Heart of Valor - V1 Dec 2004

by Lisa Jane Smith

  “Too many years, too many centuries! Living with humans, surrounded by humans. Eating their dead food. Sleeping inside walls!”

  Claudia stroked the corner of the book with her fingers, her mouth dry.

  “And surrounded by things! Square things, flat things, rectangular things. Everything with a shape. All smooth and hard, with cold unliving smells. All made. “

  The vixen began to pace again.

  “This was good land once. Wooded. You could run for hours, days without hearing the sound of a human voice. How long has it been since I have been out of the range of a human voice? Now I hunt in vacant lots. In peoples’ very backyards, for the scavengers that live on their garbage!”

  Claudia whispered, “I’m sorry,” but the vixen went on, unheeding.

  “Many animals do that. But where is my den scratched out in the soft earth? Where are my cubs? Where is the mate to stand beside me and share my triumph when the rabbit’s spine snaps and the rich blood flows?” The vixen’s sides were heaving like a bellows, her ears back. “Nowhere! I have no den, no mate, no cubs. Because I have been civilized. I have been tamed. I am a pet fox.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Claudia again, numbly. It was all she could think of to say. She wanted to leave. She didn’t want to hear any more.

  “Claudia!”

  Claudia kept walking.

  “Human child!”

  Claudia stopped, drawing her head down between her shoulders, and turned.

  “Come here,” said the vixen. She was standing on the counter, tail low and straight, her eyes like golden orbs, her ribs still heaving. Claudia slowly, against her will, took a step.

  “Come here,” said the vixen, “and take this damned thing off my neck.”

  *

  Presently, Alys missed her youngest sister.

  “She’s with the vixen in the kitchen. You know, Alys,” Charles added with a grimace, “if you ask me, the vixen is getting kind of weird. When I got here this afternoon she was just running out of the henhouse—and I don’t think she was in there counting eggs. When she saw me she turned and ran the other way.”

  “But just yesterday she was furious because Talisman—” Alys broke off. “I suppose it was Talisman?” There was a silence. Alys rubbed her forehead. “Huh. All right, I’ll talk to her.”

  The kitchen door was closed, which was unusual. Alys opened it and stopped dead.

  Claudia was standing by the open window, her cheeks wet. On the counter, unclasped, was the vixen’s golden collar.

  “She’s gone, Alys,” said Claudia, raising a tear-stained face. “She’s gone away with Talisman.”

  “Oh, Claudia!”

  “Oh, great,” said Charles from behind.

  Alys took Claudia in her arms, looking over her sister’s brown head at the open window. A fine mist of rain was blowing in.

  “She—she said she was tired of being civilized. …”

  “She’ll come back,” said Alys, closing the window, and knowing as she said it that she was not at all sure the vixen would.

  Claudia cried silently, burying her face in Alys’s shoulder, and Alys knew she knew, too.

  She let her cry a little, then said:

  “Come on. I’ll make you some cocoa.”

  Claudia sat up, still sniffling.

  “No. I just want to—to be by myself for a little.”

  “All right. But stay here. Don’t go home without us.” Alys had decided that from now on none of the four of them should go anywhere alone, but she didn’t want to frighten Claudia by saying that.

  Claudia nodded mechanically, her head bowed. Alys shut the door on her.

  *

  Claudia sat for some minutes, then got up and opened the window again. Alys, she knew, was grieved and angry at the vixen’s departure. But with Claudia it went deeper than grief or anger. She simply could not accept it. She wanted to rewind the whole afternoon and erase it, then start again. Her vision blurred as tears welled up in her eyes.

  Maybe—maybe the vixen had not gone to Talisman yet. Maybe she was just outside somewhere, and if Claudia could find her she could make her listen.

  Alys wouldn’t let her go out in the rain. So she didn’t tell Alys. She boosted herself through the open window and let herself down onto the wet grass.

  Outside the drizzle was turning into a shower. Far away there was a rumble of thunder, as if the sky were in sympathy with Claudia’s feelings. The ground smelled of rich damp earth and molding leaves.

  Shielding her eyes with her hand, she began walking, away from the wooded grounds of the estate that were usually the vixen’s territory, toward Irvine Park. There was no movement on Center Street. The rain had driven all humans inside and all animals under shelter. A great silence surrounded her as she turned down Churchill Lane.

  Thunder grumbled again and rain pattered into her face. Her clothes were wet. Claudia lowered her hand and stood unprotected, not caring.

  A whisper of sound on the other side of a fence made her look up. Something dark was moving along the fencetop underneath a big overhanging tree in the corner. The rain and the drooping branches screened the animal. Claudia made a hopeful greeting sound and held out her arms.

  The thing came closer, hesitantly, it seemed. Claudia reached her arms up higher, narrowing her eyes against the rain. If it was a cat, it was a very big one. In fact—much too big—but a dog wouldn’t walk the top of a fence—or move with such rippling grace—

  Claudia stood frozen as the creature edged out of the shadowing branches of the tree, putting one foot in front of another deliberately—except that it didn’t have feet—it had hands—

  A thin shriek broke from Claudia’s lips. She turned and fled blindly down Churchill Lane. She reached the cul-de-sac at the end and turned, panting, to look behind her.

  Through sheets of rain she saw something dark and sinuous drop down onto the street.

  Claudia whirled and looked at the house before her in panic. She knew what to do if someone was chasing her; she had been taught in school. Without hesitation she ran up the porch steps and pounded on the door with both fists.

  There was no answer. She kept pounding and rang the doorbell, looking with wild eyes over her shoulder. She didn’t know what the thing was, but it was bad. Every instinct told her she was in danger. At last, in desperation, she tried the knob—it would not turn.

  She splashed back down the steps, cutting across the front garden and floundering in the mud where marigolds and dahlias had just been planted. One look at the next house and she pulled up short. There was something on the porch, crouched and waiting.

  Claudia backed up stiffly. The dark shape rose on its legs and took one slow step toward her. Her next step back brought her up against wooden boards that gave slightly. Without taking her eyes off the thing she reached back. Her fingers encountered the wet, fibrous roughness of twine.

  The dark shape took another slow step, and stopped. She was still well out of range of any normal predator. But Claudia knew animals, knew the tiny signs by which they betrayed themselves. She knew the dilation of pupils that meant a cat was about to strike, and she knew by the way this creature gathered itself that it was going to spring. She gave the cord a yank and twisted inside, slamming the gate shut in the same motion. She heard a soggy thud as the creature landed where she had been standing a moment ago.

  She backed away from the gate, hands pressed over her mouth. She couldn’t run anymore. At the top of the fence appeared two soft, wrinkled black hands. They gripped to bear weight, and Claudia found she could run after all.

  She stumbled against an outdoor barbecue, recoiled, and tripped over a piece of rawhide twisted into a bone. Recovering, she made for the far end of the fence, with no clear goal except to put as much distance between herself and the thing as possible. There was a noise behind her. Her head snapped around, her foot missed a step on the patio. She fell heavily, landing on knees and palms. A shape surged up beside her and she screame
d, gazing at it in wide-eyed terror.

  Then the lolling tongue, white teeth, and chocolate-drop eyes came into focus. It was a dog, her dog, the dog she’d used to send a message to Janie. Her letter dog.

  To Claudia’s enormous credit, her first impulse was to warn it away. She waved scraped hands and made a gobbling sound, incomprehensible in any language, human or canine, with this intent. The dog, which had been expressing its joy and surprise at finding her, and proclaiming its willingness to undertake another mission, preferably a dangerous one, became suddenly alert. Ears went up, tail and body froze, eyes locked on a dark shape across the yard. The hair on its back rose stiffly, lips drew away from teeth, and a low, throbbing growl began somewhere inside its chest. The growl rose in pitch and volume and suddenly exploded in a volley of harsh barking.

  Claudia found herself sitting, arms flung around the setter’s chest, feeling the barking as well as hearing it. The dark shape by the fence seemed to hesitate, then a hand stretched out as it took a step nearer. The barking subsided into growls again as Claudia, clutching desperately, jabbered an explanation. One concept, and one alone, seemed to get through to the setter. This was an intruder, a trespasser of the worst kind, who was violating not only the setter’s territory but the setter’s world. It was anathema, it was worse than cats-rats-and-postmen. It was to be gotten rid of. The setter threw back his head and sounded the alarm.

  Claudia started back at the sound. This was not barking, it was a cry which showed how close dogs really are under the skin to their cousins the wolves. It was a howl. The setter was calling in the pack.

  The sound carried superbly, even in the mist-deadened air. For blocks around, in many tones, rose the answer.

  On Jocotol Avenue a sleek square Labrador retriever vaulted out into the rain while his astonished owner stared after him over two dripping bags of groceries. Two doors away a pair of miniature poodles began to dig frantically at the window screen, yapping shrilly. A bulldog from Smoke-wood Drive calmly pushed his gate a certain way and trotted purposefully off. A collie thrust first her nose, then her head, and, with a final lunge, her entire body through a loose board in her fence.

  The clamor increased as the cry was passed from house to house. At Amate Circle a Kerry blue terrier took a running leap and cleared a five-foot fence almost without touching it. Sharon Lane contributed two beagles and a sheepdog mix. On Lemon Street a Great Dane, baying wildly, hurled himself once too often against a sliding glass door, which finally exploded outward in a satisfying burst of glass shards.

  From near and far they came. Claudia, with one hand buried in the setter’s rusty fur, watched and listened in amazement. Dogs were vaulting over the fence, scrabbling at the gate, barking and howling from the street. Every so often the head of a tiny but determined schnauzer would appear above the fence from the yard next door, give a fierce yap, and then disappear as it fell again. The bulldog and the Kerry blue had begun to circle the dark shape, which had pulled back but did not look beaten yet. One of the beagles darted in low and jumped back with a mouthful of fur.

  “Oh, be careful,” said Claudia, but just then there was a heavy thump and the gate crashed in entirely. On top of it was an enormous Great Dane shaking its head and wearing a foolish expression. It saw the dark thing and forgot about being embarrassed. It leaped. All the other dogs took this as a signal, and sprang almost in unison, piling on.

  The dark thing extricated itself from the canine pileup and gained the top of the fence in a bound, where the schnauzer, astonished by its good fortune, got in one swift nip before gravity took over. Extending spiderlike legs, the dark shape scuttled away.

  In the yard the setter tilted his nose to the sky and howled triumph. Some of the other dogs, notably the Lab and the Dane, began to roll in the mud to work off their exuberance. In a spirit of pure camaraderie they began to roll on Claudia, too.

  *

  “Did you hear something?” Janie raised her head as Alys paused between pages.

  “Only thunder. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I heard a dog barking. This house is so isolated and the walls are so thick you usually can’t hear anything from outside.”

  Alys shut the book, feeling uneasy. “I think I’d better get Claudia. I don’t like her being alone in there so long.”

  There was a period of great confusion following the opening of the kitchen door. It ended with Alys, Charles, and Janie running down the driveway just as Claudia, the setter, and their muddy entourage came marching up it.

  “I ought to smack you,” said Alys, when Claudia had gulped out the whole story. She hugged her instead. The only clean places on Claudia’s face were the tear trails on her cheeks and she looked stunned and shaken. “Okay, everybody, that’s it. We’re going home, and we stay inside the wards all night tonight. Nobody leaves.”

  The dogs dispersed as the children walked their bikes back. When they reached their own porch only the setter was left; it waited until Claudia was safely indoors to trot off. As it rounded the corner it met the two miniature poodles, which had finally torn a hole in the screen and gotten out. It gave them a patronizing glance and went on by without stopping. Typical, the sway of its tail seemed to say. Always late.

  Alys, watching from the doorway, smiled in spite of herself. As she turned to go inside she saw the sky.

  “Look, oh look! Oh, Janie, come quick and see!”

  It had appeared from nowhere, a great arch of light against the midnight blue clouds. The colors were so vibrant that the whole thing almost looked solid, except near the ground where she could see red-and green-tinted hills through the base. It reached halfway up the sky, squarely spanning Villa Park.

  Janie glanced at it mechanically, and did a double take.

  “What’s wrong?” Alys felt almost cross as she said it. Trust Janie to spoil a vision of beauty.

  “It’s upside down.”

  “How can you say that? It’s perfect.”

  Janie smiled, looking patient and grim. “Alys, do you know how rainbows are formed? Droplets of water in the air break white light up into the spectrum of colors. And each color of light has a certain wavelength, which determines where it appears in the rainbow. Red light gets bent the least, so it appears on top. The other colors appear in this order: orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. It’s a law of nature, a matter of physics. Now do you want to look at that rainbow and tell me the order of the colors?”

  “Violet …” Alys’s voice trailed off and she had to clear her throat and start again. “Violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Oh.”

  They stood silently. The wind changed direction and they both felt the chill of fine rain.

  “But, Janie, that wouldn’t be caused by things getting through the Passage, would it?” Janie shook her head. “Then what do you think it is?”

  “I think if it’s a joke somebody has an odd sense of humor. And they’ve gone to a lot of trouble, and … they have power to spare. Other than that, I honestly don’t know. But I’m scared.”

  EIGHT

  The Second Dream

  “Finish telling us about King Arthur,” said Charles after dinner.

  “Isn’t there anything on television?”

  Charles missed the sarcasm entirely. “The TV’s on the fritz again. Nothing but static.”

  Janie and Alys looked at one another. Claudia was drinking a glass of milk at the table, looking pale and sad but otherwise unharmed. Janie shook her head slightly and shrugged.

  “Wards are up and safe,” she murmured.

  Alys nodded. “All right,” she said to Charles. “We might as well have hot cocoa if we’re going to have stories. And it’s your turn to make it. And not the instant kind.”

  They sat around the fireplace, cupping steaming mugs. Alys told them what she had read while Claudia looked at the pictures.

  “So, Arthur was the crowned king, and he was the best king anybody had ever known even though he was so young. He gath
ered together all the best knights, the strongest and bravest, and they all sat as equals at the Round Table. Everybody thought that he was crazy at first, and that the knights would only fight each other, but they didn’t. They went out and righted wrongs and slew evil monsters and things.

  “And all this time Arthur was guided by Merlin the enchanter, who was the wisest and the most farsighted …” Alys trailed off, not even aware that she had stopped speaking. There was something strange tugging at her memory.

  “Yes? Go on,” said Charles.

  “Uh … the wisest wizard in the land, he was,” said Alys, hearing a notable lack of conviction in her own voice. “And, uh, one day he took Arthur out riding and they came to a lake, and they saw a hand holding a sword sticking out of the lake. Arthur asked who the sword belonged to and Merlin said, the Lady of the Lake. Then a beautiful woman appeared and gave the sword to Arthur, and it was a magic sword, and he always used it after that. Because his other one, the one he’d pulled out of the stone, had gotten broken or something. And this new sword was called Excalibur….”

  Once again Alys’s voice trailed off. Then she looked at Janie, eyes widening. “Excalibur … Excalibur …”

  “Or Caliborn. Depending on your source. Yes.”

  “You mean I’ve got Excalibur upstairs under my bed?”

  “It’s a funny place to put it, but you’ve got it, all right. Now you see why I wasn’t sure about—”

  “But, listen,” interrupted Alys. “If Morgana made that sword, then Morgana must have been the Lady of the Lake. But I thought she was Morgan LeFay, and she fought against the Knights of the Round Table.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear,” said Janie severely. “And I’ve told you, Morgana has had lots of names. Some legends don’t tell the whole story.”

  “What legends don’t tell what whole story?” Charles complained. “I haven’t heard any of this.”

  Alys spoke slowly. “According to tradition, Morgan LeFay was a powerful, evil enchantress. She plotted against Arthur’s knights, and bewitched them every chance she could. She and Merlin were sworn enemies. But—do you mean, Janie, that Morgana didn’t really plot against Arthur and Merlin? Or—”