by Tom Deitz
And the ulunsuti came. One moment Alec felt his thoughts stretched taut through the darkness of the Faery ocean; an instant later, warm wet leather brushed his hand. He grabbed for it awkwardly, almost lost it again, but then managed to cup it in his hand and slowly work the pouch into a pocket.
“I did it!” he shouted. “Liz, I did it!”
But an hour later they were still floating.
Chapter XXV: Wingin’ It
(Galunlati—day two—mid-day)
David stared at Fionchadd incredulously. “You’re not serious,” he whispered. Then, when the Faery’s expression did not change, “No, I reckon you are.”
Fionchadd regarded him calmly, and David could see that his face, at least, had almost completely healed in the little while since David had first awakened. “Certainly,” the Faery affirmed. “I would never jest about anything as important as this.”
David sat down abruptly and drained the last of the bouillon, grimacing at the taste. “So what’d you have in mind?” he asked carefully, not looking at his friend. To keep his trepidation at reasonable bay, he began halfheartedly scouring the peanut-can pot with sand and a little of the water that remained in the bag.
“It is as I suggested,” Fionchadd told him. “You have changed shape before, have you not? You can therefore do so again. I know of no other way to cross the distance we must in the time that remains.”
David put down the can and looked away. “What about you? You can’t shapeshift…can you?”
Fionchadd gave a gentle half-snort of surprise. “Of course I can—all the Sidhe have that art, though some are stronger than others. Like many other talents: it improves with practice.”
“And you feel up to it? I mean, a day ago you looked like somebody’s thrown-out scrambled eggs—and I’ve got a feelin’ you were more than a little fried inside too!”
The Faery took David gently by the arm and eased him around to face him. “Look at me, David Sullivan.”
David did, though he didn’t want to. Green eyes flashed before him—not with anger or fear, but with concern.
“I do not understand this fear I see, David. You have done this thing before—surely you do not fear it now!”
David stared back up at him, and felt his eyes suddenly a-brim with tears, which embarrassed him considerably. “Don’t I?” I’m fine if I don’t think about it, but if I do…”
“Fionchadd frowned in perplexity. “But those other times you acted in haste, from strong emotion; you did not have time to mark that which makes you human. This time we can change more slowly, then fly. Flight is a—what is your word?—reflex. You can still be you. We can even talk as we travel—mind to mind. That should keep you sure of who you are.”
“I…just don’t know,” David said.
Fionchadd shook his head. “Yes you do. You knew as soon as I first mentioned it; I saw it in your eyes.”
“I guess it’s like Calvin said,” David sighed. “I guess sometimes you really do have to just grab yourself by the balls and jump.”
“I guess,” Fionchadd chuckled, “you do.”
*
It took them but a short while to make ready. David cleaned up the campsite and repacked the survival kit, though he did allow himself the luxury of a cup of coffee. The main problem was in deciding what form to take. It had to be fast, it had to have endurance, it had to be strong enough to fly with a bit of extra weight because David was not going to abandon the survival kit, and had to have the uktena scale to change back.
“So many choicesif it were me,” Fionchadd mused. “All the flying things of Faerie. But you have not so many options, you are limited to the beasts you know: birds and bats.”
“Bats,” David said thoughtfully. “Now there’s an idea! I never would’ve thought of them, but that might be kinda neat. Think it’d work?”
“It would be fine with me,” the Faery replied with a shrug. “Any time you are ready.”
But still David hesitated.
“There is a strange thing about anticipation,” Fionchadd told him. “It is generally both more and less than the actuality that follows. A thing desired is rarely as pleasant to possess as it is to anticipate; a thing dreaded is rarely so foul.”
“And this is both, I reckon,” David replied. “All my kind dream of flyin’,”
“Mine too,” Fionchadd acknowledged. “It seems to be a common ambition.”
“Yeah, but we’re also scared shitless of failin’,” David added, laughing softly.
Fionchadd returned his uncertain smile more vividly. “Come now, foolish Mortal, let us begin.”
David rolled his eyes and joined his friend on the ledge above their campsite. Fionchadd had insisted on taking the fannypack containing the survival kit, and now wore it strapped around his scrawny hips—in spite of the fair bit of steel it contained, though the denim would offer some insulation. They had also, at David’s prompting, managed to fold David’s cut-offs and the Faery’s breeches small enough to fill the remaining space.
“I have my reasons,” Fionchadd assured him, when David would have protested the Faery’s decision. “It is enough that you carry the scale.”
David grimaced in resignation and squared his shoulders. “Now?”
“Whenever it pleases you.”
David took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Another, and he raised his right hand to the scale, which was still on its thong around his throat—right beside Liz’s token. A third breath, and he grabbed it, felt the glassy edges bite into his flesh, and the familiar warm, sticky ooze of blood.
Think bat!
Bat: small, light, but not too small, because he needed to be strong; wings stretching taut and leathery, no tail, short legs—head… A moment’s panic. What kind of head, surely not the ugly faces the local kind had, and then he thought better: what were those neat fruit-eating bats called? Flying foxes. They were big too, and therefore strong. He’d become one of them. And as he chose, the image clarified.
Of what followed the only things David could recall clearly were the moment his arms demanded to be raised from his side, and the instant his major sense shifted from sight to hearing and it seemed that the whole world had suddenly become as rich with sound as before it had been with color. The air was awash with it: the buzz of bees, the dry rustle of over-heated leaves, the click of beetle-bodies as they clambered over the rocks and moss, the tinkle of the stream, the sussuration of a more distant river.
The wonder of it made him gasp, lifted his heart, made him wish for the air so he could gather in more of this strange new sensation. Before he knew it, he was flying.
Pleasant, is it not? came Fionchadd’s thought into his mind, tickling certain parts of him awake.
Yeah, real neat. I could get to like this, David replied, and then he shifted attention to his senses. He could see very well—which surprised him. But he could see with his ears almost as well: yell a little (sheer exultation made that easy), and read the shape of the land in the resulting echoes. He read Fionchadd’s shape, too, and found something strange there, something he confirmed with his eyes—a thing that made his heart skip a beat.
It was the fannypack. The Faery still wore it around where his hips would have been. (He had chosen to become a very large bat of unfamiliar species.) But what gave David pause was the fact that flesh had grown out over parts of the alien substance: wing membrane that joined his fingers to his side sandwiching denim between. No way that thing would fall now.
Yes, it pains me, the Faery said in response to David’s unasked question. But pain is a thing I now know very well—and I know that this one is temporary.
But…
Enough. There are other things both of us need to discuss.
They exchanged thoughts for a long time then. Eventually it reached the stage where David had only to brush his mind across an image or an idea or an emotion, and Fionchadd would understand. Reciprocating was harder for him, who was used to thinking in words; but by and by
he got the hang of it, though Fionchadd had to assist him. In this way he was able to pass on to this friend a much more detailed account of what had transpired from the time Fionchadd had set sail on his ill-fated voyage to the Land of the Powersmiths through Alec’s healing and the revelation of Eva’s betrayal to the aberrant weather that had precipitated the current crisis.
I think it would help if I understood the nature of this war, David told him. I only know bits now: that Alec was fooled into switching the dagger that was supposed to guide the ship to the Land of the Powersmiths for one that took you to Finvarra. That he promptly captured you and held you for ransom, and that your mother was prepared to give herself up to save you from the Death of Iron. Evidently that didn’t happen.
Alas, no, Fionchadd responded, though I would not know this had my captors not spoken carelessly around me. He went on then, recounting the whole tale of the war from Morwyn’s aborted surrender through his speculations about the reasons for his torture, to his assumption that the Powersmiths had now broken the siege that had held them in stalemate all winter.
Interesting, David thought back to him. And then they simply flew, propelled by a particularly strong, steady wind from the north.
*
Hours passed, always at wing, seeking into the higher air where the north wind skimmed them even faster, if more treacherously. Feeding sometimes on things they caught on the wing (David was slowly mastering the art of letting the animal take control at times of need like these, though he balked at sampling the many high-blown spiders). As for the landscape below, it slowly began to change. At first, it was trees, meadows, slowly meandering rivers, occasional lakes. Sometimes herds of game (bison and pronghorn mostly, though he was certain he once saw a giant ground sloth and a small herd of mammoth). Once they met a flock of passenger pigeons winging north—their numbers so vast they shadowed an entire forest. But as they continued to beat their way south, the terrain began to alter: the mountains shrank, became rolling hills, then sandy flatland. The last hour they’d begun to see marshes, and the rivers were wider but much, much slower, and David guessed they were approaching the coast. He hoped his friend knew where he was going. And wondered suddenly about Calvin, wondered if his other partner-in-chaos was enjoying his part of the mission as much as he.
The sun was beginning to warm the horizon when Fionchadd finally tipped a wing and slipped into a slow dive. A squeak brought back new images: flat land and shallow water, and at the edge, even more water—probably the sea.
Half an hour later, they were swooping low over live-oaks, interspersed with wide coastal marshes full of cattails and marsh grass. There was increasingly less solid ground, and many more small, unsteady islands—most overgrown with more live-oaks, scrubby slash pines, occasional palms, and palmettos. The smell of salt, methane, and dead fish was strong in his nostrils: the slap of waves was a steady thunder in his sensitive ears.
David held back a little, let Fionchadd take the lead, watched as his friend swooped so low the downstroke of his wings brushed the top twigs of an oak and brought away a shimmer of Spanish moss.
Another dip, lower yet, and the instinct took over and he was fanning his wings to land.
A thump, a flip head over heels, and he was lying on his back in pale, dry sand. It was also hot, for it had been baking in the too-near sun of Galunlati for hours. His cry of surprise came out as a chirp and brought back the most amazing echoes. And then he was levering himself over and reaching awkwardly for the scale that had been a burden around his neck. He found it—barely—pressed his hand into it, and called his own face to mind.
A sick feeling, a swirl of pain, joints popping and wiggling, an outward rush, and he was himself again—lying on his back on an unfamiliar coast. Before him was an endless shimmer of waves; behind him the sun was a hand’s width above the horizon. He blinked—vision was strong again, and the color range had shifted, but he thought for a moment he had gone deaf until his ears readjusted. The effect was a great deal like the way his ears had seemed stuffed with cotton after the one rock concert he’d seen: U-2 at the Omni in Atlanta a couple of years before. But this was his normal hearing. Only the contrast made it seem odd.
“Whew,” a voice breathed beside him, “I’m glad that is over.” He glanced to the right, saw Fionchadd stand, and with great relish disengage the fannypack. He handed it to David, who immediately set about reclaiming his cutoffs.
“Sorry ’bout that,” David told him ruefully. “If I’d known you were gonna carry it like that, I’d have volunteered.”
“You could not have,” Fionchadd replied. “You have not the control.”
David regarded him doubtfully for a moment, then shrugged.
“Oh well—thanks. If I hadn’t been scared I’d lose you, I’d have done without, but I just can’t risk losin’ everything. Living’s just too perilous right now.”
“How so?” Fionchadd wondered, calmly digging in the sand until he produced a shell, which he flipped open with a deft bit of pressure—and probably a touch of Power. The mollusk inside disappeared raw down his throat. He licked his lips.
“So,” David sighed. “We’re here—wherever here is. Now all we’ve gotta do is get one World over, is that right?”
“Correct,” Fionchadd acknowledged. “And I have an idea about that—but it must wait until sunset.”
“But that’s still an hour or so off, so I make it.”
“You do not need to rest and eat?”
“More than anything in the world, but I don’t dare. I’m scared that if I go to sleep I’ll never wake up—and as for food…well…I’m not really into raw clams.”
“I can call some fish,” Fionchadd volunteered quickly. “I think they will come to my call even here. After all, I am in my own body now, not so limited in Power.”
“I’ll wait,” David said quickly. “I’m not into sushi either.”
“You can cook,” Fionchadd pointed out a little irritably. “Else why bring that ridiculous can?”
David sighed. “All right, you win. You call the fish, I’ll fix ’em—and meanwhile you can tell me about that place you were captive in. I still haven’t figured that out.”
Fionchadd sighed in turn. “Nor have I, completely. As best I can determine from what you have told me and things read between words, the place I was is a thing that is almost a legend in Faerie. Tir-Gat, we called it: the Stolen Country. It seems that once a minor Druid from the Faery realm of Alban discovered some silver Tracks and followed them to a World that was still a-forming—you have told me a little of this: how matter attracts matter and so creates the Worlds. But however it may be, this Druid wished to be mightier than he was, and so in secret moved to this place and set up his own kingdom. But it was slow in forming, so he thought to speed it along, and thus began using the Tracks to draw substance from other realms—Alban, mostly, though he also pillaged Erenn and even, I am told, your own World. Eventually he was found out and executed—the Death of Iron, so it happens. But that did not destroy him, and he escaped by hiding his soul in the hilt of a certain sword which he then caused to be secreted in the Lands of Men. There he waited until time came right for him to try to escape again. Meanwhile, no way could be found to recover the land this Druid had stolen, for he had cleverly sealed its borders, and Alberon, who was king of Alban, was too ashamed at being made a fool of to ask aid of his fellow princes. Finally the Druid acted; this I heard in Faerie before we set sail. His plan was thwarted, though, and his realm destroyed—so it was thought. Apparently, however—and here I begin conjecture—Finvarra felt the disturbance in the rhythm of the Worlds, investigated, and found a small bit of Tir-Gat remaining. This he warded for himself, and claimed, and swore Alberon of Alban to absolute secrecy. That is where he put me. That is the place from which you rescued me.”
“Jesus,” David sighed, flopping back on the sand. “Yet more Worlds—and another kind of Straight Track!”
“It never becomes any simpler,” Fi
onchadd informed him. “Nothing ever does.” He rose suddenly, strode to the edge of the tide. “Now, let us see about those fish—we should be just about finished by sunset.”
“Sunset?”
“A between time, when Power is strongest.”
Chapter XXVI: Changing Places
(Galunlati—day two—sunset)
By the time David had finished broiling the two fish Fionchadd had lured to shore, the sun had touched the horizon.
“So what do you intend to do?” he asked, settling back into the depression he’d scooped in the sand and licking his fingers appreciatively. He aimed an absent salute toward the waves, since he’d forgotten to ask thanks of the fish earlier, as was the custom for anything killed in Galunlati. “How do we get our asses outta here?”
Fionchadd tongued his lips with similar relish. “I have been thinking about this,” he said. “You came here by burning a scale of the great uktena, correct? You can use it to transfer one World at a time if the scale is properly treated, but the transfer destroys the scale. However, it is also possible to treat the ulunsuti so that it can open a gate between many Worlds—and it does not perish in flame. Therefore in order to complete your plan, which I believe is the right one, we can use the remaining scale to return to the Lands of Men, meet your friends, and have them take us to Faerie—and the Powersmiths—using the ulunsuti.”
“You’re forgettin’ one thing, though,” David noted, scowling. “We’ve only got one scale, and it’s not activated.” Unconsciously he fingered the thong at his throat.
“You are correct, of course,” Fionchadd admitted. “But you forget that I have Power in my own right, Power that can take me between Worlds once I know the way. Also, I think I know how the scale can be made to teleport.”
“You what? How?”
“You yourself told me, in a way. You showed me your memory of the opening of the gate, and I have now locked it in mine. But I remember more perfectly than you and I can recall the ritual your friend used to charge the ulunsuti—and I believe I can collect most of the ingredients in the remaining time we have.”
