by Tom Deitz
*
Calvin was the first to recover, but David was the first to assess the situation and risk speaking, though he shot warning glances at his friends. “Jesus, G-man,” he managed. “Don’t tell me you’re workin’ today.”
Gary put his hand over the receiver and nodded obliviously. “Need the cash. Dr. Nesheim tore hell out of his 635 and Dad promised it to him by next week if he’d deliver the baby free.”
David grimaced in resignation, knowing of Mr. Hudson’s barter system that got him a heap of gratis services—everything from child delivery to house painting to having his taxes done.
Gary spoke to his father for a moment, more than a little irritation heating his voice, then slammed the receiver down and turned apologetically. “Sorry guys, gotta go,” he said.
“Our loss, too,” Calvin replied, standing. “Catch you later…I hope.”
Gary shrugged. “Can’t say. Looks like it’s gonna be an allnighter. I just hope Trace appreciates what I’m doin’ for the bairn.”
“I’m sure she will,” David mumbled absently as he joined his friends afoot.
Another shrug. “Hope so.” And Gary was out the door.
Alec closed it behind him and let out a long breath. His face was white, and only with difficulty could he slump down on the bed. There were tears in his eyes. “Christ, guys, did you see what I saw?”
David frowned and shook his head as if to clear it, more frightened by something he had seen there at the end than he was willing to let on. “I…I’m not sure,” he stammered. “I…saw everything very bright and clear—and then right after the vows, everything…changed, and then I saw so much stuff all at once I still haven’t sorted it all out yet.”
Calvin looked at him sharply. “What kinda stuff?”
David started to reply, but Alec interrupted. “Death.” He buried his face in his hands.
David eased down beside him and slid an arm around his shoulders, noticing that Alec was trembling almost uncontrollably. “Maybe you ought to lay it out straight, man. Maybe we all should.”
Alec took a deep, sobbing breath. “Well, at…at first it was all just regular stuff: the wedding—viewed from outside, I guess; ’least I could see myself, and then the ceremony, and then there was this noise from somewhere else—I guess that was Gary’s beeper, and it kinda jerked him away, only I stayed, and then things got really jumbled, and I only caught images; but then things clarified, and I saw—they were walking out from under the arch…and…” His voice broke, and David had to hand him a sip of Dr Pepper before he could continue. “Oh, God, guys, you mean you really didn’t see it?”
“I’m not sure,” David hedged. “Not exactly, I don’t think.”
Alec swallowed awkwardly. “Well…it was…it was nothing at first—just the wedding and then real happy and all, and then blammo: lightning right out of a clear blue sky hits Tracy and…and kills her.”
“Jesus!” David gasped, exchanging troubled glances with Calvin that did absolutely nothing to reassure him.
“Or somebody,” Calvin remarked. “Are you sure she was dead?”
“Her face was smoking and her eyes were gone. That dead enough?”
Calvin nodded grimly.
Alec’s eyes were wild. “Don’t tell me you guys didn’t see that!”
“I didn’t,” Calvin replied, then paused, frowning. “No, actually maybe I did. I…I saw them leavin’, lookin’ happy, and then things got confused like you said, and I only caught flashes, like superimposed images. In one there was a kind of skull face, and in one we were runnin’ toward them and it felt real urgent, like we were tryin’ to stop something, or whatever, and people were screamin’, and—”
“I saw them get in the car,” David inserted suddenly. “Or at least, in one version I did.”
“But I saw her dead!”
“Which means…?” Calvin began.
“Which means we each saw something different,” David replied at last. “We saw futures piled on each other, maybe. Alternate realities.” He closed his eyes, tried to work it out logically but failed. It was all too much. Way too much.
Alec made a dive for the phone. “We’ve gotta call G-man and tell him not to go through with the wedding!”
David grabbed him in transit. “Not yet. I don’t think it’s that simple.”
Alec stared at him blankly, blinking back more tears. “Sure it is.”
“No, think a minute,” David said quickly. “Even if we tried to stop it or delay it or move it, we’d have a hard time gettin’ anyone to go along, even G-man. I mean, I saw a lot of futures: some where Trace survived, and a couple where she didn’t. And one—” He paused, shaking his head as the awful images crowded close again, getting clearer the more he tried to remember them. “In one I think I saw her dead somewhere else the same day; so one way or another something’s evidently gonna get her. Movin’ the location won’t be enough, I don’t think. And I saw us tryin’ to stop things, and us not tryin’ to stop things, and us not there. And I saw ’em well and happy.”
“So what are you saying?”
“That I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that lightning you saw had something to do with the war in Faerie sloppin’ over, which means Lugh’s truce won’t last. Shit, man, think about it: lightning doesn’t just strike out of a clear sky. Not when it’s noon on Midsummer’s Day and the King of the Fairies just happens to have a weather-related ultimatum expire around the same time.”
“And…?” Alec prompted, having recovered his equilibrium somewhat.
“I think we’ve got to try to stop the war.”
“You have got to be kidding! We’re just kids, human kids, and you’re talking about major-league magicians here. Why not try to stop the wedding instead? That’d be a whole lot easier.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it, McLean,” Calvin interrupted. “Besides, I don’t think we can. I saw futures where we weren’t there, but only a couple where Tracy didn’t die.”
“Which means we’ve now got two reasons to try to stop the war in Faerie.”
“Oh no!” Alec cried helplessly. “You’ve really gone off the deep end this time. There’s no way we can do that, not with us cut off from Faerie!”
“And how do we stop a war anyway?” Calvin asked curiously.
“Simple enough,” David replied, though he didn’t really believe it. “We remove the proximate cause.”
“You mean…?” From Alec.
David reached over and ruffled his best friend’s hair, and realized suddenly that sometime in the last thirty seconds or so he had made an irrevocable decision. “Yeah, Fool-of-a-Scotsman, we simply find out where Finno is and spring him.”
“Whew!” Alec finally managed, but squared his shoulders. “That’s a pretty big order, man.”
“Yeah,” David agreed. “But it sounds like the crystal showed each of us different futures. There has to be a reason for that. We didn’t all see the same thing, which leads me to think that time really can go several different ways at that point.”
“Which still leads us back to what to do.”
Alec reached for the phone again. “Well, like I said, the first thing we’ve gotta do is call G-man.”
Once more David intercepted him. “I don’t think so. It’d only freak him out, and that’s not necessary—yet. The wedding’s not till Saturday, right? We’ve still got time to get a lot done between now and then if we get on the stick.”
Alec was not so certain. “I don’t know, guys.”
“Okay, then,” David sighed, “we hedge our bets. We try to find out what we can, and if we hit a snag by…by Wednesday, we’ve still got plenty of time to work on Gary.”
“Why Wednesday?”
“Cause Tracy left this mornin’ to shop and stuff down in Atlanta and won’t be back till then.”
“But David…”
“I’m sorry, Alec, but I really think that’s the thing to do.”
“But didn’t you see her? Didn’t you see
Tracy dead?”
David nodded grimly. “Yeah, but I also saw her alive—all of us alive.”
He did not tell his best friend that in one version he had also glimpsed all of them strewn across the meadow like the fallen rocks of Stonehenge.
PART II
CLOUDING UP
Chapter XII: Battle Plans
(Sullivan Cove, Georgia—Saturday, June 14—late afternoon)
Liz could tell by the way David was moving when Calvin let him off the cycle that something was wrong. There was a tension in his step that was not typical, a hunching of shoulders against more than the sprinkle that had just begun. Standing on the Sullivans’ back porch, she was unable to hear the boys’ parting conversation, but evidently it was a matter of some urgency because Calvin nodded emphatically and his words rang loud but unintelligibly in the clammy air. David reached up to undo his helmet and stuffed it in one of the cycle’s matching saddle bags, not pausing to fluff up his hair. Calvin promptly wheeled the bike around and splattered off down the drive. When David turned toward Liz she was shocked at how haggard he looked.
She met him in the yard, drew him toward the open barn door. He followed, not protesting, let her seat him on a bale of sour-smelling hay.
“Something’s wrong.”
David shrugged helplessly and buried his elbows in his thighs and his chin in his hands. “Maybe…yeah. Oh, hell, I don’t know. We…we got Alec to use the ulunsuti to check on Faerie. It was what we expected: there’s war—only they apparently just concluded some kind of truce. I’ll give you the details later.”
She laid an arm on his shoulder. “’Cause there’s bad stuff that won’t wait, right?”
He nodded. “Am I really that easy to read?”
“Sometimes.” She waited for him to reply.
Eventually he did. “The bad news is that the truce may not last for more than a week or so—until Midsummer’s Day, max. Lugh’s given Finvarra an ultimatum, and if he follows through on it, it’s gonna be like Calvin’s worst nightmares. You think what we’ve had lately’s bad; wait ’til this hits! Lugh’s gonna be usin’ the whole power of the friggin’ sun to blast Erenn.”
“But that’s still not what’s getting you. Not really.”
David shook his head and told her about Gary’s intrusion, about what they had seen—or thought they’d seen—afterwards. Liz could feel her chest tightening, her muscles growing tense.
“And you really think there’s no choice but to try to stop the war?” she asked when he had fallen silent. “You won’t even consider trying to postpone the wedding?”
Another shrug. “We talked about that, and we’re still keepin’ it open as an option, but we all saw multiple futures, and in most of ’em something bad happened. In a couple we evidently tried to stop it and couldn’t. I think Gary’d go along, if we told him. But Tracy’s the problem. If we started going on about how she should put off the wedding ’cause she’s gonna be struck by a bolt of Faery lightning, there’s no way she’d believe us. Even if Gary told her, I doubt she’d believe. I mean look at the trouble I had convincin’ you and Alec when I first found out about Faerie.”
“You could show her.”
David grimaced in frustration. “Maybe—’cept she’s out of town as of this mornin’ and won’t be back until it’s practically too late. But the bottom line’s that we’ve gotta stop the war. One way or another it all comes down to that. Soon as Calvin gets back we’re gonna try to find out how.”
“Where’s he gone?”
“To pick up Alec. You and me are supposed to brief Uncle Dale, while Alec tries to get hold of the gang—or Aikin at least; he’s more level-headed than Darrell—and tell them what’s up. Somebody needs to know—just in case.”
“And then what?”
“Calvin and Alec’ll meet us over at Uncle Dale’s, and then we gotta do some serious plotting.”
*
Dale Sullivan took a long swallow of coffee and ’shine from an intricate golden chalice of dubious origin (that kept whatever was in it exactly the same temperature until it was emptied, yet never froze or scalded his lips or hands—as he’d discovered to his surprise), then set it down on the Formica end-table beside him. He leaned back in his rocker (survivor of his wrecked cabin), and peered intently at the four young people who looked back at him with equal intensity, waiting for him to speak. His gaze lingered longest on David, and David found himself squirming.
“I thought we ’uz done with this stuff,” the old man said at last. Not mad, David was relieved to note, though he’d detected a slight note of irritation. No, his tone was more one of resignation, of things hoped for but not expected.
David cleared his throat. “We all hoped it was over, but none of us believed it. Lugh even warned us, remember? Shoot, he’s been warnin’ us ever since Morwyn killed Ailill. I can still remember what he told her.”
“What?” Calvin wondered suddenly.
“Oh, Lugh told Morwyn that she might have precipitated war by killin’ Ailill, and she said that she was a Powersmith and that the war would sweep by her. But then Lugh said—let’s see, I think I can get the exact words: ‘You will come to know this, Fireshaper: that when war ravages Faerie, perhaps even breaks through to consume the Lands of Men, that every one who dies, man or Faery, will die cursing your name.’ I think we’ve ’bout come to that.”
“Yeah, if we’d only listened then, we might be free of this,” Alec noted sourly.
“No use frettin’ over ifs though,” Dale replied. “Time now to start thinkin’ ’bout thens.”
“Which we’ve already said,” David grumbled in frustration. “What we need is ideas. Like, how do you end a war when you can’t even enter the bloody theater of battle?”
“Are you absolutely positive about that?” Calvin inquired. “I mean, are you really sure you can’t work the Tracks?”
David shrugged. “As sure as I can be of anything to do with this. I can’t work ’em, that’s for sure. I can’t even see ’em unless they’re activated, and that’s not very likely these days.”
“You ever try?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Once last winter. I— Oh, never mind.”
Yet David cast his mind back to a cold day in January—his birthday, in fact, the 16th, when he’d gone up the mountain to try that very thing. It had been the dark part of the year, the time he hated most. Clouds for weeks, and cold for even longer. He’d found himself wishing for summer, wishing so bad he could do like Oisin had once done, and give him a day of sunshine from some far future June. He’d sought out the place where he knew the Track lay, sat for hours staring at a strip of ground where nothing grew but moss, and even that was hidden under the snow. Nothing had happened, nothing. Magic had utterly abandoned him. He shook his head abruptly. “I told you about it, Liz, Alec. Don’t you remember?”
“Okay, then,” Dale inserted, clearing his throat. “So you can’t get to Faerie. But answer me this: If you could get there, what would you do? I doubt Mr. Lugh’d take too kindly to you folks walkin’ up to him and sayin’, ‘Hold on here just a minute.’”
David chuckled in spite of himself, having entertained exactly that notion. “Well,” he began slowly, “since the war’s bein’ fought over Finno to start with, I guess the simplest thing would be to spring him from wherever he’s being held and proceed from there. I thought of that, actually, but it just seems too preposterous now I’ve had time to think a little more.”
Alec stared at him incredulously. “Still on that, huh? Well, that oughta be simple enough,” he added sarcastically. “All we’ve gotta do is search God knows how many Worlds that we can’t get to anyway!”
A scowl from Dale silenced him. “Are you sure just rescuin’ that boy’d end the war?”
“No,” David replied. “But that’s what started it. Hostages and counter-hostages. Morwyn was gonna give herself up in exchange for Finno, but obviously that’s not happened.”
The old man looke
d thoughtful for a moment. “That may be true, now I think on it. I’ve read some of your books, and seems to me I recall that they went to war over a cow one time.”
“And over an insult to a King they deposed,” David added, thinking of Bres.
“Cows more than once, if the books’re right,” Calvin chimed in. “I’ve been readin’ up on ’em lately, too.”
“I’ve been afraid to,” David admitted. “It’s too strange seein’ one reflect the other and still tryin’ to keep up with the inconsistencies.”
“That’s a fact,” Dale agreed. “But that don’t solve our problem. Given that freein’ Mr. Finny’d end the war—which it might do or might not—appears to me that brings up two more things: findin’ him and freein’ him. And once you’ve got him free, what’re you gonna do with him?”
David frowned. “Return him to the Powersmiths if we can. Finvarra won’t dare mess with them; all he can do is bluster.”
“We’d have to be careful, though,” Liz noted. “’Cause if Finvarra ever figures out it was humans—never mind which humans—that sprung Finno, he might cause trouble in our World.”
“Real careful,” Alec said shakily. “He’s no fool.”
“But the borders are sealed,” Liz pointed out.
“Not exactly,” David countered. “Lugh put a ban on commerce between the Worlds. He didn’t actually physically seal the borders ’cause he has to join himself to the land to do that. But you’re right about one thing: if there is a way to Faerie, it’s through the Tracks, and I don’t know how to work ’em. Oh, I can find ’em, sometimes—the Sight’s good for that—but I can’t just walk onto one, activate it, and wind up where I want to go. Shoot, even the Sidhe don’t really know what they are; they just know how to get around on ’em.”
“But are all of them closed?” Calvin asked pointedly. “Lugh may have closed the border between here and Tir-Nan-Og. But what about the border with Erenn? Finvarra’s his own man, isn’t he? What’s to stop him from comin’ here on his own?”
“Well, the Worlds don’t overlap right,” David said. “Tir-Nan-Og overlaps now, but I think Erenn overlaps the early eighteenth century, and Annwyn the thirteenth, or something. And that doesn’t even take into account the fact that this World was in a different place in our space each of those times. If I even try to think about that, I get a headache. And then—”
