Summerland

by Michael Chabon

  She ran along the spiral corridor, across the carpeting made from the hides of five hundred poor, peeled animals, and over to the big black iron cage. The Sasquatch lay asleep, a great miserable heap in a corner of the cage. She was snoring, and loudly, but the harrumphing rumble of her lungs was nearly drowned out by the thunder of the roared oaths that was coming from outside. Every so often the entire structure of the giant's lodge would shake with a sound like an enormous drawer of spoons. The whole thing was probably going to come crashing down on their heads any second.

  "Yo," Jennifer T. said, whispering at first, though she doubted the giant could hear her, or anything, at that moment. "Yo, Mrs. Sasquatch. Taffy." There was no reply. She raised her voice. "Hey, Bigfoot!"

  Once again the heap of ragged skins seemed to assemble itself with startling rapidity, and there before her, glowering down with great staring yellow-orange eyes like two glowing chunks of amber, stood the lanky, powerful creature which, only yesterday, Jennifer T. would have been inclined to refer to as a giant. Taffy did not look pleased.

  "Look at my feet," she said, in a low, steady, angry voice. "Do they look inordinately large to you?"

  They were like a human's feet, more or less, big toe, pinky toe, and three in between, but they were covered all over with thick black fur, and the big toe, come to think of it, looked a lot more like the thumb of a hand. And they were nearly half again as long as a big man's foot, and half again as wide. If you tried to put shoes on them, Jennifer T. thought, you would need at least a size twenty-nine or thirty. She did not know how to answer. She had no desire to injure the Sasquatch's feelings, but the feet really did look awfully big.

  "Relative to the rest of me, of course," the Sasquatch said. "I'm nine feet tall. Of course they're bigger than yours.''

  "I guess not," Jennifer T. said. "Actually, when you look at it that way, they're really almost kind of dainty."

  The Sasquatch looked more pleased than she had until now, but when Jennifer T. told her that Mooseknuckle John had lost his wager, and explained that she was taking advantage of the giant's being a sore loser to sneak in and spring Taffy, the creature's smile faded.

  "I have nowhere to go," she said, with an air of deep bitterness.

  "Then come with us," Jennifer T. said. "We're going across the Far Territories."

  The Sasquatch's dark face softened in its rich soft mantle of fur.

  "The Far Territories," she said, her voice thick. "I haven't seen the Great Woods since the day Suckmarrow John and his trapping party snared me."

  "Then come!" The irritating thought crossed Jennifer T.'s mind that there might not be room in a Saab station wagon for a nine-foot Sasquatch, but she dismissed it. "And fast. We may have to make a run for it if that guy settles down."

  The Sasquatch had begun to pace eagerly back and forth across her cage but now she stopped and her smile faded once more. She pointed to the immense lock that was bolted to the door of her cage. The keyhole was nearly as high as Jennifer T. herself, and as wide. Even if Jennifer T. had somehow managed to obtain the key, it was plain to see that she would not have been able to wield it. And while a human girl might have been able to slip through, the keyhole was nowhere near large enough to allow a Sasquatch to pass. Jennifer T. glanced at the hinges of the door, at the iron rivets that held the bars to the frame.

  "I've been in this thing for two hundred years," the Sasquatch said. "I've studied those hinges and rivets as if they were holy scripture, and raged against and fought with them as if they were robbing me of the dearest thing to me in all the world. Which, of course, they are. It can't be done, little human. Get yourself back to your friends out there, and begone."

  And so saying she sank back into a wretched ragged pile on the ground.

  Jennifer T. looked around for something she or the Sasquatch might use to break the cage. There were plenty of old tibias and shankbones, but Jennifer T. felt pretty certain that they would just snap in two if you tried them against the thick black bars. There were the burning embers and logs of the cookfire, but she knew that an ordinary fire, even a giant's fire, would never be hot enough to melt iron—otherwise it would melt the big iron stewpot, too. Feeling the hope ebbing from her heart with every inch lower to the ground that Taffy sank, she zipped open her backpack, and saw the Wa-He-Ta Brave's Official Tribe Handbook lying there. Maybe there was something in it about fires, something herb or mineral you could add to them to make them burn hotter?

  She flipped through the old musty pages, and saw that the point of being a Wa-He-Ta brave seemed to be to collect something called Feathers—maybe they were real feathers—one of which you earned whenever you showed that you had mastered some aspect of True Indian Lore. There were Feathers for Tracking, for Canoe Building, for Fire Making and Spear Fashioning, for Fishing and Swimming and Climbing Trees and Rocks. There were Feathers to be won in Dancing, Singing, Telling the Truth, and even, somewhat to her astonishment, in Telling Good Lies. And you could—it was right on page 621—earn a Feather in the Most Ancient Lore of the Knot. It was here, in the chapter on Knots, at the very back, in the final three paragraphs, that she encountered a small essay, almost an afterthought, on the picking of locks. It was illustrated with a series of five drawings that showed what was going on inside of what was called a "warded lock." This appeared to be exactly the type of old-fashioned lock that she was now confronted with. The kind that you opened with one of those clunky old "skeleton keys." Inside the lock there was a kind of metal tube; when you twisted it, it raised the latch. This tube was prevented from twisting, however, by a series of three pins, resting on springs. The pins were set to three different heights. When you stuck in the key, three different bumps on the key's blade pressed the pins down so that they all sat level with one another, out of the way of the tube. That allowed the tube to turn.

  Jennifer T. put down the book and pulled herself up to the keyhole. She stuck her head inside, but it was too dark to see. She felt along the narrow passage with one hand. She could feel a pin—it was more like a rod, thick and cold. She pressed down on it and, with an unwilling creak of its iron spring, it gave. She crept along this strange passage until she encountered the second pin, and then the third. A moment later her head poked through into the cage itself, followed by her shoulders. Taffy was staring at her, looking very surprised.

  "What are you trying to do?" she said.

  "Twist my shoulders," said Jennifer T. She was pressing down, as hard as she could, on the three pins, using her ankles, her knees, and the muscles of her upper arms. The resistance of the springs was stiff and the tips of the rods jabbed her skin.

  "What?" Freedom, when at last it comes, rarely resembles the picture the prisoner has longingly painted of it. Taffy's great bearded jaw hung slack, and she blinked.

  "I'm being a key, Bigfoot! Grab my shoulders and turn me!"

  Taffy stood up and shook off two hundred years of servitude. She had watched often enough as Mooseknuckle John operated the lock with the enormous iron key. She knew that Jennifer T. must be twisted—clockwise, from Taffy's point of view—in order to lift the latch of the cage. She took hold of the girl by the shoulders, and twisted.

  "Owww!"

  Taffy let go of her at once.

  "No, it's okay!" Jennifer T. said. "Just do it. Hurry!"

  The big furry hands, long-thumbed and steady, grasped the girl's shoulders again and cranked her in a clockwise direction. Jennifer T. pressed with all her might against the pins, until she felt that they were about to pierce her skin. Slowly, almost irritably, the key shaft began to groan and give; the latch lifted and, with a rusty creaking like the wheels of a train, the heavy iron door swung open. Jennifer T., of course, swung with it. Her head was now pointed toward the center of the great hall—she herself lay on her back, face up, and she missed the moment when the Sasquatch stepped out of her cage a free beast.

  A great rumble shook the lodge, and the walls rang like a carillon. Shards and chunks of roc
k fell and shattered against the hard ground that underlay the furs.

  "He's coming!" Jennifer T. said. "Get me out of here."

  Taffy swung the door shut again and this time gripped Jennifer T. by the feet. Now that she was on the other side, she needed to turn the girl clockwise once more. The key shaft gave more easily in this direction, and Taffy soon was able to set the latch and tug the girl free. She set the girl on her feet and then surprised her by catching her up into her soft, hard, furry arms and squeezing every atom of oxygen from Jennifer T.'s lungs. Taffy had a smell that was rank but not unpleasant, the way Gran Billy Ann's dogs smelled after they had gone swimming in the Sound.

  "Thank you!" Taffy cried. "Oh, thank you, thank you!"

  A sparkling dark wave crested and broke at the center of Jennifer T.'s brain. It was funny, considering that you spent every second of your entire life doing it, that you could forget how important breathing actually was. "Please…put…me…"

  SHE WOKE UP IN BACKSEAT OF THE FELDS' SAAB WAGON, JOSTLING and pitching and tossing. There was a sound all around her like pennies being shaken from a bank as the contents of the car rattled and tumbled. Her head struck something hard that turned out to be the head of Thor Wignutt.

  "Ensign Rideout has regained consciousness, Captain," Thor Wignutt said.

  Ethan turned around to look at her. He was sitting in the driver's seat, with Cinquefoil riding shotgun. The ferisher was sitting very still, with his eyes closed.

  "Hey, Jennifer T.," Ethan said. "Hold on tight. John's about to lob us across."

  Sure enough, the windows of the car were filled, on the right side, with a view of nothing but the great pale fingers of Mooseknuckle John; on the left side curved his enormous thumb with its long black nail. He was holding Skidbladnir by her underside, pinched between his fingers, like a boy about to launch a paper plane.

  "Where's—" She sat up, panicked.

  "Shh," Ethan said. He pointed toward the back of the car. Jennifer T. turned around and saw a smudge of black fur at the top of the rear window of the car's hatch. It looked very much like a foot. Now she noticed another bit of fur visible at the top of her window, and one at Thor's that matched. Ethan pointed to Cinquefoil, whose forehead was beaded once more with glinting drops of pale golden sweat. All at once she understood: Taffy was clinging to the roof of the car, probably grasping the stay cables that held the envelope in place. And Cinquefoil—pale, damp, all but unconscious himself—was working desperately to maintain the grammer that was keeping Mooseknuckle John from noticing.

  "READY, MORSELS?" The giant's voice rocked the car. It held a note of malicious pleasure, like the voice of a bully just before he "helps" you into the swimming pool—with all of your clothes still on.

  They all gripped their thick Swedish safety belts and held on.

  "SMELL SOMETHING," the giant said. "SMELL TAFFY!"

  He snuffled and sniffed and muttered to himself for a moment. A low moan escaped the ferisher's lips. But the grammer held. As Mooseknuckle John raised his arm they were driven deep into their seats. The cables shivered and sang. Then the wind was in them, and they thrummed like the strings of an enormous guitar, and Jennifer T. was thrown backward with all the force of a giant's mighty arm. The car squeaked and shuddered, and the wind whistled over the car. Jennifer T. turned, and saw the giant disappearing rapidly behind them, rubbing absently at his belly, very sorry indeed to see his meal go sailing off into the blue.

  "WELL, REUBENS," CINQUEFOIL SAID, AFTER THEY HAD BEEN bubbling along over the endless green carpet of the Great Woods for half an hour. Their route, Cinquefoil hoped, would take them clear over the Raucous Mountains, over the Big River to Applelawn, and thence across Diamond Green to the well called Murmury. "That were yer first tangling-up with the greater grammer."

  "What's that?" Ethan said.

  "It's what's supposed to keep you reubens out of the Summerlands," Taffy said, from the roof of the car.

  "Not exac'ly," Cinquefoil said. "It won't never keep ya out if yer so hot ta get in as all that. It'll let ya in, you bet. But it won't never let ya get far. Not without making sure that ya gotten yerself all tangled up in grammer."

  "What happens to you then?" Ethan said, looking himself up and down as if for any lingering traces of grammer that might be clinging to his clothing.

  "Stories happen," the ferisher said. "Misadventures. Exploits. Stumble through at a spot where the greater grammer is laid on all nice and thick, might take ya a hunnert years ta get two miles. Send a reubenish army through—just try!—and they get tangled up in all kinds of sagas and folderol. We're well past it. Fer we'd best get on our way. I fear our time may be very short."

  Ethan checked his watch again and found that the numeral 1 at the bottom right corner of the calendar page was now a 2, and that the arrow beside it was pointing up.

  "I wish I knew what this meant," he said.

  "What?" said Jennifer T.

  "This little thing here, with the two and the arrow. When we were in the giant's house, I looked at it and it was a one, and the arrow was pointing down."

  Jennifer T. pulled his wrist toward her.

  "Innings," she said. "Top of the second."

  "Top of the second inning?" Ethan said. "The second inning of what?"

  But even before the question was out of his mouth, he already knew the answer. He could hear Mo Rideout's gravel-bottomed voice echoing in his memory: "Ragged Rock is a day, the last day. The last day of the last year. The last out in the bottom of the ninth."

  "Top of the second," he said. "Seven and a half innings left to go."

  Just then the guy wires from which they dangled began to thrum, in unison, deep and low. Dark clouds were piling up in the sky all around them, out of the proverbial clear blue sky.

  "Mmmmm," said Taffy the Sasquatch, inhaling deeply the free air of the Summerlands for the tenth time since leaving the giant behind. "Storm coming."

  "Does this mean that nothing is going to happen to us?" Ethan said. "No stories, I mean? Because I kind of think we actually need something to happen, or we'll never find my dad. Finding my dad, and saving the Tree—it's like a story, only it's true.''

  "All stories are true," Cinquefoil said.

  "You sound like old Albert," said Jennifer T. "Anyway, Eth, I wouldn't worry too much about nothing happening."

  She pointed, and the wind rose to a whuffling gust that made the silvery envelope shudder and hum nervously to itself, and then they were drowned in the shadow of an enormous pair of wings.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mr. Feld in the Winterlands

  FINER MINDS THAN MY OWN have forever dulled their edges trying to explain the workings of clocks and calendars among the worlds. A human traveler to the Winterlands may pass a single month—the month of Splike, say, with its forty-three days of stabbing black hail—amid the horrors of the Blue Toeholds, only to find on his return to the Middling that even his great-grandchildren have been dead for fifty years or more. Another may spend her entire life adventuring in the Summerlands and then return, aged and bent, to find, still waiting for her, the supper and husband and children that she left only a few minutes before. So I can't really explain how it happened, but nevertheless it is true that at the very moment when Skidbladnir appeared in the skies over the Far Territories of the Summerlands, a motley caravan was approaching the crossroads known as Betty's Bonepit, in the shadowless region of the Winterlands known as the Iceburns.

  When Ethan tried, much later, to reconstruct the course of his father's strange and painful journey across the Winterlands in the clutches of Coyote, he came to the conclusion that there were at least six, and possibly thirty-seven, more direct routes the Rade might have taken from Clam Island to the heart of giantland. There was no reason for Coyote's party even to be in the Iceburns—it was totally out of their way. But the Rade rarely travels in a straight line, or takes the most direct route to any destination. In fact, if you consult the old myths and legends, you wi
ll see that it has always been extremely rare for Coyote actually to have a destination in mind when he moves among the worlds. Coyote, as the tales tell us—he just sort of goes along. His traveling companions, the vast, shrieking, tumbling, lying, skulking, dancing, shambling crimson-and-black-clad Rade of skrikers, graylings, hobs, goblins, lubbers, fire sprites, and beastmen of every imaginable breed and configuration, including weretrout and wereflies, known as the Rade, almost never knew where they would be sleeping the day after tomorrow.

  They did not even always know for sure, as Robin Padfoot tried to explain to Mr. Bruce Feld, if Coyote was even among them as they rambled along. Which was why there was just no way he could take Mr. Feld to see Coyote, or convey Mr. Feld's repeated demand to be released immediately.

  "He ain't—heh-heh—he just ain't around right now," said Robin Padfoot. "And even if he—heh-heh—was around, no way could I take you to him. Folks have to wait for Coyote to come to them."

  Mr. Feld nodded. He was feeling very low. For the last twenty-three hours and nine minutes he had been lying, blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back, on a piece of musty foam rubber. For a blanket, he had the skin of something that smelled like a goat and did little to keep off the stunning cold. He knew exactly how long he had been lying there shivering because every ten minutes he checked his watch. For most people, being blindfolded would have made it hard to check the time, but not for Mr. Feld. He had constructed his wristwatch, too, and, like Ethan's, if you held down the FUNCTION key and pressed 2*1 it would literally tell you the time. For reasons that Mr. Feld himself could not quite understand, the watch spoke with a crisp little British accent. And while it didn't do him much good to check the time every ten minutes, there was something reassuring to Mr. Feld about the watch's unflappable butlerish tone.