Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 (22 page)

 
          
We
all went out. I laid my gear down at the door of the entry.

 
          
“What
do you propose to do, John?” Scylla inquired me.

 
          
“Come
and see,” I said.

 
          
They
all trailed behind me as I walked back to the grave where Scylla had lain and
dreamt betwixt life and death. It was a gouged-open hole the size of Scylla
when she got up from it, with the dark, damp dirt flung up on all sides. I
stooped and pushed the Judas book and the written translation down on the
blanket she'd left there. Then, from my back pocket, I fetched the amulet I'd
ripped off of Harpe’s neck, to take his magic power away.

 
          
For
a second I looked at the cleft where he’d fallen, but just for a second. No
point in a-flinging his amulet down there to whereair he was, no point at all.
I put the amulet down amongst the wadded papers. The women watched me and said
naught.

 
          
I
went to the hollow tree and fetched out the ivory horn Harpe had blown to make
Cry
Mountain
reply him back. I brought it to the grave
and put it in, too.

 
          
“That
horn is a valuable prehistoric artifact,” said Scylla.

 
          
“That
horn’s a big troublemaker,” 1 said, and draped the blanket over all I’d set in
there. A-kneeling down, I raked and scooped with my hands to pile in the dirt
Scylla had shoved up when she’d waked. I filled the place and stood up again.

 
          
There
lay Harpe’s magic, all buried, but how to keep it there? I recollected what I’d
heard tell of the
Grand Albert
book,
how you couldn’t get shed of it if you burnt it or flung it in the water; you
must bury it and say a funeral over it. So I stood by the covered-in grave, and
I repeated some of the words I’d said when I’d preached what I’d thought was
Scylla’s funeral. I stooped again and moved the headstone I’d put there, this
time to lie right on the middle of the grave. Nearby lay a big flake of rock,
broken and sharp. I gouged a cross into the headstone, deep as I could. Again I
straightened up.

           
“Nobody air better try to dig that
up again/' I said. “There’s been enough digging at that place.”

 
          
“Amen,”
said Myrrh, like as if she was in church. And “Amen,” said Scylla after her.

 
          
I
sought out the stream. That ran all clear and happy, it was a natural thing. I
washed the caked dirt off my hands and arms. Then I went and picked up my sack
and slung my guitar behind me.

 
          
“You
ready for the start down, Myrrh?” I said.

 
          
She
came to my side and we headed for the gate.

 
          
The gate.
Gentlemen, it wasn't aught to call a gate when we
got to it.

 
          
The
gate had been part of the whole conjure stockade that Ruel Harpe had raised up.
Now it was all fallen down. Its rails and stakes were come apart and lay like a
bundle of lumber logs that waited for somebody to come and stack them. I looked
amongst the rails, and there lay something round and dull white. I picked it
up.

 
          
“Ohh!"
Myrrh wailed.

 
          
“This
is Zeb Plattenburg s head," I said. “I'm a-going to carry it down to put
with his other bones. He deserves that much. He had the sand in his craw to
come up here and see what was what. Come on, we head down thisaway.”

 
          
I
helped her along ledge after ledge I'd come up. I steadied her to climb down
from one to another. The water flowed with us as we went down. And
Cry
Mountain
was silent no more. A towhee slid over us,
a-singing its name,
towhee towhee.
Off
amongst some trees on one ledge, a chickadee said
tsee-tsoo.
I recollected how no birds had spoken when I was
a-climbing up.

 
          
Myrrh
was hushed and careful as she came along with me, but we were a-going faster on
the way down than I'd been a-making the journey up. Once Myrrh looked below,
where the face of
Cry
Mountain
fell like a wall, and again she moaned,
“Ohh!"

 
          
“Just
don’t look down there, Myrrh," I said. “Let me be honest to tell you,
there’s no future in a-looking down from a mountain height. Edgar Allan Poe
says that, somewhere in his tales.”

 
          
“Poe?”
she repeated the name. “I read a poem of his one time, about a raven.
Said the raven, nairmore.”

 
          
“Nairmore
do we have to come up
Cry
Mountain
,” I said, to comfort her.

 
          
We
worked along and along, and there was the weedy place where Zeb Plattenburg’s
skeleton lay strung out. I put his skull down at the head of it.

 
          
“Shouldn’t
he be fetched down and buried?” Myrrh asked me.

 
          
“I
don’t rightly know how to answer that,” I had to confess. “Maybe right here is
the place for him. He came up where he wanted to come.”

 
          
“Yes,”
she said, so softly I could barely hear.

 
          
Then:

 
          
“HEY!”
sounded a voice from below, loud as the blast of a railroad engine, and we
looked down.

 
          
Somebody
was a-coming up, a-coming on a run. I flung down my guitar and my gear, and
stood a-waiting. No telling who it might could
be,
what he might figure to do to us. But then we could both see who it was.

 
          
“TOMBS!”
cried out Myrrh, as loud in the voice as he’d been.

 
          
That’s
who it was, Tombs McDonald, a-scrambling ledges there below us. We waited as he
came along and got to where we were, got there a-heaving and a-sweating and
a-puffmg. His beard was wet from the climb. He put out a hand to us.

 
          
“John,”
he said.
“And—why, Myrrh.”

 
          
“Yes, Tombs, yes.”

 
          
And
they were in one another’s arms, shoved against one another from knee to face,
and they were a-kissing one another and a-telling one another “Oh, oh, oh.”

 
          
Tombs
dropped a sort of satchel he'd fetched up with him.

 
          
“How
come you come to be up here, too?” he asked Myrrh finally, and he put his eyes
on me as he asked.

 
          
“I
was witched here, but John got me out,” she said against the shoulder of his
sweaty shirt. “I'll tell you about it, but it's a long story,” and then she kissed
him again. “I love you,” she said, with all the meaning a woman could put into
it.

 
          
“I
love you, Myrrh,” he said, and looked past her at me. “John, I be damned but I
figured I'd better come see why you nair come back.”

 
          
That
was a friend a-talking to me, but I didn't know what to say, so I said nair
word.

 
          
“I
reckoned you to be in trouble, a-climbing yonder,” he said. “I got two-three
fellows to come with me. We're camped down at the foot of this here mountain,
we fetched along a box of rations and all like that. Let's go back down. Myrrh,
you can tell me about a-being here.”

 
          
“I'll
tell you,” she promised him, and his arms went round her again. Then he looked
up the way we'd come.

 
          
“Who’s
them?” he asked.
“Them folks there, a-heading down to us.”

 
          
Myrrh
and I looked, too. There they came, far away, but we could tell who they were.
Scylla and Alka and Tarrah.

 
          
“They’re
all right, Tombs,” said Myrrh. “They're friends of mine.”

 
          
Manly
Wade Wellman has been writing award-winning tales of fantasy, horror, and
science fiction since 1931, In addition to his highly acclaimed series of
novels about Silver John—
The Hanging
Stones
,
The Lost and the Lurking,
After Dark,
and
The Old Gods Waken
—he
is also the author of two novels featuring the adventurer John Thunstone,
What Dreams May Come
and the forthcoming
The School of Darkness.
He has won
the Gandalf Award for Lifetime Achievement from the World Fantasy Convention.
Mr. Wellman lives in
Chapel Hill
,
North Carolina
.