier. As he lifted his lamp, its glow fell across the bodies of two big catfish.
They must have fallen from Lucky’s basket when he bolted. No way on earth anyone was going to think they got there on their own. Bernard drew his pistol and again nudged his horse towards Lucky. For an instant Lucky considered calling out, assuring the Swaims he wasn’t the man they were hunting. But the Swaims weren’t the sort of men who’d let him toddle on home with the knowledge they were using contraband ammunition and curses to murder a fellow. Lucky tensed to flee back towards the marsh.
Suddenly a shot rang out from behind Lucky. Bernard’s lamp shattered, releasing a hiss of blue light and plunging the woods back into darkness. Bernard fired blind. Lucky felt branches near his head splinter.
Someone caught the back of Lucky’s collar and jerked him ahead.
“Run,” a man’s low voice whispered against Lucky’s ear.
Lucky didn’t resist the pull of the hand at his back. He raced blindly towards the thick brush surrounding the marsh. Maple branches slapped his face and brambles caught at his coat and trousers. The man beside him gasped as they sprinted, but he kept apace. Then Lucky’s foot caught on a root. He toppled only to have the man beside him catch him and yank him upright. He all but dragged Lucky through the tangle of brambles.
How the blazes this other fellow hadn’t tripped even once, Lucky had no idea.
Another explosive boom rocked through the air, and one of the Swaims’ horses let out a horrifying scream. Frank shouted a string of obscenities, and Harry returned them. The shrill tones of their voices carried through the dense underbrush.
The brothers sounded a good distance back and a ways off to the north. Bernard’s utter silence throughout the argument filled Lucky with dread. Chances were, he hadn’t lit off in the same direction as his brothers. He could be right behind Lucky and this other fellow, even now.
Then, to Lucky’s relief, his feet hit cool, wet soil. Mud squelched around his toes and spattered his ankles. A thrill of water rushed up from the soles of his feet. The man beside him whispered an oath and started to pull Lucky back up towards higher, dry ground.
“No,” Lucky whispered. “They don’t know the marsh like I do.”
He felt the other man’s hesitance but didn’t let it slow him. Lucky wasn’t going to linger with Bernard Swaim on his trail. He rushed ahead into the stands of tall reeds and bald cypress. He heard leaves rustling behind him and realized the other man followed. Once he’d worked deep into the cover of overhanging branches, Lucky paused.
Shafts of moonlight fell between tree branches and offered Lucky glimpses of the man behind him. This fellow looked broad in the shoulders. His pale hair hung in loose locks over his bowed head and obscured his face.
The man raised his head, and Lucky almost jumped at the sight of two large, perfectly round and milky-white eyes staring back at him. The man cocked his head, and the angle of the moonlight illuminated the strap of the man’s goggles. Was he wearing moon lenses? Those
cost a fortune, didn’t they? But that explained how he’d navigated so well through the dense underbrush.
The man stepped back into the shadows, and a moment later touched Lucky’s shoulder, assuring him of his presence in the darkness. Lucky leaned in to where he imagined the other man’s head might be. He caught the strong scent of perspiration and iron. This close Lucky could smell the curse burning through the primordial scent of the man’s blood and his heart sank.
Unless a theurgist broke it immediately, there was no respite from a curse. It touched living flesh and manifested instantly. That was why throwing a curse—even a half-assed one scratched onto a copper spoon—would get a soul hanged by the neck until dead. Amen. Only theurgists, with all their badges and licenses, were authorized to create, handle or transport curses.
Lucky reached out and touched the man’s back. The leather of his coat felt hot and damp. Fever raged in him, and Lucky could feel shudders passing through his frame. He probably didn’t have long left, certainly not enough time to get to help. Frank Swaim got it right; this tall stranger was already dead for all intents and purposes.
Lucky thought he should go, but the memory of Effie burning up in the throes of scarlet fever filled his mind. He didn’t want to stand here and helplessly witness another person’s death. This man had saved his life, and he deserved better than to be abandoned to the mercy of leeches and giant crocodiles like One-Eyed Pete.
Not too far behind them several branches snapped, and one of the Swaim brothers—Harry—swore at the bushes.
Lucky couldn’t believe it. Despite the dark, the cottonmouths and the crocodiles, the Swaims had followed them into the marsh. Behind them another string of profanities rose up along with the distinct scent of a furious skunk. A gunshot echoed through the marsh.
“God, Harry,” Frank snapped. “You got the damn thing’s brains all over my pant leg.”
They truly wanted this man. Lucky wasn’t certain he could stop them or if he ought to even risk the attempt.
“Go,” the other man whispered.
Lucky didn’t know why, but having the fellow suggest being abandoned made Lucky all the more set against deserting him.
“I know a place they won’t go,” Lucky whispered. “You think you can keep walking a ways more?”
Lucky heard the other man take in a strained breath. “Lead on, Macduff.”
Lucky frowned, uncertain if the man’s fever had made him think Lucky was this Macduff fellow or if he’d missed some joke. That made him uneasy, since Dalfon had always been quoting this and that text like he thought everyone in the world spent all their days reading books. And this man’s voice sounded for all the world like his best old worst first love. But if it was Dalfon, wouldn’t he have said? Or maybe he didn’t even recognize him.
“Is your name…” Lucky lost his nerve and instead said, “I’m Lucky.”
“You sure are—” The other man’s voice caught, and he drew in several more quick, pained breaths.
Hell, this was no time to waste with talk.
Lucky strode quickly and quietly through the towering reeds into the deeper water. Slow-moving warm currents washed up around his thighs, and Lucky sensed fish scattering away from him. He heard his companion slogging behind him and felt the waves generated by the man ripple into his own body. He forced himself to focus on the land just ahead.
Lucky kept a quick pace, though every ten minutes or so he paused, allowing his struggling companion to catch up. Lucky didn’t know how the man continued to move, hunched over and drawing in ragged breaths like that, but his will and stamina impressed Lucky plenty.
At last they reached the raft. It wasn’t much more than driftwood and pine logs lashed together with reed ropes, but it floated like a cork and lay low enough to the water that none of the Swaims were likely to spot it moving through the overgrown marsh.
“Here,” Lucky whispered to his companion. “Rest yourself against this cypress. And I’ll have us out on the water in no time.”
“I can’t—” The man doubled over, clutching at his chest and pulling gasps of air through his clenched teeth.
Lucky didn’t allow himself to think about his action—he’d have been too afraid to act if he’d paused even a moment. He placed his hand against the man’s forehead. Damp locks brushed his fingers. The skin blazed hot as a soft-boiled egg.
Then he opened himself to the power of the cool waters rippling around his ankles. At once the illusion of a sluggish, lazy marsh shattered. Even here at just the edge of the Inland Sea, the sheer power of the ocean roared through Lucky. His ears rang and his entire body trembled. It felt like too much to bear—as if he was being swallowed by endless depths. His lungs filling with water. Brine pouring over his eyes and choking his throat.
But he fought against his rising panic. He could do this. He knew he could.
Three years ago he’d managed to control his fear long enough to relieve his sister Effie’s suffering when she’d writhed in the grip of scarlet fever. For a few hours he’d even thought he’d saved her. But her fever had returned and he hadn’t been strong enough to withstand an entire ocean flooding through his body a second time.
Now he imagined the waves calming, turning to ice.
Cold rushed up through Lucky, and he held it though it made his fingers ache.
He ran his hands over the man’s brow and down the back of his head to the nape of his neck. With each motion he slowly released more and more of the frigid power pent up inside him. The skin beneath Lucky’s fingers cooled, his shuddering limbs stilled. Again and again, Lucky caressed the other man and tried not to remember doing the same thing—uselessly—for Effie.
“Thank you,” the fellow murmured. His voice sounded rough. “That’s enough. We should get moving. You said you had your raft…I think.”
Lucky felt his hands being pushed away, and he came back to his senses like he was breaking the surface of a frigid lake. He gulped in a breath of air, feeling groggy and embarrassed by the tremors that shook his hands.
“My raft…that’s right.” Lucky stepped away from him quick and scurried to his raft. He loosened the single mooring, then snatched up his pike pole. The other man moved much more slowly. He remained quiet as he knelt down on the raft. Lucky shoved it off the muddy bank and into the flowing water. They drifted. Lucky navigated the shallows between sandbars as the other man lay on his back gazing at the night sky through the opalescent lenses of his goggles. He didn’t speak, and Lucky didn’t know if he was sleeping or if he’d succumbed to the curse and lay dead.
Just now Lucky felt too spent to touch him and find out. He’d done as much as he dared for the other fellow. Now he allowed the powerful current of the Inland Sea to take them.
For nearly three hours Lucky and his silent companion drifted while the land gave way to a vast black sea and a river of stars filled the sky. Lucky set aside his pike pole, sat down to dangle his legs off the edge of the raft. Tentatively, he allowed his senses to skim the water. Waves rocked the raft and eddies grasped it, but Lucky carefully nudged and tugged his own path through.
Twice Lucky felt the sleek bodies of plesiosaurs pass beneath him. The huge creatures didn’t frighten him nearly as much as the immense depths surrounding them. He’d already lost himself once tonight in all that vast water. And he didn’t even know if it had been worth it. His companion lay still as a corpse.
At last Lucky caught sight of the black curve carved out from the midnight-blue sky.
Five miles from the muddy shores of Riverain County, Moreau Island rose from the Inland Sea’s salty dark waters in three rolling hills. As they drifted closer, the weathered heads of submerged statues appeared to peep up over the waves, like stone mermaids observing their passage. If it had been light, Lucky could have peered down through the shallows and picked out the granite angels and bronze monuments that populated the sunke
n graveyard.
Before 1858 everything beneath the Inland Sea had been dry land: prairies, farms, plantations and vast estates like the one built by the Moreau family. Then earth mages had torn open an unnatural rift, and the waters of the ancient ocean had flooded through. Behind the floodwaters had come all those ancient creatures that had once existed only as rare fossils.
In the big eastern cities little changed, in fact, but in places like Moreau Island, the turbulent past was not buried deep. Wreckage from the first rush of floodwaters littered the shallows around the island with huge, opalescent boulders that Lucky liked to imagine as the remains of an ancient temple of the Illini people. They shone in the moonlight and piled up around the island like immense bones.
The raft’s bottom scraped over a sandbar, and Lucky jumped off and tugged it onto the grassy shore. Two large crocodiles raised their heads to observe him but neither appeared interested enough to rouse themselves from their stretch of the banks. Lucky moored the raft to a weathered statue of a plump cherub. Then he slid his fishing basket from his shoulder, laid his rifle down and collapsed onto the wild grass.
At this his companion began to rise, which caused a burst of happiness through Lucky’s chest.
“You’re alive!” His voice sounded loud as an alarm bell in the darkness and woke a group of little pterosaurs who’d roosted in a tupelo tree above.
“That’s me, coming back like the proverbial bad penny,” the man mumbled.
Relieved, Lucky closed his eyes. Distantly he heard his companion stagger from the raft and make soft, awed noises about the moon-white rocks piled among the gravestones. “Do you know what these are?” The man sounded delirious, and Lucky wasn’t certain if the question was rhetorical or not. Just now he felt too exhausted to care. His stomach grumbled, but it didn’t keep him from dropping into sleep.
When he woke it was to the smell of wood smoke and frying fish. Tiny orange sparks drifted up from a fire and burned out against the night sky. Lucky rolled over.
