The Summer Country

by James A. Hetley

  Jo coughed. Her throat felt like cracked mud in a dried-up creek-bed. Her wrist stung where the vine had rooted, her knees and hips ached like someone had cut them open and sewn burning coals inside, and her eyes were full of the sand of hours of unblinking sight.

  A scream broke into the tangle of her anger. She sorted out the clashing images and found a focus.

  It was David.

  She forced her muscles to move and staggered to her feet. She managed one jerky step and fell face-first in the dirt. Her feet were numb, no feeling from her knees down to her toes. She blinked and cursed and crawled over to David, to the cage of vines that held David.

  They shriveled into brown ash before her eyes, giving up a smell of burning foulness. Her hand reached out and then jerked back, afraid of what it would find under the dust. The forest had eaten him. Could a half-digested meal be human? Could it even live?

  She looked at her own wrist, where the briars had joined her flesh. Red dots like a healing rash speckled her skin. She gritted her teeth and touched David, brushing the dust away from his face, from his closed eyelids and nose and cheeks, daring to look.

  He was David. He'd lost weight, and his skin shone waxy pale under the angry red welts and pockmarks of what looked like the aftermath of the world's worst case of poison ivy, but he was David. He was alive.

  His screaming stopped when she touched him. She felt his recognition, as she had felt it when she dove into the forest's web to find him and bind him and draw him back.

  She'd won.

  She'd wrestled the forest for his soul and won.

  Someone offered her water. She drank it greedily, the cold wetness soothing her parched throat. She cradled David's head in her arms and dribbled water down his throat and held him against the racking coughs as he rejoined the human race.

  His hand jerked and twitched and then steadied as he reached up and stroked her cheek. "Jo," he croaked, and then, "I love you."

  "Hush." She held his head against her breasts. She felt a shivery warmth there, not sex but mothering. She wanted to open up her blouse and suckle life back into him.

  Feet intruded into the Madonna scene. She traced them up legs to find Maureen and Brian.

  "Where the hell did you come from?"

  They shouldn't have been able to sneak up on her through the forest. The forest saw everything.

  Then she remembered, hazy through the fading bond.

  She remembered their coming into the forest, and she remembered the skulking bastard she'd shot creeping up on them, and she remembered the fierce hungry thrill when she and David had hurled the forest's rage at him and tripped him and swallowed him alive. She also remembered Maureen's threats.

  The forest had wanted to eat them both, Maureen and Brian. The forest hated fire and feared everything on two legs. It had reached out for them, and Jo and David fought it back. The battle was vague in her mind, but a fox was bound up in it, and an oak almost as old as the hill on which it stood. Both had fought on Maureen's side.

  "Goddamn you, why couldn't you just leave us alone?"

  Maureen blinked. "Leave you trapped here? What kind of a bitch do you think I am? You're my sister! I had to get you out! Either that, or die myself!"

  Jo gritted her teeth. "I should have let the forest eat you. We were happy. You've got no idea what it's like, joining the land. It's all your goddamn fault, anyway. You dragged all of us into this fucking mess."

  Then the last threads of the spell finally broke. Jo shuddered, staring into the black chasm of what she'd done. She had nearly died. David had nearly died, and the land had made death seem so inviting that in the end, both of them had nearly reached out for it.

  Maureen's eyes rolled up, and she collapsed into a heap of dirty clothes around a stick doll. Jo jerked with shock, finally noticing details: hollow eyes like bruises in her face, wrist and elbow bones standing out so sharp they almost cut the skin, pallor that made her freckles stand out like spattered paint.

  That was her sister. Someone had done that to her sister!

  Fear surged through Jo, and then cold rage. Maureen looked like one of those survivors in the photos of Dachau.

  "Brian, what the hell did you drag her into?" Jo felt something dangerous pressing against her eyeballs. That clone of Buddy Johnson stood about an inch from getting his ass fried.

  He seemed to know it. He held up a hand and knelt down to gently ease Maureen's position. "Peace, woman! I'm just carrying her to a place where she can get some food and rest. Ask David. He and I were both captured within minutes of coming here. She set me free this morning. She'd already killed the man who did this."

  Jo fumbled her way out of Maureen's jacket, took the lighter out, and tossed both of them to Brian. "Get her covered. Make a fire, warm her up. Get some water into her. You know this goddamn place, for Chrissakes get her some fucking food!"

  He just stared at her.

  "Goddamn you, move your ass! Do I have to light a fucking fire under you?"

  David shook his head, still groggy, and looked up at Brian. "Sisters," he said, as if he was cussing. "They fight like cats, but God help you if you dare threaten one of them."

  The pins and needles of her waking feet proved that she was alive. She was alive and held a living David in her lap.

  She noticed a briar next to David's hand, green and wiry and covered with thorns. It moved. Rage took her, and she ripped it out of the ground--a foot, three feet, five feet of rooted horror. It broke loose and shriveled in her hand. She threw the blackened remnant into a bush and hoped David hadn't seen.

  She stared at her shaking hand. The rash throbbed with her racing heartbeat, and she thought of asphalt. Nice, safe, dead asphalt.

  * * *

  Maureen tasted blood. She must have cut her lip when she fell. Damn fool theatrical stunt to pull, fainting in the middle of a fight. Debate Club wouldn't permit it, but the Drama Club might. The world fuzzed in and out, balancing on the foggy edge between reality and dream.

  Blood, the little worm boring in the back of her mind muttered. Remember the taste of Fiona's blood? Remember what it told you? Do you have the guts to run a blood test on yourself?

  Was she pregnant?

  The thought formed ice in her belly. She lay there, limp, eyes closed, and wondered. Words echoed around in gray emptiness, bouncing off the walls of her future. Was she pregnant? If so, who was the father?

  And, what would she do when she found out?

  Three questions. Three questions about her goddamn belly, not anybody else's. Not the pope's, not Father Donovan's, not even Sister Anne's back at St. John's School.

  She'd asked how long sperm remained alive inside the human woman. Memories stirred, rolled over, and sat up. The past spoke to her in the dusty words from a medical text on anatomy a high-school friend had stolen from the library. Adults only! the circulation stamp shouted in heavy red ink. Black-market Sex Ed. It showed clinical detail to curious teenagers who had no other source. That was where she had found out about puberty, about why Buddy had used rubbers with Jo but never wasted one on her.

  Sperm remains viable for up to three days inside the human female, said the dry clinical voice of the pages. The translation was, Dougal's slime still swam around in her, mixed with Brian's seed. Her skin crawled at the thought. For a moment, she thought she'd puke again.

  An egg can be fertilized for anywhere up to twenty-four hours after ovulation. So a woman had a four-day range in any cycle of the moon, to become pregnant. Russian roulette is what it was, one bullet in seven chambers. Basis of Rhythm and Blues, a highly questionable method of contraception endorsed by Father Donovan. Like he'd really know.

  And women tended to be more interested in sex when they were fertile. That was Nature's little joke, but then, remember She's a Mother.

  Thirty hours from zygote to mitosis, three days for the embryo to migrate to the uterus, one week to implantation, all rough figures that change from one woman to another. Fiona must ha
ve gotten herself knocked up the first day she had Brian, to taste like that. Witch's luck, or witch's skill.

  All Maureen would have would be a fertilized egg, at most.

  Did she have the guts to look? Did she have the guts to live with the answers?

  Maureen tasted the coppery salt in her mouth. When would a lab test know, she wondered. When would the proper hormones and other changes show up in her blood, her urine?

  Not for weeks. There was another way. The dirt she lay in told her of it, lent her power. It was her land. It obeyed her. It supported her. That was the only reason she still lived.

  {Look inside yourself,} it said. {A witch has more ways of sight than eyes. You don't need a crystal ball.}

  She lay in her half-faint, voices murmuring around her, feeling warmth, feeling wetness in her mouth washing away the blood, feeling the gentle touch of concern. Brian, she knew. Brian held her. Brian cared for her.

  She'd fucked him. Twice. She'd been too busy wrestling with herself to pay much attention to him in the process. Next time, she'd try to do better. Someday, she might even be able to kiss him.

  You're dodging, the worm said. Are you a coward? Does the witch who killed Dougal fear to learn the truth? She can bind Fiona but can't control her own belly? As Maureen thought about it, sweat turned clammy on her skin.

  She looked.

  She found an egg. It had been fertilized. The helix strands of DNA said Dougal was the father. Maureen's stomach twisted like a writhing snake.

  Abortion? Adoption? Tough it out? She could kill the fragile life with the slightest touch of Power . . . .

  She had started to turn her thoughts down those tangled alleys before she noticed another minute blob of protoplasm. Twins. Different eggs, released at different times. Brian had wound the chromosomes in that one.

  Twins, by different fathers. One she ached for, one she had hated enough to kill. God was such a joker. There hadn't ever been twins in her family, as far back as she knew the tree and all the monkeys swinging in it.

  The Pierce women, she thought, the O'Brian women, both sides, we're small. We're skinny, we're flat-chested. None of those big-hipped big-boobed earth mothers who can birth twins and then go out to finish plowing the back forty with one baby hanging on each tit.

  The irony of it all sickened her. Thanks a hell of a lot, God. I've just swept eighteen years of ghosts out of the fucking madhouse and You go and dump a new load of trauma in my lap. Some people can't stand the sight of happiness.

  And then she let her inner eye wander, through the rest of her belly, the rest of her body, and realized neither baby ever could be born. Her body would reject them. Her body simply didn't have the strength for pregnancy--didn't have the fats and sugars and whatevers floating through her bloodstream to build placenta and nourish one baby, let alone two.

  She'd lost too much weight, between the dungeon and the magic. She'd barely been able to ovulate. Dougal had killed his own son. Brian could try again, next month or the next. "Feed up good and you can still be a mommy," her body said.

  God's own abortion, she thought. Even He takes steps to protect the mother's life. God aborts embryos and fetuses all the time. She remembered an obscure statistic from Dendro. 202: something like 90 percent of the fruit set on an apple tree got aborted, every year. No matter when it starts, life isn't nearly as sacred as some people like to think. There's always more of it than the world can hold.

  Never count your chickens before they hatch.

  Relief jangled with pain and loss. She wondered what they would have looked like, what they would have grown up to be. She thought she probably always would. I'll cry for them, she thought, sometime when I can find the strength for tears.

  The worm stirred again in her brain. It asked, What would you have done? To hell with chickens. Would you have flushed a baby away with a used Kotex?

  Don't know, she thought. Damned glad I won't have to choose.

  She opened her eyes and stared up at Brian. She smiled, weakly, through tears.

  "Sorry."

  He shook his head. "I told you to save your strength. Wait here. I'll get some people and horses down from the castle. They'll carry all of you up the hill."

  Maureen blinked her eyes, puzzled. "Why should they help us?"

  "They need you. This land is still feudal. People band together around power, for protection. You're their protector."

  She swallowed bitterness. "I don't want slaves."

  "Then don't treat them like slaves. They'll stay."

  "Brian, will you stay?" She held her breath.

  He bent down and gently kissed her forehead. "Yes. I think it's time I retired from the hero business. The Pendragons have gotten fifty years out of me. Whatever's left is yours."

  She could breathe again.

  * * *

  Maureen watched Brian's back disappearing through the woods. "Castle," he'd said. Her home. She lay in the dirt and leaves of her own bonded land. She could feel it in her bones.

  The stench of the dragon hung over them like a cloud. As far as the forest was concerned, the rotting meat was just so much food and fertilizer. The way she felt now, though, the stinking hulk revolted her. She was too damn tired to take the larger view.

  David stirred in Jo's lap. "Is that guy really dead?"

  "Which one?" Maureen's voice came out as a whisper, nearly as hoarse as the croaks of the ravens in the trees.

  "The one we grabbed. The one over there."

  Jo answered. "He's dead. He isn't held in limbo, like we were. I felt him die."

  David looked like he wanted to vomit. "We ate him."

  "He deserved to die," Maureen whispered. "Treacherous, murderous, conniving bastard, he deserved to die. He would have killed all of us. Don't lose sleep over Sean."

  Treacherous, murderous, conniving--those adjectives all fit the land, as well. She could feel it. She had some work to do, some attitudes to change. She'd leave enough dangers in, though, to serve as guards against Fiona.

  But her blood belonged here. Brian had talked to her about Power, about Blood, about Old Ones, but the words hadn't really stuck. After all that had happened, all that she'd done, that sense of belonging finally said it all.

  She and Jo weren't even human.

  "You're staying?" David aimed his face at Maureen, but he looked like he was afraid of Jo's choice.

  Maureen answered, anyway. "I'm staying. I'm not crazy here." She shot a glance at Jo. "I can talk to trees, and nobody calls the shrink. And if I think 'They' are out to get me, it's probably true."

  Jo stroked David's forehead. "You're a hero in this land, darling. You've killed a dragon. Bards were always powers in Celtic legend. You have a place here."

  David suddenly looked even paler. "I'm not a hero, Jo. I ran away. I only came back and fought because there wasn't any place to run to."

  Jo laughed and stroked his forehead again. "I'd prefer to live with a smart hero, any day. I've got no use for a dead one."

  "You can stay at my castle until you find another place," Maureen said. "Fiona told me there was lots of room around here, unclaimed land. Of course, she is Sean's sister. He was a champion liar, too."

  Jo stared down at David, her face suddenly a mask. "I don't know."

  She's waiting for something, Maureen thought. She wants him to tip the balance. What does he want to do?

  "Jo," David whispered, "Jo, I like living with four seasons. Let's go home. Otherwise, every time I touch a leaf, I'll wonder if it's going to drink my blood, suck the marrow out of my bones, eat my soul. Even the dirt is hungry here. I feel it. You may be born to it. I'm not."

  A faint smile eased Jo's face. "Thanks, dear. This land scares me." She hesitated. "No, I'm lying. I scare me. I'm afraid of the woman this land creates in me."

  She finally looked across to Maureen. "You say you aren't crazy here? Well, I am. I don't like being crazy. I enjoyed killing that creep. I even did it twice, it was so much fun."

  Mauree
n nodded. "I never belonged, back in Naskeag Falls. You don't belong in the Summer Country. We're not twins. We never were twins. We're some kind of mirror between the worlds. It reverses our souls, not our faces."

  The orange tom had reappeared from wherever cats go. She caressed him, snuggling him under her filthy ski jacket and ruffling his fur. "Marmalade is walking between worlds, too. He and his harem seem to be moving in with me. Fiona wouldn't let them just be cats. Maybe you can ship us some cases of tuna or sardines."

  She looked up at Jo again. "Come and visit. Both of you. I promise to make the forest behave itself."

  A tiger-stripe butted Jo's hand, demanding attention, while a gray-and-white feline settled against David's side and started to wash her paw. The three cats purred in counterpoint harmony, almost loud enough to shake her bones.

  Maureen heard voices and the thump of hooves. Brian, she thought, she hoped, she prayed. It had better not be strangers. The cats could put up a better fight than we could.

  It was Brian, leading three horses and two women with food and wineskins. They hoisted their patients into saddles, funny little saddles without any horn to grab hold of, and Maureen had never sat on a horse since summer camp. They handed up three cats, to perch neatly in loaf-shapes crosswise behind the saddles as if they rode every day. Each walker took a set of reins and led the horses off through the woods.

  All she had to do was keep her butt on the horse. Big as it was, the beast seemed placid enough, rocking along in a slow walk suitable for small children and fools and invalids, and she didn't have any reins to worry about so she concentrated on wine and cheese. Good wine. Good cheese.

  Maureen looked up from a bite, and the skin along her spine prickled. A red-furred shape stood sentinel on a boulder beside the trail, underneath a huge oak tree. Maybe the forest had forgiven her threats of fire.

  The fox didn't stir a hair as the parade ambled up, close enough to touch it. Maureen reached out for it with her thoughts.

  Thank you. Thank both of you. How did you keep the forest from killing us?