Ghostlands

FORTY-EIGHT

It’s like descending into a grave, Cal thought, and knew it was not the first time he’d had such a thought in the journal of his adventures. In truth, more than anything, his life had become a collection of experiences and exploits he never dreamed he would have, and more often than not would have preferred forgoing.

His body anchored with weariness, muscles singing with the ache and bruise of the long trek and its travails, he staggered into the heart of the earth. Christina drifted shining beside him, Colleen and Doc half supporting each other, Howie limping along while Shango and Enid helped guide Papa Sky down the sloping terrain. Inigo and his mother, still holding hands, followed close upon.

The gateway of soil sealed up behind them, entombing them in the massive space beneath. Cal tensed as it closed, then detecting a like anxiety in his companions, forced himself to relax.

The air underground was fresh and moved with a cool breeze from several pathways. The pungent, pleasant smell of burning sweetgrass and sage wafted on the air. May Catches the Enemy led them to low tables with soft cushions, where buffalo stew and flatbread and strong, hot coffee were served up. Cal ate greedily, for the first time aware of how hungry he’d been, and felt considerably better.

Inigo’s mother came and crouched nearby, studying him keenly, as if trying to weigh who he might be by the way he chewed his food, how he sipped his coffee.

In time, she said, “We were told you were coming, but not who you’d be.”

“Yes?” Cal replied. “By whom?”

She hesitated, and her eyes darted to Papa Sky, who sat across the table, nodding his head in time to a beat only he could hear.

As if he’d caught her glance, the old blind man said, “By my special friend…”

A shudder ran through Cal. He thought of the first time he’d heard Papa Sky use that phrase, back in Buddy Guy’s club when he’d given them the dragon scale that had come from his mysterious, unseen traveling companion.

“That the same friend who sent you to us in Chicago?” Cal asked.

A smile spread across Papa Sky’s face, like honey on good dark bread. “That’s mighty sharp of you, Mr. Cal…. But then, my friend always said you were bright.”

Colleen started to speak, but May cut her off with a raised hand. “The white people joke about Indian time…but we like to wait till everyone’s here who’s s’posed to be. We still got one or two coming. There’ll be time for talk. But right now, y’all need some rest. You come a long, hard way.”

Colleen looked questioningly at Cal.

Yawning, he rose. “Show us to our suites.”

The others were led to various alcoves where warming fires blazed, given sleeping bags and blankets from Wal-Mart and Prairie Edge and wherever else folks had been able to scrounge supplies before they’d been locked in here, trapped in their tiny enclave of safety from the encroaching, malign power at the Source.

May Catches the Enemy found Cal and Christina a cozy place in a shadowy corner away from everyone, where Cal was surprised to find fluffed pillows and a goose-down comforter and thick buffalo robe waiting. The woman withdrew, and Cal settled into the robe, wrapping its lush dark fur around him as he lay on the dry, hard earth. Christina floated onto the comforter and grew still, closing her eyes, her aura fading to faintest eminence as she eased into rest.

Her eyes fluttered open and focused on a distant spot, to the darkness where Doc and Colleen lay unseen. “Things are different,” she said drowsily.

“Uh-huh,” Cal said.

“She’s with him now, huh?”

“They’re good together,” he said. “It’s a good thing.”

“You’re different, too….” Her eyes came to rest on him. “Good different. You’re strong, Cal.”

“I can’t move boulders with my brain.”

She gave him the faintest smile, then her face clouded. “Goldie…” she said, and didn’t finish it.

He nodded, feeling the loss, knowing there was nothing to make it right.

“Maybe we’re alive in who remembers us, at least a little,” his sister said. “Maybe we’re alive in what we set free….”

“Maybe,” he agreed.

They were silent then, alone with the crackling fires, the weight of air.

At last, Christina spoke again. “Back in the mountain, when I was…you know.” He sensed she couldn’t bring herself to say human. “It’s all fuzzing away now, like a dream when you wake up, I can’t keep hold of it. But the one you mentioned to Papa…he was there.”

Cal felt chilled, within the warm embrace of the robe. Neither needed to say his name; they both knew. Cal was wide-awake now, his senses keen. In the distance, down the rock passages, he could hear the whistling of the wind, and a sound like something calling.

Christina huddled deeper into the comforter, her pale fine hair fanned atop it. As sleep enfolded her, she murmured, “Inigo calls him Leather Man.”

As night drew on, Cal found sleep eluding him. Restless, he moved off from his sister as she slumbered, not wanting to wake her. Wrapping the buffalo robe about him, he walked to the mouth of a passage, peered down it. Air swirled up out of it like a titan exhaling, and he heard a rhythmic, deep pulse. But it was dark as a coal miner’s esophagus. He felt like seeking out Inigo, with his night-sharp grunter eyes, and asking him to search out its secrets.

He was weary of mysteries….

Suddenly, he was gripped hard from behind, felt cold steel at his throat, the edge of a long blade.

“I been a long time waiting for this,” the voice behind him said softly in his ear. It held music in it, and steel.

He knew the voice.

He’d placed his sword by the pillows and comforter; still, he had his short knife in its scabbard under his ribs. He could reach it easily, might be able to do something with it. Or he could call out to his sister. Rousing fiery awake, she could shatter this one’s bones where she stood, blast her to dust on the air.

He did nothing.

“You’ve got something to say.” He worked to keep his voice level, and as quiet as hers. “Or we wouldn’t still be talking.”

She released him then, and came around to face him.

“My married name was Devine,” May Catches the Enemy said.

As the night waned and morning came on, Cal came to know that long months ago, nine hundred miles away in Chicago, he had killed this woman’s husband, and Inigo’s father.

They drank coffee, just the two of them, beside a low fire, out of earshot of the others. The flames leapt and sparked, made light play in her raven hair, her emerald eyes.

“He never wanted it, what happened to him,” May said, not looking at Cal. “He left to keep us safe. Maybe that’s what he was doing with them flares, too…. Then it all went to hell.”

“Have you told your son?”

“Not yet…I’ll tell him when the time’s right. We got a lot of catching up to do. When I got back, I couldn’t get to him. With everything I could pull off, the farthest I could get was here.”

Cal thought back to the deserted mall in Iowa, to his first encounter with her son, when he’d heard the boy’s name and recalled the line from The Princess Bride.

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die….

Incredible, Cal reflected, the turns of fate, the dance of loss and grief and inexorable parting, of sins committed, and allies made….

“That thing with the knife,” May said, “I just needed to get it off my chest.” Her eyes found him, held him pinioned there. “You did what you had to,” she added, an absolution.

Nevertheless, Cal blamed himself, even knowing he could have chosen no other course, that Clayton Devine, in his guise as both Primal and Primal’s toady, would surely have killed them all had they not gained the upper hand.

Guilt and necessity, that was the rule of the day. So what separated the pure from the defiled, the evil from the good? Compassion? Could that possibly be enough?

Or did the old definitions, the dividing lines, no longer hold sway? Had they changed like everything else in this twisted world?

“You have a busy head,” May Catches the Enemy said, intruding on his thoughts. She touched his hand, and he was surprised to find that her touch discomforted him more than the blade at his throat had.

Catching this reaction, she smiled. It was the first time he’d seen her smile, and it transformed her, rendered her girlish and appealing. He saw she had a dimple in one cheek, the fire lending her skin a warm glow.

“It’s a good thing you’re here,” she said, growing serious again. “Mostly, those who made it here are old folks, some kids. We only got one or two holy men, and that won’t be enough….”

“For what?” Cal asked.

May Catches the Enemy gave him another smile, but with mystery in it, and the promise of coming things.

“Better get some sleep while you can,” she said, rising.

“I haven’t slept much since the Change,” he replied.

She gazed down at him. “The world hasn’t changed,” she said, “just revealed more clearly what it always was, so everyone can see it plain.”

She fell silent, meditative. Then she murmured, soft as a feather touch, “Folks got so busy, everything so noisy and fast, they forgot who they were. Things had to get quiet again, so they could find the being in human being, get connected to the universe again, to the world, to their power….”

It was amazing, Cal thought, that here, surrounded by the forces of darkness, cut off from anything that might bring reinforcements or aid, she could so effortlessly, so simply summon up hope. Her certainty, her self, was like a golden spike driven straight through her to the center of the earth.

Cal felt something inside him come alive and warm. And for the second time since he had entered the Ghostlands, he felt he was home.

With a start, he realized he was staring at her. She lowered her eyes. “I didn’t mean to make a speech,” she said.

“It’s okay,” he answered, then added, “I like your world.”

She brought her eyes up to him once more, and he floated in her gaze. “The big circle of everything,” she concluded. “The four quarters, four winds, four directions, four races…all balanced in unity.”

Unity? At this last, Cal found his mind rebelling. What about the Evil inside that mountain?

As though answering his thought, May said, “No such thing as the Devil, only a sickness at the heart of things, an imbalance.”

She bent to him, kissed him lightly on the head. “Pray to see what’s real, Mr. Griffin…and you will.”

Cal wasn’t aware of having fallen asleep, but he was awakened by the rumble of the earth opening up and daylight pouring in.

A man stood facing him from the gaping mouth of the land, a man all in black, his gleaming black hair pulled into a ponytail and held in place with a white gold clasp.

“You may have wondered why I’ve asked you here,” the man said with a voice like acid-scraped rock.

Cal’s eyes darted to where he’d lain his sword in its scabbard. Christina was no longer there. He dove for it, rolled and came up fast.

The man was sauntering up to him, his face and body melting in the morning sun like candle wax, shifting and reforming into black iridescence, into truth, into reptilian splendor.

He laughed as Cal drew his sword.

“You don’t want to kill the man who saved your sister,” the dragon said.

Cal lowered his sword.

“I didn’t think so.”

A figure appeared from behind the dragon, walking on spindly old legs, her tan, lined face like the land itself, with its patience and wear.

“We’ve got a good deal of catching up to do,” Mama Diamond said, putting a hand on Cal’s arm.

Together with Stern, she took him to where the others waited.