Ariel

by Steven R. Boyett

  Naturally it was Ariel who found George’s trophy. She called us over to the clump of burned-out trees she and Shaughnessy had run behind the night before. Embedded in a tree trunk was a tooth, its curved yellow-whiteness standing out against the black background. It was a foot long. I worked it loose and gave it to George. It was smooth, cool, and dry. The point was rounded. He stared at it.

  “It’s perfect, George,” I said. “Nothing else around has a tooth like that. Your father will have to believe you.”

  He looked up at me with the tooth clutched in his hands.

  *

  We packed. George shouldered his Boy Scout pack with the tooth tucked safely away. I soberly shook his left hand; his right wrist was still swollen and the middle finger still splinted. You should see the other guy, I thought with amusement.

  He shook hands with Shaughnessy and she pulled him in and gave him a hug. “You be careful,” she told him.

  “I will.”

  “Mind your wrist,” I ordered. “You’ve got a week’s traveling ahead of you even if you make good time. Here.” I handed him the foil packet of beef jerky. “It’ll keep you from having to hunt too much.”

  “Thanks, Pete.” He turned to Ariel. He opened his mouth to say something—thanks, maybe—but she just blinked and nodded. He stepped forward and put his arms around her neck. Tears glistened in his eyes when he pulled away. I glanced at Shaughnessy but her expression was unreadable. Was she envious, I wondered?

  We said goodbye again and walked away in opposite directions. I looked back once, and he saw me and waved.

  His broadsword still dragged the ground when he walked.

  Fourteen

  Now hollow fires burn to black And lights are guttering low Square your shoulders, lift your pack, And leave your friends and go.

  —A. E. Housman, “A Shropshire Lad”

  Walking, walking, walking, and walking. My life since the Change seemed to consist of little more than putting one foot in front of the other and plodding onward. I could grow to hate it—but after more than five years it was the way I lived. I look at what I’ve written here and realize it sounds as if things all happened in rapid-fire sequence, but the truth is that most of it was boring. The dull parts have been left out because they’re not worth mentioning, and there were plenty of them. What comes out in the telling are the highlights.

  A river ran just outside Durham and we filled our flasks and continued. I let Shaughnessy carry the bota, the wine flask. We skirted Durham and I-85 turned north again just outside the town. We camped a few miles north of the town. I could tell Ariel’s leg still hurt, but she never complained. Two nights later we made camp across the Virginia state line.

  *

  I finished reading Don Quixote to Ariel and Shaughnessy before we reached Richmond. Neither of them liked the way the novel ended.

  “It feels like Cervantes just got tired of writing it. The ending’s too abrupt,” complained Shaughnessy. “I know I’m supposed to feel terrible that he dies, but all I feel is shortchanged. I mean, he died in bed!”

  I’d put the novel away and pulled out the road atlas, and was tracing our projected route with a finger. I-85 had just become I-95 and we would be in Richmond by late evening.

  “Live a fast life, die a quiet death,” said Ariel.

  I looked up from the map of Virginia. “Mine ought to be pretty peaceful, then.”

  “Guess that means mine’ll be horribly gruesome,” Shaughnessy mused. “Up to now my life hasn’t been anything to rave over.”

  “Stay with us,” I said, “and I’m sure it’ll get more interesting.”

  She shook her hair away from her face. “Fine.”

  In Richmond we camped on a concrete bank of what the map said was the James River near the downtown area, not far from the Interstate. Ariel kept watch all night; she said she didn’t need the sleep. I’d been sleeping the way I had our last night with George: head on Ariel’s neck, Shaughnessy alone on my sleeping bag. Tonight, though, Shaughnessy and I slept on our respective sides of the unfolded bag, me facing away from her. The concrete was hard under my right side.

  I dreamed again.

  I unbutton her shirt with trembling hands … .

  It went all the way through, exactly as it had before, the same movie rewound and played again.

  At the end of it I woke up trembling and breathing hard. Ariel stood a few feet away, looking at me thoughtfully. Shaughnessy slept with her back to me. I got up quietly, feeling warm wetness in my underwear. I avoided Ariel’s look and unzipped the bottom compartment of my pack, drawing out a baggie of folded toilet paper. “Have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

  “Sure, Pete.” She continued gazing at me thoughtfully. “Be careful.”

  “Right.” I tried to appear casual as I went to the other side of the overpass above the dark river. I pulled down my pants and underwear. Whitish goop was smeared on my pubic hair and the head of my penis. I wiped it off with a soft wad of tissue. I lifted it to my nose and sniffed. Heavy, starchy. I tossed it into the river, fastened my pants, and leaned against the concrete part of the sloping overpass bank, trying to think. I suppose it was what they call a “nocturnal emission,” a wet dream. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before and I was scared.

  Ariel said nothing when I returned. I went straight to her and put my arms around her neck, feeling her softness on the insides of my arms, her coolness against my cheek. “What is it, Pete?” she asked gently.

  I could only shake my head.

  “All right. I’m here.”

  I pulled away from her, hands still pressing the sides of her graceful head. “I’m scared.”

  “Of what?” That same gentle tone, lacking in reproach, filled with concern.

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. Different … pieces of things, fragments. Too much of it is vague. Maybe that’s part of it—uncertainty.”

  “New York.”

  I nodded. “I don’t know what to do when we get there. If we get there.”

  “We’ll help Malachi.”

  “We don’t even know where to meet him. He doesn’t know we’re following him. Ariel, I don’t even know if he’s still alive! He might not have made it this far.”

  “You know better.”

  “We’re probably so far behind him.”

  “He’ll be on the lookout for us. I think he expected we’d follow him; he just didn’t want us to hamper him on the way. If we don’t find him, he’ll find us.”

  “And then?”

  “I can’t say, Pete. We’ll probably try to go up against Shai-tan and her master. Knowing Malachi, that will be the first order of business.”

  “And after that?”

  “If we win?” She blinked. “We’ll have removed a domino from in front of one far more capable. The griffin rider serves someone, too.”

  “The necromancer.”

  She nodded.

  I swallowed and dropped my hands from her face. “Ariel … . I’ve been having … dreams.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Whether you know it or not, Pete, I guard your sleep. Even when I’m asleep I keep a part of me focused on you. When you’re troubled I can keep your sleep dreamless so you’ll at least be rested when you wake up. But lately—” She sighed. “I wake up in the middle of the night because you’re moaning, or making small noises like an animal. Often—” she seemed embarrassed “—you have an erection. Next day we’ll break camp and you’ll be quiet for a long time, most of the morning at least. I’ll know that whatever you dreamt is on your mind, and the peace you’re being robbed of by night is troubled by day, too.” She lowered her head and, with it, her voice, until she whispered. “And whatever those dreams are, I can’t stop them. They’re too strong, or too subtle, for me.”

  And so I told her about the dreams. About how they’d become more graphic, more intense, awakening feelings within me I didn’t want disturbed. I described t
hem in detail, and I told her they made me afraid.

  “When did they start?” she asked.

  I glanced at Shaughnessy’s sleeping form. “Before she joined us, if that’s what you mean.

  “I was just wondering. It would be easier to explain if it was her. But I guess not.”

  “No. They began—” I thought a minute. “I guess about the time we set out from Atlanta. At first it was just a vague something that disturbed my sleep, something I couldn’t pin down when I awoke, except to know that I’d slept poorly. Like something below the surface of a dirty pool—you know something’s there; you can see it. But it’s hazy. Like that.”

  “I’ve been having dreams of my own,” she whispered. “They begin the way yours do, vague feelings that grow into a detailed scene.” She shut her eyes.

  “Ariel? What is it? What’s the dream?”

  She kept her eyes closed but relaxed them a little. “I’m in the woods. I’m running. I don’t know what from or what to. Everything feels very immediate, very real. The wind is whipping my mane back and I can feel the ground as my hooves pound. I’m not quiet as I run, the way I usually am, but loud. I break out from the trees and into a small clearing, and there you are.” She opened her eyes, looking at some invisible point past my right shoulder. “You’re lying down, and when I head toward you, you get up. I try to say something but the words won’t come. In the dream I always know what it is I’m trying to say, but when I wake up I don’t know what it is anymore. You head toward me with your arms spread wide, but you run into something. It’s invisible, but I know it’s like one of those things you showed me once. People used to keep fancy old clocks inside them.”

  “A bell jar?”

  She nodded. “It’s as if you’re in one of those, a giant one. And I can’t get to you and you can’t break out. I think, maybe I can smash it with my horn, and I step forward. Something in your face, in your eyes, makes me stop. I turn around and run away. I can’t see because of the tears in my eyes, and branches crash into my face. That’s where I always wake up, with branches hitting me in the face.”

  We were quiet a long time.

  “What do you think they mean?” I finally asked.

  “Who can say what a dream means? I only wish I knew where they came from.”

  “Our subconscious? Dreams are your mind’s way of—”

  “—Sorting out what happens during the day. I know; I’ve read the same books you have. But I rarely dream, Pete. And I’ve always been able to keep away the dreams that disturb you, up till now. I wonder if they’re being sent.”

  “By what, or who?”

  “Who sent that wind, our first night on the road?”

  “Oh, come on. I’ll grant you an evil wizard in New York, but to send us dreams—”

  “It’s just a thought. I don’t think it seems likely, either.”

  “So what do we do, start taking sleeping pills?”

  “No. They wouldn’t work on me, and you need to be on your guard. I don’t need you groggy if you have to jump up and fight in the middle of the night.”

  “They’re getting steadily worse, and we’ve still got a long way to go.”

  “They get worse the farther north we go, yes. Which makes me wonder about their cause. But our anxiety grows the farther north we go, also, and that seems as plausible to me as the necromancer causing them. More plausible.”

  “Which reminds me—how’s your leg feel?”

  “Like it’s broken all over again. I still remember how that felt.”

  “That has a lot to do with your being afraid of New York, doesn’t it?”

  “It has a lot to do with why I don’t want to go there, yes. But it won’t stop me from going. I guess I feel like I’ve got to make the world safe for unicorns, too.”

  I smiled. “Lower your head.” She complied, and I gently kissed the base of her horn. One would expect the feel of cold bone; what my lips touched was warm and alive. I felt it through my skin like some barely contained, tremendous spark, some powerful healing energy beneath the fire-opal surface. “After this is all over,” I said in a low voice, choppy because my throat kept trying to close, “let’s just wander, the way we did before Atlanta. Just you and me on the road, no Causes.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “We won’t ‘go’ anywhere. No destinations. We can aim toward California, if you want. Go West, young man and unicorn.”

  “After this is over,” she promised. “But not until. If we abandon this now, we’ll never be safe again. Anywhere we went we’d have to hide.”

  For some reason her words made me remember what it was like to die, how it felt to have her there, trying to bring me back. “You brought me back to life, once,” I said.

  “Yes. But I don’t think I could do it again, Pete. I think … it’s one of those things you just can’t do again. You’ve broken some kind of natural order the first time around, and death always has its due. Always. If—you died again and I tried to bring you back … . I think it would kill me. Some large part of me was left behind when I did it before, and I don’t think I’ve got it to leave behind again. And if you died and I couldn’t bring you back—I think that would kill me, too.”

  I looked at the silhouette of the overpass, black against the indigo of the night sky. “The thought of dying used to scare me because I didn’t know what it was. Now it terrifies me because I do. It’s dark out there.”

  “I know. I was there. I saw it, I felt it.”

  I touched her mane, ran fingers gingerly down its length. “Where are we headed, I wonder? I don’t mean New York, I mean … you know. Destiny. That sort of thing.”

  She laughed softly, and the tinkling had returned. “Now who’s trying to look down future roads? Too many side streets, Pete, too many places to branch off. Forks lead to forks lead to forks. It doesn’t do to wonder. Just do.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “You could never be a unicorn. You think too much.”

  “Yeah. But you could be a woman.”

  She said she’d keep watch the rest of the night and I went back to bed. Shaughnessy tossed in her sleep as I lay down on my side of the sleeping bag.

  And you, Shaughnessy, I asked silently. Do you have your dreams as well?

  *

  Shaughnessy nudged me awake. “People,” she told me, stopping me in mid-stretch and yawn. “Over there.” She nodded toward the overpass. Four men stood at the guardrail on the near side, all armed and wearing backpacks. As I watched, they stepped over the guardrail and started down the bank, keeping their knees bent to avoid slipping on the slope of dew-soaked grass.

  “How long have they been there?”

  “Barely a minute. Ariel hid; she doesn’t think they saw her. I woke you up.”

  I nodded. “I’d better wake up George—” I stopped, remembering. “Never mind. Shit. All right, let’s get ready for a scene, but keep it calm. You’re my girlfriend. Stay close to me and look helpless and harmless. We’re headed to Florida from, uh—”

  “Canada,” she suggested.

  “Okay.” I reached for the Aero-mag, keeping Shaughnessy in front of me to block their view. I broke it down—it separates midway down the length—and gave her the mouthpiece half. “Can you use one of these?”

  “You aim this end and blow into this one, right?”

  “Right. Blow hard. And be sure you inhale before you put your mouth to it.” I handed her two more darts. “Stick these point-down into the back of your pants. Put your shirt over them. Yeah, like that. If it comes down to it, aim toward the chest; it’s easier to hit.” I watched them coming our way. Three of them carried swords. One wore a rapier, one a cutlass, and one—I frowned—a samurai sword. The last man had a double-bladed axe slung through his belt with the business end resting at his hip. They stopped in front of us and one of them, a short man with thin blond hair and a slightly darker beard, nodded to me. “Morning.”

  “Hi,” I answered.

&
nbsp; “You wouldn’t happen to have a map we could sneak a peek at, would you? We’re headed north a little ways and we want to make sure we’ve got our bearings straight.”

  “Sure, I’ve got a road atlas you can look at.” I looked at Shaughnessy. “You want to get it from my pack, babe?”

  She smiled, a wonderfully vacant look in her eyes. “Sure thing.” She held herself very straight as she walked, trying not to reveal the broken-down blowgun tucked under her pants and shirt. It didn’t show unless you knew it was there in the first place.

  “Headed far?” I asked, trying not to watch Shaughnessy too carefully.

  “We were thinking of maybe seeing what Washington’s like. Heard anything about it?”

  “Not a thing. We’re headed Florida way, ourselves.”

  He nodded.

  The one with the samurai sword jerked his chin toward Fred. “That yours?”

  Time to dumb it up—“Yeah. I’ve only had it a little while. Never had to use it or anything. I used to have a cutlass like yours—” I indicated the one on the blond man’s hip “—but it broke when I was cutting firewood. Cheapshit thing.” I felt I ought to be chewing on a length of straw.

  Shaughnessy brought the road atlas and stood close to me, beaming. I put my arm around her waist and handed the atlas to the cutlass wearer. The two darts at the small of Shaughnessy’s back pressed against my forearm; the blowgun rested against the bend in my elbow. I’m sure we looked the perfect Christian couple. Take the picture now, Henrietta.

  “Yeah, if they’re tempered wrong, the blade gets brittle,” he said, thumbing through the atlas. He shrugged. “Happens.”

  “Mind if I see your blade?” asked the samurai swordsman.

  My grip tightened against Shaughnessy. “No, go ahead.” She cast me a quick, cautioning glance. I smiled down at her.

  He went to Fred and picked it up. He held the scabbard at his hip beside his own and drew the blade. Flash: it caught the sun as it sped out. Fast.

  He looked at me. I smiled. He nodded, then put his hand on the blade. I gritted my teeth, still smiling stupidly. “Is it a good sword?” I asked.