The Summer Country

by James A. Hetley

  Her fingers tingled.

  {Jo.}

  The word jolted her like an electric shock. Concentrating, she reached out again, felt the tingling again.

  "David?"

  {We are here.}

  Her hand jerked away. We?

  She gritted her teeth, touched the ferns a third time, and closed her eyes. Something brushed her mind like butterfly wings and then left the memory of a kiss on her forehead.

  {Muirneach.}

  Beloved. He'd scrounged half of his scanty Gaelic vocabulary out of songs, a dozen dialects from the Shetlands to Cape Breton. You'd think the man would take lessons or at least buy a language tape if he hoped to make a living as a Celtic musician . . . .

  "Where are you?"

  The signal dissolved into hiss again, spurting out scattered words. { . . . all around . . . everything . . . alive . . .}

  Terror knotted deep in her belly. This voice spoke with Maureen's madness and the strange fire that had burned through Jo's hands into the gun. She didn't dare look in the water of the pool. She'd see insanity looking back.

  {Do not be afraid.}

  Sure. That was what the voices in the Bible always said. Jo whimpered and then managed to form her fear into words.

  "What's happening to me?"

  {. . . already know . . . of magic . . . you . . . power . . . blood . . . bend land to your will . . .}

  "Bullshit. If that was true, I wouldn't be sitting in the bottom of a hole."

  {. . . fall because you expect to fall . . .} came through a break in the static.

  Yeah, she thought, piecing things together.

  And the gun and lighter worked because she expected them to work. And she caught fish because she expected to catch fish, but there were only five because that was the most she could believe in.

  "Why are you speaking with David's voice?"

  The signal strengthened, as if David-ness needed to think of her to pull itself together. {We are David. We are his blood, his breath, his thoughts. The land is David, and David is the land.}

  Ghost fingers walked down her spine and touched her twitch-spot, the freaky bundle of nerves that caused a jerk she couldn't control. David sometimes played with it to tease her, and that was one of his less loveable habits.

  "Cut that out, you bastard!"

  {You did not believe that we were David.}

  "Why do you fade in and out?"

  {. . . scattered . . . lose focus . . . distraction . . .}

  "So now you've got somebody to talk to as you die," she muttered, half to herself. "Sometimes. Big help."

  {Climb . . . waterfall.}

  She'd avoided the rocks next to the waterfall. Coated with wet moss and lichen and the same slick green algae that had greased her drop into this hellhole, they were treacherous.

  Remember the rope. She grabbed one end of the rope and hauled it in, forming a loose loop between her left elbow and hand. The stupid thing looked like some kind of gaudy shoelace, a purple and orange woven sheath of synthetic yarn. It felt soft, dead limp, and pliable, and it gave a little like a stiff rubber band when she snagged it on some rocks, before she jerked it free.

  It was a specialized climbing rope. She'd seen them described on that TV sports show about competitive rock-climbing. Frigging synthetic climbing rope designed to absorb the impact load of falls. The bastard had conjured it out of thin air.

  Great. Now that she had it, what the hell was she going to do with it? Throw? What she needed now was a nice thick pole across the sinkhole, a fallen spruce or something like it. Then she could loop the rope over it and climb out, hand over hand.

  Thirty feet of pull-ups, she reminded herself. She was the girl with no biceps.

  Besides, there wasn't any pole, and she couldn't see anything else to hook a rope on. If that slimeball had just tied the damn thing off before throwing it down . . . .

  The right side of the waterfall seemed to carry more of that eerie glow than the left. A sign from David? She slung the rope across her body and clambered over to that side.

  She reminded herself to test each hold before she trusted her life to it, to lodge her feet behind the boulders so she couldn't slip off the greasy tops. One thing she'd learned from the last few days: keep her weight over her feet. If she leaned forward, the angle would force them to slide. Up, up, five feet, ten feet, past the easy stuff, she stepped gently and gripped the rounded cold knobby slimy handholds.

  She tried to split the difference between dry bare rock and the pounding shower of the stream, climbing in the cold mist but not getting soaked and blinded. Looking up and squinting through the spray, she saw something she'd never noticed before. The stream had carved a notch in the rim, cut the overhang back into the rump-busting slide that had first caught her. The water actually curved, spiraling down into the sinkhole, and the notch was hidden from the floor.

  {. . . left . . .} came crackling through the static. Left moved her further into the wet, into ice-water splattering on her head and sluicing down her neck.

  The water had carved buckets in the limestone, leaving fluted honeycomb shapes like ice melted out from under a dripping downspout. Her feet felt sure, her hands strong and deft, her balance serene and relaxed. She'd found a rhythm to her climb.

  "Where the hell were you when I was climbing before?"

  {. . . lost . . . found anger . . . focused . . .}

  So the slime was alive enough for David to whisper through its life. She paused in a secure stance and scouted her route. She guessed she had about ten feet to go, closer to the rim than she'd ever climbed before. A rounded lip crowned her view, a smooth humped sheet of water with an undercut below it and then a ledge that must have been harder stone.

  She couldn't see beyond the lip. Jo shrugged; whatever was up there couldn't be any worse. "Famous last words," she muttered under her breath.

  Shut up and climb. She quit worrying about a fall. From this height, she'd either hit the pool like the first time, or smash her head. Each of her moves found a hold, each gentle probe with fingers or toes. She felt like she was floating up the wet rock, even making love to it, instead of fighting it.

  Her right hand reached the ledge, then her left. She had to hoist a knee up on it because there were no higher handholds below the rim. Slowly, delicately, in perfect balance, she brought her final boot up and moved her weight to it and stood up. Her head rose above the rim.

  Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!

  The rim came just below her breasts. The rim was the bottom of a funnel. Now she knew what an ant lion saw, lying in wait at the bottom of his cone of sand. A trap. Jo stared up a wet sheet of rock, smooth and sloped and coated green with algae and slick as a TV game-show host.

  She tried pressing her palms down on the slope, and they slipped right back to her sides. Her boots had perfect footing. She could stand here all day, she could even lie down and take a frigging nap using the frigging rope as a frigging pillow, but there wasn't another hold within ten feet of her.

  The edge of the stream flowed across her belly and trickled down her legs, cold and indifferent. It had a way out. She scooted carefully sideways, away from the water, and her right toe found empty space. End of the ledge, end of the road. She shuffled back again. If she went in the other direction, the stream would wash her right off the ledge. No thanks.

  Twenty feet away, trees crept up to the edge of the slick green limestone. It might as well have been a mile. Lumps of rock poked through the dirt and tangled roots, ranging from beautiful hand and foot holds up to boulders big enough to moor the Queen Mary. Beyond them, dirt and forest stretched away to level ground and safety. Jo felt tears running down her cheeks.

  "Damn you, David! This is even worse than sitting on the bottom and waiting to starve!"

  Her fingers brushed coiled rope and then gripped it so hard her knuckles cracked. What did she think it was, a goddamn fashion statement?

  Jo whacked herself on the forehead. Som
etimes she was just fucking stupid. Time to play cowgirl. She made sure of her footing and then shrugged the rope off her shoulder. Three tries at a slipknot for a noose persuaded her that Scouts and sailors had different kinds of fingers than she did. Anything she tied that slipped did it much too enthusiastically to trust with her life.

  Finally, she just shook out a loop of doubled rope. Swinging it around her head, she heaved it at a likely-looking nub of rock and saw it land about ten feet to the left.

  "Some cowgirl you make," she muttered. "How the hell do you throw a snake?"

  Swing again, miss again. This time, the rope splatted down about fifteen feet to the other side. She retrieved it, fingers slimy from the green goo the rope picked up in its slither.

  "It's okay," she muttered. "Take your time. We aren't going anywhere."

  Leaning up against the rock lip cramped her movements. "It would be real nice," she added, "to just step back a pace and be able to get my shoulder and hips into the throw."

  She looked down and scratched that idea. There were a lot of rocks between her and the water. Sharp rocks. How the hell did she ever miss those things the first time?

  Swing, throw, miss. Swing, throw, miss. Swing, throw, hit! The rope draped over a lump of rock, and she twitched gently on the two lines leading from her hand. The damn thing lay doubled, the woven sheath construction too limp, too pliable, to form a nice wide loop like a good cow-rope noose. The rope curved and her pull dragged it off the nubbin again and it slithered back into the wet grease.

  Swing, throw, miss. Swing, throw, miss. Swing, throw, hit, slither. Swing, throw, hit, slither.

  Jo gritted her teeth. Son-of-a-bitch rope was damn well going to land on that nub of rock and it was damn well going to loop over it and it was damn well going to catch and hold. If she could make wet green wood burn with a glare, she damn well could breathe a little stiffness into a rope.

  She narrowed her eyes and hefted the doubled climbing rope again. Anger seemed to trigger whatever it was she did, and she was seriously working on getting angry, right now.

  She swung the rope again, threw it, controlled her glare. The noose floated out into a beautiful curve, the two threads separating into the prettiest loop she'd ever seen. They settled like a pearl necklace around the nubbin of rock, and she pulled tight against it, feeling the strength of her anchor in the deep thrum of taut springy rope.

  Heat boiled in her belly and flushed strength into her arms. She pulled herself up and over the final lip and slid, hand over hand, through the slimy algae and up the funnel of rock until her knuckles bumped the rough bark of tree-roots. Gently, one hand at a time, she shifted from the rope to firm rock and still more distant holds. She brought her knees onto grit instead of grease and finally gathered her feet under her body to stand, hugging a dry cedar as if the spiraling bark was her lover's body.

  "David, I'm out," she whispered.

  {. . . .}

  No words. She barely imagined the faintest hint of exhausted thought, buried under the long slow dreams of trees and the bright darting quicksilver of whatever squirrels used for brains. David had scattered again, now that she was safe.

  Jo slumped against the tree, exhausted and hungry, her legs so shaky she slid down the bark and thumped her butt on a lumpy root. Some food would be nice, right now, she thought. Double cheeseburger with fries. A half-gallon of Ben and Jerry's finest. Flaming kebabs down at The Riverside, with a pitcher of dark ale and a basketful of garlic bread.

  Useless thoughts. She ran through her list of assets: one revolver with eight remaining bullets and some kind of a hex she could overcome if she got mad enough, one Bic lighter maybe half-full, one Swiss army knife, one yellow ski jacket covered with green slime, the clothes she stood up in. To hell with the rope: that thing was heavy. Besides, from now on she was damn well going to watch where she put her feet.

  She had to find David. Whatever was happening to him, she had to find him and stop it.

  {. . . dragon . . .} barely rose above the background noise of forest life. She remembered the great obsidian snake with its cryptic references to a Master.

  She could follow water back the way she came. The stream crossed the trail, and the trail led back to the dragon.

  If that Master was behind David's problems, the scumbag had better watch out. She had just gained one additional asset: a belief in magic and a faint but growing sense of how to control her powers. Somebody's ass was about to get fried, and she didn't think it was hers.

  Damn Maureen!

  * * *

  Sean followed her touch on the forest gently, gently, in his head. He didn't dare to think of moving until she was well out of sight and hearing. One more bullet and he was dead.

  He coughed quietly, the jerking muscles rousing knife-sharp pains in his chest and side. Something lumpy scratched at his throat and he coughed again, spitting out blood. Bitch. She'd blown a hole in his lung and another in his liver. That was bad enough, but her curse really had put venom on the bullets.

  "I wish you joy of each other," he muttered, remembering his jesting words to Dougal and Maureen. Mixing the two quests, Fiona for Brian and Dougal for Maureen, began to look like a mistake similar to letting a pyromaniac loose in a fireworks factory. Sean had thought he'd find an ally against his damned half-brother, and look what he got, instead.

  The older one, Jo, was further away now. Sean allowed himself to curl around the stabbing pain in his gut. He'd just stood there in shock after the first bullet slammed into him. Then the second tore through his belly and out his back. Only instinct dropped him out of the line of fire and froze him into faked death, before she’d witched a third.

  Witch blood. The genes of Old Ones and humans mixed unpredictably. Besides the sterility thing, Power skipped and surfaced in chaotic variations. Even untrained, this redheaded witch was dangerous--nearly as dangerous as Fiona.

  He coughed again and spat out a deformed lump of copper and lead. The poison and his instinctive antidote had tarnished the bright red metal jacket to the green of a weathered statue.

  Sean needed to follow the woman, follow her carefully. The Power of the Summer Country would pull her back to Brian and her sister. He could use her for revenge, use her against Fiona and Brian before he passed his pain back to the bitch with added interest. She was far enough away now that he dared to move.

  He forced himself to his hands and knees. Healing tissue screamed at him, and he panted for air. Racking coughs cleared more blood and torn tissue from his lung.

  He reminded himself to just move very carefully. All his energy must concentrate on healing. He was in no condition to challenge the bitch right now. After she’d fought Dougal and maybe Fiona, she'd be weaker. And besides, he couldn't leave the forest until Fiona released him.

  That would give him time to plan.

  Something else detached itself from the shadows and followed the woman--Dougal's mutated black leopard. It was about as big as a lioness.

  Lovely. Now he had to hide from that, as well. Sean squandered some of his precious hoard of Power on masking the scent of his blood.

  The cat stalked Jo for about a dozen yards. Then it shied away from her trail and looked for safer game.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Maureen played chess against Brian. The position seemed surreal, like her life since Liam and the ice-storm alley. This pattern of pieces hadn't grown from any normal opening and development, but she made the best of what her dream offered to her. At least the rules for moving remained the same.

  She'd schemed and even sacrificed her queen to force a passed pawn and advance it to the seventh rank, protected by a rook. Brian ignored the threat because he had his own attack and the potential queen was blocked from direct view of his king.

  He picked up his own queen and moved it three squares along the black diagonal. "Mate in one move," he said, with Dougal's voice.

  She looked up. It was Dougal on the other side of the board, not Brian. She hadn't
noticed the switch. His sly smile implied a double meaning to the threat.

  She glared at him with her teeth bared. Chess was not a game. Chess was war. Chess was domination. Chess was a battle of wills in which your opponent must be destroyed--not just defeated, but destroyed.

  Chess was life.

  She ignored Dougal as she looked over the position, noting his forces that backed her king into a corner and the single bishop's move that would force the checkmate. Queening her pawn would be useless. None of her other pieces could intervene, could even move to a point to interpose their bodies in sacrifice. Dougal was sure of his win.

  She smiled, and advanced her pawn. Dougal shook his head and reached for the replacement queen.

  "Knight," she said. He blinked. "Check."

  The knight reached out with his crooked move, the only move that could fly over another piece, and attacked Dougal's king. The king retreated one space. Dougal's threatened mate still hung over the board.

  She advanced another pawn, the single-space and diagonal threat of the weakest piece on the board. "Check."

  If he moved his king further, to capture the undefended pawn, he'd be even more exposed. She could draw with perpetual check. Instead, he captured with his queen, dividing his forces and removing the checkmate threat. Maureen could cover her king now, and battle on.

  Instead, she moved her bishop along the white diagonal. "Check, and mate."

  Dougal's queen sat on his only escape square.

  Her dream faded back into the stone walls, taking the inlaid marble board and the ivory chessmen with it and leaving cold, damp loneliness behind.

  Those were her favorite strategies, the feints and the unexpected moves, the misdirection. Offer her enemy a goal juicy enough to tantalize and make it just one move further off than her own attack would take. Sacrifice, even her most valuable pieces. Then strike for the throat, with a force so weak it was easy to overlook.