Fool on the Hill (51 page)

“Nothing personal,” Mr. Sunshine said. “You’re a wonderful Character, but this is storytellers only. Sorry.” He turned his attention to George, crawling across the grass toward the Spear, still unable to stand. “How disappointing. How very disappointing. For all your talents I think you lack the proper motivation, George.”

Then a smile played at Mr. Sunshine’s lips. A terrible, mischievous smile, more Faustian than Greek. “Look here, George,” he said.

Stephen George, one hand on the Spear, heard the voice and turned to look. His heart nearly stopped at the sight: a bed had materialized on the walk in front of Andrew D. White’s statue, a hospital bed like a bier for the perfect sacrifice, and on it Aurora Borealis Smith, still locked in slumber, wreathed in enchantment. Defenseless.

“No,” George said. “No, you bastard, that’s not fair, not fair. . . .”

The Green Dragon, momentarily spellbound by the felling of Nattie Hollister, now took notice of this second woman. The corners of its fireproof mouth pulled back in a parody of Mr. Sunshine’s smile; like the Greek Original before it, the Dragon focused its concentration, and its magic, at the sky, seeing if could repeat the trick it had seen. Electricity flickered across boiling clouds of black, gathering at a central point.

“
No!
” George roared, and function returned to his legs, to his feet, lifting him up, sending him pounding across the Quad. Without losing its grip on the sky the Dragon fired a blast of flame at him, withering the grass at his heels, toasting his backside. Feeling the searing heat George ran all the faster, intent on reaching Aurora, uncertain whether his hair had caught fire yet or was only about to.

Then the sky opened, firing a huge blue bolt at the Earth. With a last desperate bound George sprang to the bed, spent a precious half instant gathering up Aurora, and leapt away. A brilliant flash, a thunderclap breaking directly behind him like a wave, and the storyteller landed hard at the base of Andrew White’s statue. Stars swam in his head, but he still had the Spear in his hand and Aurora unharmed in his arms. The hospital bed was a burning, melted wreck; the air was sick with ozone.

And the Dragon was coming. It bore down on them like a juggernaut, but George took the time to give his Princess a brief kiss. She did not stir, but the kiss gave him the strength, the steel, that he needed.

The Dragon came on, dragging shadow with it. Its jaw dropped open as it came in range, and George sprang up to meet it, whirling around once, twice, three times. “All right then, fine,” George shouted, “come on, COME ON!” and hurled the Spear up and out. Fire welled in the Dragon’s mouth and the Spear flew straight to it, thrusting between the massive jaws, sticking fast at the back of the monster’s throat.

There were two sounds. The first was the disconsolate
thuk-thuk-thuk
of the broken valve on the Dragon’s fire tanks, unable to dispense more fuel.

The second was a cry like a sonic boom fed through a bad amplifier: the Green Dragon, screaming. Impossibly stung, it jerked its head back in anguish; in the McGraw Hall belfry, Rasferret the Grub convulsed, feeling an invisible spike at the back of his own throat.

“
Does it hurt?
” George shrieked at it. “
Does it hurt, you bastard?
”

The Dragon, whipping its head around in anguish, trying unsuccessfully to dislodge the Spear. The force of its cry rebounded the length of the Quad, shaking buildings, shattering windows.

As the beast reared back, George looked and saw his kite lying in the grass by the Dragon’s tail. And all at once he knew how the Story should end.

VI.

“Where are you, Jack?” the Black Knight bellowed, staggering along the first-floor corridor of Goldwin-Smith Hall. Ragnarok had the mace in his right hand, while his left rested against his chest like a beloved but broken toy. Walking the corridor was like walking the depths of a tomb, and the Bohemian watched each dark classroom doorway. But the President of Rho Alpha Tau failed to appear; Ragnarok reached the center of the building and paused, listening. To his right, wide steps descended to a lobby where doors opened on the Arts Quad. Sounds from the battle outside echoed dimly in the Hall.

Gunshots; and at the same instant Jack Baron materialized from behind a bust of the Hall’s sponsor, rocketing the sledgehammer overhand at Ragnarok’s skull. The Black Knight side-stepped the blow, sweeping a knee up into Jack’s stomach. The Rho Alpha grunted, doubled over . . . and then, half letting go the sledgehammer, seized Ragnarok’s wounded hand and squeezed it tight.

“Painful?” Jack inquired. The Black Knight let out a roar and crashed bodily against the Rho Alpha, spilling them both down the steps, Jack still gripping the broken hand for most of the tumbling way down. At the bottom they rolled apart; above the agony of his ruined fingers Ragnarok realized that he had once again lost his weapon. It lay halfway up the steps, too far to reach.

Jack Baron laughed as he got to his feet, sledgehammer secure in his grasp. “What’s the matter,
partner?
Drop something?”

Not three feet behind him, another open staircase, narrower, steeper, descended into the basement. A handmade sign taped to a pillar announced that this was the south entrance to the Temple of Zeus Coffeehouse.

“You’re disappointing me, Ragnarok,” Jack taunted. Outside, more gunshots. “This is too easy. I thought you were supposed to be a killer, sold your soul to the Devil.”

“A killer,” Ragnarok whispered, his eyes narrowing, burning. “A killer, is that what you want?”

“Come and get me,” Jack said, and lightning struck on the Quad, the flash coming in through the windows on the doors, dazzling the Rho Alpha Tau President for half a second. In the time it took him to blink Ragnarok had crossed the distance between them, landed one punch to stun him a half-second more. Standing too close for the sledgehammer to be any use, the Black Knight seized Jack Baron by the throat with one hand and began slamming his head up against the pillar.

“Is
this
. . .
what
. . . you
want?
” Ragnarok shouted at him, accenting each slam. The Coffeehouse sign slipped to the floor, flecked with blood.

“
Is this what you want?
” he shouted again, turning, pivoting Jack around toward the narrow staircase. At the last moment Jack’s eyes refocused, he seized Ragnarok in a clumsy bear hug, and once more they tumbled together.

The southern doors of the Temple of Zeus burst their hinges as Ragnarok and Jack plunged through, not as two separate combatants but as a single coil of fury, a symbiotic union of hate. Like a giant’s skittleball they rolled into the Coffeehouse proper, scattering chairs and tables. From a shelf along one wall a pantheon of Greek statue replicas—some missing arms, some missing legs—watched this action; a plaster Apollo seemed especially attentive, as if recording the moment for posterity.

Only Ragnarok got up from the floor. Jack was flat out on his back, blood all over his face, eyes blinking rapidly like defective shutters. The Black Knight stood straight and tall, sledgehammer in his good hand, and placed one boot on the Rho Alpha Tau President’s chest, steadying him as a lumberjack steadies a chopping block from which an ax is about to be pulled.

“If you want it,” the Black Knight said softly, “you’ll have it. Partner.”

“No,” Jack croaked, too weak to move, too weak to do anything. “No, please . . .”

And Ragnarok tucked the sledgehammer beneath his arm, freeing his hand, freeing it to swipe at his eye, where fury burned in a single teardrop. Outside the Dragon screamed, and the windows set high up near the ceiling of the Coffeehouse broke and fell inward, even as Ragnarok wiped his vision clear.

“Now,” the Black Knight said, taking the sledgehammer in hand again. He raised it above his head, paused for an instant, a blacksmith ready to strike. “Now I win.”

Jack Baron screamed aloud, a scream that rose as the sledge descended . . . and cut off abruptly as it struck.

Ragnarok let out a breath.

Wind gusted through the broken windows.

And Jack, eyes wide, looked to the right, to the place where the sledgehammer had struck the floor, leaving barely three inches to spare.

“Surprise, you son of a bitch,” Ragnarok said. “I
win
.”

Jack’s eyes rolled up in his head. His head dropped sideways in a faint.

A moment later, with a satisfied smile on his face, the Black Knight of Bohemia did the same.

VII.

Leaving Aurora at the base of the statue, hoping he would not be made to pay for leaving her unprotected, George raced forward while the Dragon still choked on the Spear. In its convulsions it stood almost upright, though it had no rear legs to support itself. Skirting the monster, George passed beneath one mammoth wing—it was like running beneath an eclipse—and hurried to snatch up the kite, which danced ahead of him for a moment, propelled end over end over the grass by the gale the Dragon’s movements kicked up.

“Got you!” George said, grabbing it by the crosspiece, and the ground erupted in a shower of dirt two feet to his left as the Dragon thrust down with a claw.

The Dragon’s head swung down, its eyes seeking to pin George with their blue intensity; the impotent
thuk-thuk-thuk
of the firetank valve kept a steady beat. The claw struck again, tearing up more landscaping. Ceorge rolled to avoid it, felt something hard beneath his back.

The ball of kite twine.

That was even better than the kite.

“Try this on for size,” George said, grabbing the ball, hurling it as he had hurled the Spear, giving it just the right twist of the wrist. The ball shot upwards, twine unraveling behind it in even coils, and as it flew into the Dragon’s mouth three of these coils fell around the shaft of the Spear, drawing tight.

“Finished!” George yelled, standing up, dodging away. “You’re finished!”

Again it was the tail that got him. Bullwhip quick, bullsnake sinister, it knocked his legs out from beneath him with more force than a line tackle. Now the Dragon claw descended at leisure, not smashing down but scooping up.

“I smell Epilogue,” Mr. Sunshine said, as talons closed like an iron fist around the prone storyteller, picking him up. George shook his head dizzily as the monster grabbed him, saw the kite on the grass again. Too far; couldn’t reach it.

Didn’t matter.

The Dragon, Spear jutting out of its mouth like a headless lollipop, lifted him up so it could see better as it crushed the life out of him. George did not meet its eyes, those eyes that were the blue that is the hottest part of a flame. No; he let his head loll back while the claw tightened around his torso, cutting off his air. He lolled his head back and looked at the sky, studying it, as if searching for a familiar face there. And though he could not turn in place, could not speak the magic phrase, still he managed to smile.

Come on
, he thought, feeling the first of his ribs begin to crack,
come on
. . .

A new wind, one not caused by the beating of the Dragon’s wings, began to blow. The kite stopped dancing on the floor of the Quad and began to rise, purposefully, a slender umbilicus of twine still tethering it to the Spear shaft.

Thuk-thuk-thuk
, went the fire tank valve.

Have you now, have you now, have you now
, went the babble of Rasferret’s thoughts.

Up, up, went the kite,
up
, above the Quad, above the Princess, above Saint George, above the Green Dragon. Reaching for the clouds.

In those clouds, electricity gathering, gathering . . .

“Now George lifted his head, met the Dragon’s gaze. Smiled the fiercest smile he knew.

Finished
, Rasferret thought.

Finished
, George agreed.

“BEN FRANKLIN!” a slurring voice boomed. It was neither storyteller nor Storyteller, but the Bohemian Z.Z. Top, who rose from enchanted sleep beneath the bushes by Lincoln Hall to let out a drunken bellow.

“Ben Franklin says burn in hell,
burn in hell, BURN IN HEIL!
” he roared and George thought
Come on
and Mr. Sunshine said “Aah . . .”and Rasferret thought
No, NO, cannot, MUST NOT
— as lightning struck the kite, incinerating it. Like a moving finger the crackling bolt continued to Write, dancing down the string, finding the metal Spear shaft at its far end, so much like a lightning rod. There was a last cry
NO!
from the Grub that seemed to stretch out for eternity as blue fire—a gift from another Saint, Elmo—danced over the skin of the beast from nose to tail.

Then, with a sound like the end of the world, the Green Dragon exploded.

VIII.

A tremor shook The Hill, rolled down to the town below. The enchantment shivered and broke, and as one the human and animal populations of Ithaca twitched, sighed, and eased into a more natural state of sleep. In the world of the wakeful, Rasferret’s Rat troops lost their battle courage in the blink of an eye and fell into a shrieking rout before the remaining sprites.

In the open-air belfry of the Clock Tower, Zephyr stood beside the half dozen bodies of the Rats that had found their way up to her; she watched the Dragon blow apart and cheered its demise even as she screamed in fear for George, who was lost in the glare of the blast. Yet all at once there was another sound behind her. She whirled to face a new opponent . . . and boggled at the sight of the dark diamond shape that came sailing out of the fog, crash-landing in the middle of the belfry.

Zephyr lowered her sword, her arm stiff from exertion. The fog was evaporating, and in the growing visibility she studied this second, miraculously unroasted kite with curiosity. It jittered here and there, and all at once a corner lifted and Puck crawled out from under, looking disheveled.

“Hey there, Zeph,” he greeted her, smiling sheepishly. “How’s it going?”

IX.

Pieces of the Dragon littered the Quad, spreading smoke in the wind. Near the center of the blast a hot, fragmented fire burned, and it was in the midst of this inferno that George had fallen, knocked semi-conscious by the explosion. He felt the heat around him, tried dazedly to crawl to safety, managed as much as to kick away the remnants of the Dragon claw that had held him, but no more; the last of his energy was spent. He collapsed and began to go under as the smoke thickened.