Stoneskin's Revenge (24 page)

And every one of those things could be in that water!

But he had to complete the ritual or he'd be starting out with everything wrong, and maybe confronting such fears as these was part of it.

Steeling himself, Calvin backed up to where he was standing entirely on soft moss (not rock or sand, which were presumably the Stoneskin's minions), and once there he began to strip. He did this slowly and methodically, staring at the water, willing himself to calm, thinking the solemn thoughts appropriate to the occasion. He was a warrior—maybe the last of his kind—preparing to embark on a venture that could very well cost him his life. But if he did not try, others would die, and that was an incontrovertible fact. Thus he gazed steadily at the glittering creek while he undid buttons and zippers and knots, folded each article neatly as he removed it, then set it aside. Even the uktena scale, though it was the last to go, and he placed
it
in front of him so that it was centered in a patch of moonlight he had chosen for just that reason. He squatted then, retrieved the four small objects he had removed from his pocket when he had first come there, and folded them into his fist before standing again.

Turning to face the north, he took one of the objects—it was a tube of Robyn's lipstick with a definite bluish cast—and with it, he marked his chest and his arms, his thighs and his cheeks with lightning bolts, and while he drew, he chanted:

Sge! Ha-nagwa asti unega aksauntanu usinuli anetsa unatsanuntselahi aktati adunniga.

Utlunta utadata, Utlunta tsunadaita. Nunnahi anite-lahehu igeski nigesunna. Duksi-gwu dedunatsgulawa-tegu. Dasun unilatsisatu. Sakani unatisatu.

It was the prayer he had learned from Oisin the first time he had gone to Galunlati, the one that was normally invoked before the ceremonial Ball Play, since war was now unknown in that land. Though he had not understood the words then, Uki had later explained them to him. Basically, the chant ridiculed the other participants—this section asked the Terrapin to hold onto them so that they lost all strength. When he had finished, Calvin set the blue lipstick on the ground, substituted a red one, and faced the east, then marked himself again, the scarlet lines paralleling the blue; and again he chanted, this time invoking the First and Second Heavens, and with them the Red Bat and the Peewee and the Common Turtle:

Nunnahi dataduninawati ayu-nu digwatseliga anetsa unatsanuntselahi. 77amehu Gigagei sagwa danutsgulan-iga. Igunyi galunla gesun iyun kanunlagi uwahahistagi. Taline galunla gesun iyun kanunlagi uwahahistagi. Hen-ilu danutsgulaniga. Tlama unnita anigwalugi gunt-latisgesti, asegwu nigesunna.

Dutale anetsa unatsanuntselahi saligugi-gwu dedunatsgu-lawistitegu. Elawini dasun unilatsisatu.

South, now, and the color was white this time, and the chant was in invocation to the Third and Fourth Heavens, to the Red Tlaniwa and the Blue Flycatcher.

Tsaine digalunlatiyun Saniwa Gigagei sagwa danuts-gulaniga, asegagi nigesunna. Kanunlagi wahahistagi nugine digalunlatiyun. Gulisguli Sakani sagwa danuts-gulaniga, asegagi nigesunna. Kanunlagi uwahahistagi hiskine digalunlatiyun Tsutsu Sakani sagwa danutsgu-laniga, asegagi nigesunna.

Dutale anetsa utsanuntselahi Tinegwa Sakani sagwa danutsgulaniga, igeski nigesunna. Dasununilatsisatu. Kanunlagi uwahahistagi sutaline digalunlatiyun. Ani-gastaya sagwa danutsgulaniga, asegagi nigesunna. Kan-unlagi uwahahistagi kul-kwagine digalunlatiyun. Watatuga Sakani sagwa danutsgulaniga, asegagi nige-sunna.

Finally Calvin took black lipstick and turned his eyes to the west,
Usunhiyi:
the Land of the Dead, the place he feared he might soon experience firsthand, and then he began the last chant.

Dutale anetsa unatsanuntselahi. Yana dedunatsgu lawsistaniga, igeski nigesunna. Dasun dunilatsisatu. Kanunlagi detagaskalauntanun, igunwulstanuhigwud-ina tsuyelisti gesuni. Aktati adunniga…

He went on for some time before concluding the invocations to the Bear and the Blue Dragonfly and the Chimney Swift, and to all twelve Heavens. Eventually, though, he rose and once more faced the east (which was toward the river) and without flinching, without moving his eyes up or down, left or right, marched straight into the water.

It was cooler than he'd expected, though
anything
would have seemed cool after the heavy, blood-warm heat of the day. Further he waded, feeling the water rising up his body, the mud squishing up between his toes. When the water lapped around his chin, he stopped and began, very softly, to repeat the chants, addressing each verse to the appropriate direction.

There was logic in his actions, though it was that peculiar sort that governed the Ani-Yunwiya worldview. Water was the strongest thing there was, for it could wear down mountains, drown fire, shut out air. By giving himself to water, he was confronting that thing; by offering his Power to it, as he was doing by allowing it to lick away at the signs he had painted on his body, he was making a bond with it and hoping it would give him back Power at his need. A white man would have seen echoes of birth or rebirth in that ritual, of death and resurrection. That was fine; they fit too.

There were still untouched symbols on his cheeks, though, and Calvin could not complete his bond with the water until all the signs had been tasted. He took four deep breaths, each facing a cardinal direction, with the last one addressed to the east, which was where new life was born—and with that air still filling his lungs, he ducked his head underwater and held his breath.

It was like death must be, he thought distantly, as he felt the water close over his head, lifting his hair, filling his ears, making little raids on his nose and mouth and eyeballs. Very slowly Calvin began counting: seconds, officially, but each was a symbolic year he hoped to live. He made it to twenty—his own age—without any trouble, kept on going to forty, fifty—seventy. At eighty his lungs began to hurt; at ninety he could hear the blood starting to pound in his ears. He was counting more slowly too, and almost did not make it to the last five numbers…
ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred.

And with the breaths of a hundred years begging for release from his lungs, Calvin broke surface and exhaled.

He emerged from the creek then, sleek and shiny as the newborn child he figuratively was; felt the caress of wind against him: the second strongest elemental. A glance down made him smile. The water had done its work—and more, for it had washed away every single mark he had made upon his body, which normally it could not have done. Moving silently (for he would not speak now unless he had to), Calvin gathered up his clothes and his talismans of Power, and walked back to his camp.

And then he began to vest himself for war.

It was in the Lands of Men that he would fight this battle, and so he would wear the outward dress of that World. But beneath he would be a warrior of the Ani-Yunwiya. The lipsticks returned, and with them he once more painted lightning on his chest and on his cheeks. Deer he drew on his legs, for he would need to run swiftly; a falcon he sketched on his forehead, for it would be good to be sharp-eyed. A snake decorated his left forearm, the one that would aim the arrow, for he would have to strike fast and sure; even as the bear on his right was for the strength he would need to shoot true. And as an afterthought, he drew a snow-white 'possum above his heart, in honor of the one for whom he did this thing.

Clothes followed: the clean ones he'd never had a chance to wear: fresh underwear and socks, blue Levi's, and a black T-shirt bearing a white wolf's mask. He'd have preferred a falcon, but in a hurry, you took what you could get. Finally, he bound back his hair with a red bandanna, into which he stuck the falcon feathers he'd kept since he'd found them in the woods after the third vision.

And then it was time for his weapons.

He retrieved them with care, stowed them with pride: the Rakestraw hunting knife in his belt, the bow, and the deerskin quiver that carried the white-fletched arrows of Galunlati.

A deft movement of arm, calf, and thigh strung the bow, and he was ready.

And so, in the early morning hours of Thursday, June 19, Calvin Fargo McIntosh, called Edahi, strode north along Iodine Creek in Willacoochee County, Georgia, to do battle with Utlunta Spearfinger, called Nunyunuwi: the Stoneskin.

Chapter XVII: Confrontation

(east of Whidden, Georgia—late)

Calvin was possessed. It had come upon him abruptly, but was not the dark and evil thing people usually implied when they used that expression. No,
this
was a sort of feyness that was maybe born of a combination of fatigue (he hadn't had a lot of sleep in the past several days), shock, wonder, and anticipation. Perhaps the ritual he had just concluded had something to do with it as well, or possibly it was simply that he was finally acting, not wondering what to do. Whatever it was, it filled him with a surge of energy that was all at odds with his predicament, and he suddenly found himself almost looking forward to his encounter with Spearfinger.

So it was that he ran nearly all the way to Don's house without tiring. In fact, it was as if each breath drew Power into his lungs along with oxygen; as if each footfall upon the spongy ground took only the pain from his muscles and not his strength, as if it
gave
strength back, and added some of its own. He was one with the night; and the shadows that flicked and slid across his body seemed to caress him, not set obstacles in his way. The tree trunks that littered his path, he hurdled; the branches that thrust before him he brushed aside—but even they seemed to stroke him, to massage his muscles loose, not to claw, or scratch, or poke at his eyes. The woods, it seemed, were clearly on his side.

He hoped he was not dreaming, hoped his high would last long enough to see him through what he had begun.

A blue/white glimmer through the trees ahead marked Liza-Bet Scott's security light, and a quarter minute's trot that way brought him across the tracks and the road and onto the fringe of the Scott clan's yard.

He halted in the shadow of a pine, assumed stealth mode as he made a slow, detailed survey of the house. Nothing was obviously amiss—it looked a typical south-Georgia brick ranch, no different from those in the suburbs of Savannah or Brunswick—or Atlanta, for that matter: set back off the road within an acre or so of yard dotted with the ubiquitous pines whose needles made a soft mat beneath his feet, while their spicy odor mingled with the ever-present pulp-mill sulfur in the air.

The only things that set the house apart from its more urban analogs were that there were no others nearby, and the fact that the road it fronted on was not asphalt but sandy dirt.

This far out there was no sign of Spearfinger, though the den lights were on, as Don had told him they might be. Calvin kept his eyes fixed firmly on the bright rectangle as he dodged from tree to tree until he was roughly thirty feet from the nearest of the azaleas that ringed the red brick walls.

He paused there, with his shoulder pressed against a stickily oozing pine, glanced right and left, straining his eyes for any sign of surveillance—and decided the intelligent thing to do would be to head straight for the window, on the theory that if Spearfinger was still where Don had left her, Calvin would be able to see her before she saw him.
If
she had normal eyes.

Two deep breaths and he ran for it, and an instant later paused directly beneath the sill. Unfortunately the house, like most of its kind, had windows tucked close up under the eaves, so that Calvin had to stretch to peek inside. Very cautiously he did, seeing the white ceiling, the ivory walls with their matching paintings of shrimp boats above the long brown sofa.

Which was empty.

The television was still on, crackling static, but Spearfinger was almost certainly not in the room—at least not in human form.

Did he dare break in to seek her, then—or should he continue prowling around out here? He much preferred the latter: houses didn't give you much room to stalk, and his plan depended on him taking Spearfinger unaware.

With this in mind, he skirted left, slipping from window to window with shadowlike silence, raising his head carefully from below, or sometimes from the side—to see nothing but drapes, a glimpse of a boy's cluttered bedroom, a swatch of shower curtain, a bit of kitchen.

But no Spearfinger.

He was beginning to lose his nerve now, for while the house was finite, the environs were not. There was a heap of yard, and a mess of woods around it, and the whole bloody state of Georgia beyond. A troubling thought struck him then: what if Spearfinger had abandoned her wait for Don's mother and departed, seeking other, more accessible prey? Or was there some method to her feeding? And hadn't she told Don that she planned to hunt him? That seemed to indicate that she intended to hang around. Maybe it took a lot of strength to travel between the Worlds, and she had to rebuild for a while before she could move on. Maybe she'd even given up on finding Dave. Or perhaps she was still trying to figure out where he had gone. What would
he
do, Calvin wondered, were he in Spearfinger's situation?

Well, if
he
had zapped into another World in search of someone,
locating
that party would naturally be his first priority. Everything else—food, clothing, shelter—would take a backseat. But what if the quarry kept moving around on you more quickly than you could keep up: in Stone Mountain one day, then gone entirely, then suddenly on Cumberland Island, then in Willacoochee County, and then back in Enotah County three hundred miles to the north? That would drive you crazy in no time, so maybe you'd stay in one place and plot and wait. But you'd still get hungry, and you wouldn't want to draw too much attention to yourself, so you'd find yourself a family living far out, one with several members, and one by one you'd kill them off, but you'd keep their shapes handy in case you needed to fend off folks asking questions…