It was the flame-bearer, a creature with a fanged face like a skull. The plume of black fire arched and spat. A single spark touched Oxossi’s shining shield and devoured it, an ember popped and turned Oxossi’s magic spear to cinders.
Lord of woods, lord of worlds, why do you stand between me and what is mine? The creature’s voice echoed wickedly inside Jorge’s head. Even you can never hope to hold this child back from a path of his own choosing. Without your weapons in your hands, even you must fail and fall. You call to him, but see!
He comes to me.
It was true. Jorge saw his little brother’s eyes fixed on the black flame as if it held nothing but joyful promise. Illusion and temptation sang to Ramõn from the killing fire’s core, and their song cut him off from true hope as surely as if they’d set an iron wall around him. The instant that the boy touched the doom-bright flame, it would own him, he would be lost.
As his little brother reached out his still-bleeding hand to the black flame, Jorge leaped forward on Oxossi’s strong, bare feet and plunged his own hand into the blackness, through the killing fire, deep into the monster’s grinning skull. The creature screamed, but Jorge’s scream, Oxossi’s scream, drowned out the hideous sound. The birch grove shook as the pale trees split from crowns to roots and a great voice, filled with pride and sorrow and love rang out above them, crying, My sons, my beloved sons, mijitos! Stand strong against the enemy, be brave against the monstrous thing that once stole me from you!
It was the last thing that Jorge took with him as he plummeted into darkness.
* * *
“Hey, man? Jorge? You awake?”
Jorge heard his brother calling to him through all the layers of his dreams. He swam back into the waking world, sat up slowly, realized he was lying on the floor of his bedroom with Ramõn squatting beside him. He managed a feeble smile.
“Yeah, I’m awake,” he said. “And you’re back from the police station. Man, I oughta kick your skinny ass. Ripping off the grocer’s, giving tía Clarinda a heart attack, yeah, that was real good, you stupid little—”
“Huh?” Ramõn stood up, looking genuinely confused.
“What station? What ripoff? Where you getting this stuff from, hermano? You fall off of the bed or something and hit your head? How come you’re lying on the floor, huh?”
“You saying—?” Jorge stopped himself, touched his own face with his left hand as if trying to remember what he looked like without resorting to a mirror. Oxossi’s mask was gone. He shook his head and sighed deeply.
“Hey, no fooling, something wrong?” Ramõn sounded worried. “You want me to get tía Clarinda or what?”
“No,” Jorge said softly. “I don’t want that.” I want to know I’m not going crazy, he thought. I want to know why someone’s put the world on rewind. I want—
“What I want is a little help up,” he told his brother.
“Sure, man. What’s a brother for?” Ramõn grinned and held out his hand.
Only Jorge saw in his brother’s palm the thick scar of the spear’s bright, healing passage. Only Jorge saw how the green lizard that crouched across it winked its ruby eyes once, twice, three times before it vanished, leaving footprints like a trail of fallen leaves.
Only Jorge felt, as he took his brother’s hand, how the forest god’s strength closed around them, bearing the endless warmth and life of their father’s love.
THE THING IN THE WOODS
Harry Turtledove
TIM’S armies chased Geoffrey’s across the game board on the floor of Geoffrey’s room. One more good throw of the dice and he would win. As he reached for the red plastic cubes, though, he noticed the full moon shining through Geoffrey’s window.
Startled, he looked at his watch.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “I’m late. My mom’s gonna skin me.”
“We’ll call it a draw, then,” Geoffrey said happily.
“I would have stopped you at the river anyway.”
Yeah, sure you would, Tim thought, but he was too late even to stay and argue about it. He grabbed his coat off a chair and hurried for the front door. Geoffrey followed, still going on about how well he’d played.
Tim hopped onto his bike. “See you in school tomorrow.”
He couldn’t resist a parting shot: “You still going to need help with your math?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” In bright moonlight, the dirty look Geoffrey gave him for being reminded seemed especially sweet.
Chuckling to himself, Tim was about to ride off when something in the woods back of Geoffrey’s house made a horrible noise. Time almost jumped out of his skin.
“Wh—What was that?” he said. “A coyote?”
“Maybe,” Geoffrey said. “Maybe it was a werewolf, too.”
“Don’t be stupid. There’s no such things as” —the horrible noise came again—“werewolves.” The hair on the back of Tim’s neck tried to stand up.
“Whatever you say. I’d ride fast if I were you, though.” The gloating tone in Geoffrey’s voice made Tim wish he’d never brought up the math homework, especially since Geoffrey helped him almost as much as the other way around.
Tim lived only a few blocks east of Geoffrey. He pedaled as if he were trying to catch up with the long, black moonshadow that stretched out ahead of him.
When he was halfway home, he heard the howl from the woods again. He was so nervous, it sounded to him as if it came from about three inches behind him.
He yelped and made his legs go even faster, which wasn’t easy.
He had never seen anything so welcome as his house, even if his mother did come down on him like a ton of bricks when he went in. “You still have your homework and nine million chores to do before you go to sleep,” she said, the way he’d known she would.
“And you need a bath.”
“Okay, Mom.”
He gave in so easily, she stopped being mad and started being worried. “Are you all right, Tim? Did something happen over at Geoffrey’s?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. No, nothing happened.” That wasn’t quite true, and Tim knew it. He hesitated, then went on, “Mom?”
“What is it, Timmy?” She hadn’t called him Timmy in a long time.
He hesitated again, feeling dumb, but finally blurted out, “Mom, there really aren’t any werewolves, are there?” Once he’d said it, he felt even dumber, but if he couldn’t be dumb around his own mom, who could he be dumb around?
“Werewolves?” she said. “What ever gave you that idea?”
He’d surprised her, he saw. That wasn’t easy. He explained what had happened over at Geoffrey’s house. By the time he was done, even he was laughing at himself.
“Well,” his mom said, laughing, too, “I certainly think it was a coyote. I’ve never seen a werewolf except in the movies, and I don’t think anyone else has, either. All right?”
“Sure, Mom.” Talking about it made him feel a lot better. “Boy, it sure sounded scary, though.”
“I believe you. Go do your homework anyway. Didn’t you tell me you have a math test tomorrow?”
“Oh, Mom!” She would remember! Then she gave him a hug, and he said, “Oh, Mom!” again, in a different tone of voice.
“Go on, now. Remember, you still have to take that bath.”
He went. But even when he was dividing fractions and plotting points on graph paper, part of his mind still heard that dreadful, unearthly howling. He rarely wondered if his mom was wrong, but this was one of those times.
When he and Geoffrey came out of math class together, Geoffrey asked, “How do you think you did?”
“I don’t know. Not too bad, I guess.” Tim paused.
“What did you get for number eight?”
“Which one was that?”
“Five twelfths divided by seven eighths.”
“Let me think.” After close to a minute, Geoffrey answered, “Oh yeah, that one. I almost didn’t remember to reduce it to lowest terms. It’s ten twenty-firsts.”
<
br /> “Uh-oh. That’s not anything like what I got. I got thirty-five ninety-sixths.”
This time it was Geoffrey’s turn to say, “Uh-oh.”
They both put some worried thought into the problem.
Then Geoffrey said, “I know what you did wrong. You forgot to invert the divisor before you multiplied.”
Tim slammed his hand against a bank of lockers, hard enough to hurt. “You’re right.” He scowled at Geoffrey. “It’s your fault, you and your miserable werewolf. I couldn’t study straight last night.”
“Don’t blame me because you’re dumb,” Geoffrey said loftily.
Tim shoved him. He shoved back. It might have gone further than that, but behind them someone with a deep voice said, “Boys, you don’t really want to go visit the vice-principal, do you?”
“No, Mr. Tepesh,” they said together.
“Good. Cut it out, then.” The wood-shop teacher walked on by.
“Boy, I ought to—” Tim said, but the moment where there could have been a fight had passed. “You and your miserable werewolf,” he repeated.
“Well, there’s nothing to worry about for the next month, anyway,” Geoffrey said. “Not till the next full moon.” He let out a howl that sounded nothing like the one they’d heard the night before.
“Will you shut up, for Pete’s sake?” Tim usually didn’t lose his temper easily, but he felt his right hand, the one that wasn’t carrying his books, curl into a fist.
But Geoffrey said, “All right, already, all right. Did I tell you my dad’s going to the ballgame tomorrow? Some people have all the luck—we’ll be stuck in school.”
“Yeah,” Tim said. It blew over, as quarrels often do. Pretty soon the two of them were laughing about the way their math teacher’s saggy arm muscles flopped like fish out of water whenever she wrote on the blackboard.
A couple of days later, Tim went over to Geoffrey’s house after school. He kept a careful eye on his watch.
He also trounced Geoffrey at their war game, so badly that it was done fifteen minutes before he had to leave. He was feeling pretty smug as he climbed onto his bike.
Then that horrible howl came from the woods. Tim flinched. He couldn’t help it. Geoffrey noticed—he would, Tim thought. If he’d just laughed or something, it wouldn’t have been too bad. But instead he said, “You’re probably safe this time, Tim.”
“What do you mean, probably?”
“Well, the moon’s not full, and so—”
“Oh, be quiet. Why don’t you just go to the moon?”
Geoffrey laughed then, which was a lot meaner than if he’d done it at first. And he howled after Tim when he rode away. Tim thought about turning back and knocking some sense into his friend’s thick head, but he decided Geoffrey was too dumb for that to do much good. He kept riding.
Over the next few weeks, things almost got back to normal between them. Almost, because Geoffrey wouldn’t let the whole werewolf business alone. Every so often, he’d make panting noises in the hallway at school, or check his forehead with his hand, as if to see whether he was getting hairy. After a while, Tim stopped paying any attention to it. If Geoffrey wanted to be weird, that was his problem. They were still buddies.
“Two days of freedom,” Geoffrey said as school let out for the weekend. “Can you come over tomorrow night? We can play till late, and I’ve got a new attack figured out that’ll knock your ears off.”
“Don’t you wish,” Tim said. He waited for Geoffrey to make one of his stupid werewolf jokes and get it out of his system—the moon would be full again tomorrow night. But Geoffrey just stood there, waiting to see what he’d say. Maybe he was finally bored with werewolves. About time, Tim thought. He said, “Sure, I’ll come. About seven?”
“Yeah, okay. We’ll be done eating by then.”
Tim spent the night studying the game board. If Geoffrey was silly enough to tell him he had something new up his sleeve, Tim wouldn’t waste a chance to work on figuring out what it was. Maybe Geoffrey would go through the foothills this time, instead of around them. He was welcome to try. Tim was positive a few tanks posted in the right spots would smash that move before it got started.
Or maybe . . . Tim was still figuring angles when it got to be time for him to go to sleep. Whatever Geoffrey was thinking of pulling, he expected he could handle it. Geoffrey talked better than he played.
The moon was at Tim’s back as he rode over to Geoffrey’s the next night. That way he didn’t have to look at it, but he knew it was there, fat and round and gleaming, like a big gold coin in the sky. However bright it was, it didn’t light up the woods back of Geoffrey’s place. They stayed black and foreboding.
Anything might live there, Tim thought nervously.
Anything.
Stay cool, he told himself as he pulled up in front of Geoffrey’s house. Just because something might live there doesn’t mean it does. That line of reasoning would have been a lot more comforting if a howl hadn’t come just as he stepped up onto Geoffrey’s front porch.
He almost turned around and jumped back on his bike. But what if Geoffrey was watching through the curtains? He’d never let him forget it. Tim made himself walk toward Geoffrey’s door. Even if something dreadful did live in the woods, it hadn’t shown any signs of wanting to come out.
He rang the bell. Geoffrey took his time about answering.
“Come on,” Tim muttered. The thing in the woods howled again. It sounded closer. “Come on!”
Tim said out loud.
The door opened. A werewolf sprang out at him.
It had fur and claws and enormous yellow teeth, but it walked like a man. To his terrified eyes, it seemed nine feet tall. It howled right in his face. He screamed and ran.
The werewolf chased him. He could hear its feet pounding after him, could hear its vicious laughter.
Laughter? He was almost to his bike when that finally registered. He could imagine werewolves doing lots of things, but laughing wasn’t one of them.
He turned around. The werewolf wasn’t chasing him any more. It was leaning against the house, laughing its head off. As soon as Tim stopped being panicked, he recognized its voice. That was no werewolf—that was Geoffrey!
“You—you—you—” Tim looked for something bad enough to call Geoffrey. He couldn’t think of anything.
He jumped on him instead.
Geoffrey was bigger, but Tim was furious. Besides, Geoffrey had trouble seeing out of the eyeholes in his werewolf suit, and the gloves with claws on them would hardly fold into fists. On the other hand, the thick, shaggy fur on the suit helped pad him against Tim’s blows.
After a few seconds, Geoffrey didn’t even try to hit back. He was still laughing too hard. He just covered up as best he could. “I’m sorry, Tim,” he got out at last. “I really am. But you—ouch!—should have seen your face.”
“I ought to kick your—” But then Tim was laughing too. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t seem to help it. He and Geoffrey rolled on Geoffrey’s front lawn.
Tim finally sat up and picked a couple of blades of grass out of his hair. “Do you really have a new attack planned, or were you just luring me over so you could scare me to death?”
“Wait a second.” Geoffrey pulled off the fur and rubber werewolf head. “Whew. Stuffy in there. No, I don’t have anything new figured out. Why?”
“Because,” Tim said grimly, “now that I’m here, I’m gonna drive a stake right through your heart.”
“You don’t do that with werewolves,” Geoffrey said.
“You’re no werewolf. There’s no such thing as werewolves.” As if on cue, the thing in the woods let out another howl. Tim couldn’t have cared less. He glared at Geoffrey. “Right?”
“Right.” Geoffrey got up. “Come on. Let’s see how tough you really are.”
“Okay.” They went into Geoffrey’s house together.
The next Friday night, Geoffrey went to Tim’s to play their wargame and sleep over. This
time, Geoffrey had worked out something new, and Tim had all he could do to hold his own. The game swayed back and forth. First one of them had the edge, then the other. Tim didn’t realize how long they’d been playing until his mom came into the room.
“Come on, boys,” she said. “It’s getting late.”
“Oh, Mom,” Tim said.
“Don’t you ‘Oh, Mom’ me.”
“A little longer?” he pleaded.
She shook her head. “The sun will be rising soon— time for young vampires to sleep. You two don’t want to be caught out of your coffins when it comes up, do you?”
Tim and Geoffrey sighed and exchanged resigned looks. “No,” they answered. What else could they say?
“Well, come on then. Please don’t make me wait around—don’t forget I have to have time to get into my own coffin after you do, and you still have to wash your faces and brush your fangs.”
“Oh, Mom,” Tim said again, but he knew it was hopeless. He got up and headed for the bathroom.
Geoffrey followed him.
THE STAR CATS
Charles Edgar Quinn
IT looked like the funeral procession of a giant.
The great, flat platform with its multitude of tank tracks, the largest ground vehicle ever built, crept inch by weary inch under the heat of the Florida sun. The Titan rocket that it was bearing, that lay across its whole length, quivered slightly with the vibrations of all the different engines and all the many sets of tracks and wheels; faint but noticeable waves ran up and down the mighty vessel with its movement. Even a statue this big would have swayed with the wind.
A scattered remnant of people watched from all sides as the spaceship crawled not toward, but away from the launchpad. Camera crews from the various networks and newspapers worked in cliquish bands; many set up their equipment directly in front of the huge truck. This juggernaut was definitely moving slowly enough to avoid. The others, those actually dressed in work clothes, milled about idly and uneasily, their work done, or rather, left forever unfinished.
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