To the Vanishing Point

7

Afterward, Burnfingers stood thinking for a long time. Then he muttered something angry in Navajo and gave the water bucket a kick that dented the metal.

"Wrong. All wrong. If you were not sent here, then you should not be kept here. They should confess a mistake has been made."

"But will they?" Alicia dared to sound hopeful. "If they don’t, is there anything you could do for us? You say they let you move about freely. Can you help us get away from here? Or maybe you could intercede on our behalf with whoever’s in charge."

Burnfingers shook his head. "He does not concern himself with small matters. In any case, you do not want to bring yourselves to his attention. One time I saw him, riding by in his limo, and even though I had a long hot way to travel I did not consider asking for a ride." He paused, added thoughtfully, "I had not really realized it until this minute, but I think I am tired of mopping floors. Some of the staff is okay, but your average demon or imp is a real slob. They just do not care about keeping things neat.

"I have accumulated enough gold here. With what I have acquired before, I think I have enough to do my work. So I suppose it is time to move on." He regarded them somberly. "Crazy I may be, but I still like my sleep. It is hard to sleep here, what with all the screaming of the Damned. If I agree to help you, then you must agree to trust me."

"Trust a crazy man?" Frank murmured.

"You will get out of here only by trusting someone crazy. But if you would prefer to rely on the kindly nature of the lieutenant and his advisors, I will not interfere."

Alicia clutched at her husband. "Frank, he can help us. Let him."

"I dunno." He stared at Burnfingers, who waited patiently. "We might be getting ourselves in deeper than we already are."

"You will find yourselves in deeper when they send you through the Gates to the First Level. Once past that point, nothing can help you."

"That lieutenant admitted we don’t belong here. Maybe when they finish checking their records they’ll just let us go."

Burnfingers nodded thoughtfully. "They might. But if they let you go, then they are going to have to fill out a big stack of special forms. They all hate paperwork. Just stopping you on the highway and bringing you in will tie up half a dozen clerks for a week. Letting you go will mean ten times as much work. I do not remember it ever happening before. I admit that the lieutenant is not bad for a demon, but when he figures out how much extra work he is going to have to authorize to process a release, he may find it better to lose you in the shuffle. Hell is an easy place to lose people. After a week or so down on the Third Level or lower you will none of you be in any condition to think of filing a complaint or anything else. Think hard, friend. Do you really expect to receive justice here?"

"Frank, please, let’s do as he says." Alicia was pleading with him now. Her daughter joined in.

"Daddy, if he can get us out of this awful place, let him!" She was looking at the door. "I don’t want to have to see that creature again!"

His daughter’s stark terror convinced him. "Okay. We’ll take a chance on you, Begay."

The big man was pleased. "Good. It has been a while since anyone had to take a chance on me. You really have no other choice. If this is passed on to the higher-ups they will find a way to keep you here. A nice, contented middle-class family like yours would be a coup for the boss here. So if he finds out what’s going on here he’ll have you booted through the Gate and damn any subsequent difficulties."

"Can you do that trick with the water every time?" Alicia asked hesitantly.

"Those were just minor imps, class-four grade-school bullies. What I did was comparable to swatting a fly."

"Fire-breathing flies," Steven whispered to himself.

"A few of your major demonic personages, now, you toss a bucket of water in their direction and they’ll laugh and spit napalm back at you."

"Then how are you going to get us out of here?" Frank challenged him.

"How did you get in?"

"We’ve got a motor home." Alicia gestured indecisively behind her. "It’s parked out in front of the station. At least, it was."

"Don’t worry," Burnfingers told her. "They won’t bother it. They aren’t interested in machines unless they’re built in their own shops. Parked out front, you say? Since they have not figured out what to do with you yet, I am sure they have not figured out what to do with it. It should be as you left it." He placed his damp mop in its slot on the bucket cart. "Now, I want you all to follow me."

Frank put out a hesitant arm, felt it bounce off ribs that felt as if they were sheathed in stainless steel. "How can we do that? Maybe they won’t question your movements, but we’re not staff here. Surely they’ll stop us."

"They must see us first. Then someone must make a decision. The lower echelons shy from doing that because if they make a wrong one it can get them in trouble. Demons and imps have their own punishments." He nodded at the door. "My room is not far. There are a very few things I want to take with me. I do not plan on returning to this place. It may be that I am not breaking any rules by helping you, but I do not think it would be healthy for me to remain to find out."

He cracked the door. The hot air that came pouring in made Frank flinch.

"You folks are lucky," Burnfingers told them. "They turned up the air-conditioning for you."

"Air-conditioning?" Alicia whispered, crowding close to her husband. "It must be a hundred and twenty in here."

"Remember where you are, earth mother. For recreation some of the supervisors here put on winter clothes and go sandskiing in the Danakil Depression." He opened the door wider, peering out into the hall. "Not a busy day. We’re lucky. Keep close behind me, but act unconcerned. If we should pass anyone, appear resigned to your fate. Show any unease and you will be lost."

"Has anyone ever escaped from this place before?" Frank asked him.

"It is not common, but there are stories. Some years ago a minor trusty named Adolph tried to organize a big breakout. Only a few of his people made it and they returned here soon after. As punishment he spends Eternity cleaning bathrooms and waiting on tables in the Jewish section of Level Seven." He continued talking softly and urgently as he opened the door the rest of the way.

"Quickly now, before someone comes to check on you."

They exited into the stifling corridor and trailed Burnfingers closely. A minor female imp wearing the red-orange uniform of Administration appeared in a side corridor. She barely acknowledged Burnfingers’s existence, gave the family clustered close behind him a disinterested glance, and continued on her way.

Only when she’d turned a corner and vanished behind them did Burnfingers take a moment to explain her indifference.

"There is so much paperwork to keep up with, hardly anyone knows what the demon in the next cubicle is doing, let alone the ones in the next department. Act like you belong out here." For the second time his gaze locked on Mouse. "You aren’t part of this family, are you?"

"I was hitchhiking. The Sonderbergs were kind enough to offer me a lift. I am on my way to the Vanishing Point to try and regulate the Spinner before it allows the fabric of existence to unravel completely."

"Something to do with weaving, is it? You’ll have to tell me more. We Navajos make the finest rugs in existence, just the best there is. Especially the medicine rugs. I’ve seen some; a Two Gray Hills, a Seven Yeibichai, and a Teec Noc Pos, with plenty of the fabric of existence woven through them. Miracle Yazzie’s work would astonish you." He turned left up a cross corridor. "One of her medicine rugs had dancing figures in it that shifted whenever you looked away. By the time you looked back the pattern was different.

"But pure fabric of existence, without wool or cotton, that is something I have never seen. If it is coming apart and they find out who you are and what you intend, they will try to stop you. Such unraveling would inspire jubilation in this place."

"That’s what Mouse told us!" said Wendy in surprise.

Burnfingers Begay favored her with a wide smile. "All the more reason for helping you folks away from here."

"It’s nothing to do with us," said Alicia. "We’re just on our vacation."

"Not anymore, you’re not." Abruptly he halted and unlocked a door. "My room," he said helpfully.

Frank didn’t know what to expect. A simple bed, perhaps a table and chair, possibly even a rug of the type he’d described to Mouse. All those were present, and more, but what took everyone’s breath away was the vast and highly detailed work of art that occupied the whole far wall.

Rummaging through a box he extracted from beneath the bed, Burnfingers noticed their rapt stares and commented indifferently.

"Sand painting. My father taught me how to do them."

"It’s beautiful!" Alicia told him.

"Totally awesome," Steven added admiringly.

Burnfingers was filling a small backpack. "It gives me something to do in my spare time. One thing I have no trouble acquiring in this place is plenty of sand." He nodded in the painting’s direction. "But making the sand stay in place on a vertical surface, that is the real art."

Frank was confused. "You mean it’s not glued on?"

"No glue can last long here. It is a matter of placing the grains of sand one at a time and making sure the internal planes of the various crystals are correctly aligned."

That didn’t make sense, but Frank had no reservations about the painting itself.

Four lines radiated from a common center. These served to isolate yeibichais, plants, animals, and highly stylized representations of the forces of nature. Creatures and gods, lightning and stars, combined into an immense whirling shape on the wall. Though the figures were simplistic in design, the overall effect was quite awe-inspiring. It drew you into an alien but warm world.

Burnfingers frowned. "The lower right-hand corner has been giving me a lot of trouble, but it doesn’t matter now." He was watching Mouse as he explained. "That part contains a representation of Chaos. Not easy to paint."

"The Anarchis." Mouse sounded approving. "A most remarkable and revealing portrait. You are quite an artist, Mr. Begay." She stared at the intemperate mass of black and yellow sand that occupied most of the right-hand corner of the painting.

Burnfingers shrugged off the compliment. "When I don’t have time for making jewelry I like to play with sand. Keeps the fingers nimble. And the mind."

"What’s this?" Steven had walked around the foot of the bed to examine the painting more closely. Before Frank could stop him, the boy touched the portion of the painting that had piqued his curiosity.

A rush of wind blew through the room, unexpectedly cool in that hottest of regions. It was the kind of wind that caressed beaches and mountain buttes. On contact with Steven’s finger the entire intricate construction collapsed. Where an elaborate work of art had hung an instant earlier there was now only a blank wall with an uneven pile of multicolored sand heaped at its base.

Alicia’s hands went to her cheeks. "Oh my God."

"I’m sorry!" Steven stumbled backward. "I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it."

"It doesn’t matter." Burnfingers smiled at him as he slung a battered canvas backpack over his shoulders. "We are leaving anyway. Sand paintings are not meant to be permanent. They are intended to instruct and reveal and entertain. The permanent ones you can buy in places like Arizona are for tourists to take home and hang on their walls." He put a comforting arm around the boy and hugged him. "When I have time I will make another, just for you. One you will be able to take to school to show your friends."

"Okay. Just as long as they don’t ask me what I did on my summer vacation." Steven managed a weak smile.

"That’s the spirit. You have quite a little fella here, Mr. Sonderberg. Right now he is a bit too much of a good thing, but I think that will change as he grows older.

"Come now." He led them to the door, checked the hallway beyond, and stepped out into the intense heat. Mouse followed, then the Sonderbergs. They left a small room occupied by simple furnishings and one collapsed painting of the entire universe.

"I hope this doesn’t make things worse."

Frank whispered to his wife, "What could be worse than this?"

She looked up at him out of doe eyes. "Fleeing police custody."

"I think you were right the first time, hon. We’re not gonna find much kindness and sympathy here."

"I wish we knew more about Mr. Begay, though."

"We know he’s human. In a place like this that’s good enough for me. And Mouse trusts him."

"I thought you didn’t trust Mouse."

"I don’t yet. Not entirely."

Burnfingers had stopped. They crowded close behind him.

"Wait here." They complied as he disappeared around a corner. Minutes ticked toward oblivion. Frank was starting to worry that they were being set up when their newfound friend finally returned. "All clear. Come quietly."

Following him into another hallway, they passed something that lay in a heap off in a corner. It wore a red-orange uniform over bright green skin. A single fang protruded from the upper jaw. Both eyes were closed tight and the row of spines that ran from the base of the skull to the sacrum lay limply against the monster’s back. Green blood trickled from the misshapen forehead.

"Did you do that?" Fear and admiration mixed in Wendy’s query.

"Had to. He was on station here and I couldn’t talk him away. So I waited until he looked elsewhere and then I clobbered him."

Frank’s gaze lingered on the unconscious beast as they hurried past. "He’ll be pissed when he comes to."

"This whole place will be in an uproar when you are discovered missing. They will search the station first. That should allow us a good head start."

"Won’t they see the motor home leave?" Alicia wondered.

Burnfingers shook his head; a terse, economical gesture. "Not unless some are standing around out in the parking lot. There is no reason for them to do so. They will expect you to be wandering around lost inside the building, which is exactly what you would be doing without my help."

"It just occurred to me," Frank said, "that if they find out you’ve helped us and this doesn’t work, what they do to us will be nothing compared to what they’ll do to you."

"Don’t worry about me. Remember, I am crazy."

"You can still feel."

"Pain is only a different state of mind. You sound like an old woman, Sonderberg. They are not going to catch me, and they are not going to catch you, either."

Then they were running past the solid quartz door Burnfingers opened for them, out into the lot. Across the road, the endless line of vehicles containing the Damned awaited their turn to pass through the Gates. Screams and moans emanated from within as panicky, fearful faces hammered on locked windows.

A few patrol cruisers were parked nearby. There was also something that looked like a giant toaster on wheels. Which, Frank mused uneasily, it might well have been. Their motor home gleamed whitely against the stark surroundings, as out of place in that parking lot as a beluga whale in a school of salmon.

Frank was relieved to find it still locked. He dropped the keys twice before he got the door open. Everyone piled in. Still no sign of alarm from within the station. The lot was devoid of officers, while the demons who worked the line of traffic across the street were too busy to pay attention to anything going on behind their backs.

Frank slipped gratefully into the driver’s seat and jammed the key into the ignition.

"What if it doesn’t start?" Alicia whispered tensely.

Frank growled at her as he turned the key. The engine turned over immediately, a warm, purring sound.

Burnfingers was standing between the two captain’s chairs, watching the station. "Okay. Move out, but not too fast."

The lot was big enough to give Frank plenty of room to maneuver. He’d backed up, swung around, and was about to pull out into the road when something with four eyes and vestigial leathery bat wings came running toward them, waving its clawed hands urgently.

"What should I do?" Frank said tightly.

"Stop."

"Stop? But we — "

"Be calm, Mr. Sonderberg. Roll down your window."

Frank complied reluctantly, forced himself not to recoil from the stinking monstrosity that leaned close for a look at them. It could do so easily because it was at least nine feet tall. The nasty expression it wore relaxed when it espied a familiar face.

"Janitor, what you do here with these humans?"

Burnfingers grinned. "These here tourists took a wrong turn back up the highway apiece. Honest mistake. I’m giving them a guide out."

"That so?" The winged apparition made an unpleasant gurgling noise. "I heard somethin' about that." It rested a clawed hand on the windowsill. Frank did not look at it. Those thick scaly fingers could easily pluck him right out of his seat. "Whatsa matter? Don’t you folks like our hospitality?"

"We’re on vacation." Somehow Frank found the wherewithal to talk calmly and rationally. "We were on our way to a warm destination, but not one quite this warm."

Again the gurgling laugh, followed by a display of four-inch-long teeth in a gaping mouth. "Let you go, huh?"

"That’s right," said Burnfingers, nodding. "No reason to keep them. It was a mistake in traffic control."

"All right." The tall demon’s drool dripped down the inside of the door. Frank quietly moved his left foot clear of the noisome liquid. "Seems a shame to hafta let such sweet people go." It shrugged, an unexpectedly human gesture. "But if that’s the decision, it not my business. What you going do with them?"

"They’re a little nervous," Burnfingers explained easily, "so I’m just going to show them the on ramp. I’ll walk back. I can use the exercise."

The demon nodded once, leered at Frank. "See you folks in a few decades, right?"

"You never know," said Frank, astonished by his facile reply.

The hand which looked capable of lifting the motor home off the pavement released the windowsill. "I’d tell you to be good, but that would be bad for business. Right, Burnfingers?"

"Not really my department." Burnfingers smiled and waved as the demon returned to his duties across the road. Still smiling and waving, he whispered to Frank. "Okay. Now go like hell, Frank Sonderberg."

The partly paralyzed Frank put the motor home back in drive and thromped the accelerator. Kicking up sand and gravel, the big vehicle clawed its way back onto the access road. Their lane was deserted, that opposite bumper-to-bumper. Frank was glad all the traffic was on his side so Alicia wouldn’t have to see what was taking place inside some of the cars and vans waiting their turn to deliver the condemned to their fate.

"Here," said Burnfingers. "Don’t miss the ramp. There is no other."

"I’m on it." Frank swung the wheel to the right. The motor home plunged down the on ramp, picking up speed as it descended. They were at fifty by the time they hit the empty freeway. No traffic on their side, but plenty headed in the other direction, slowing as it prepared to exit.

"Made it!" Frank shouted gleefully, pushing them up to sixty.

"Maybe." Burnfingers was staring back the way they’d come, his eyes narrowed.

A moment later they heard the sirens.

"Oh, God," Alicia was mumbling, "oh, God, not again, not now!"

Grim-faced, Frank tried to shove the accelerator pedal through the floor. The motor home raced past sixty-five, heading toward a futile seventy. The tri-axled beast couldn’t outrun a family compact, much less a highway patrol cruiser fueled by Lord knew what.

"We aren’t going back with them," he told his wife quietly. "No matter what. Tell the kids to strap in. Get everybody secured." She nodded, left her seat to comply. Frank kept his eyes fastened to the highway ahead as he spoke. "Burnfingers?"

"Very right, Mr. Sonderberg. You keep going. I do not think I could talk to them anymore." Frank sensed rather than saw the big Navajo straighten and turn curiously. "Hey there, missy, what are you doing?"

A rush of warm air reached the front of the motor home. Someone must have opened the big rear window, back in the master bedroom. Frank was about to protest when his ears were filled with a high-pitched quaver. The single note rose and fell but slightly, hardly varying at all in pitch or intensity.

His attention was diverted by something that spanged against his sideview mirror. The top half, glass and metal alike, had been melted. He wondered what kind of bullets their pursuers used.

Enough of the mirror remained to show the half-dozen patrol cars that were pursuing. Sirens wailed, rotating lights flared threateningly, and the sickly sunlight gleamed on bright red-orange hoods. Rising above the hellish cacophony was Mouse’s single, unwavering note. No mysterious words to this song, no elaborate contrapuntal harmonics: just one note sung with all the power at her command.

Their pursuit began to fall by the wayside, one car after another pulling over or stopping dead on the pavement. Two brushed past each other at high speed, causing the one on the left to veer sharply. It slid onto the sand shoulder that bordered the slow lane and rolled several times. Behind the retreating motor home a dull boom was chased by a pillar of smoke.

By now the relentless unvarying note was sending shivers through Frank’s whole body. He clung determinedly to the wheel. Everyone else was trembling, too, but the effect on the pursuing demons was far worse. Even so, one last cruiser hung grimly on their tail, closing ground between them even as the last of its companions screeched to a halt behind it.

Pulling alongside, the screaming din of its siren penetrated the glass to claw at Frank’s soul. Knowing that the motor home was ten times heavier, he considered swerving sharply in an attempt to shove their assailant off the road. Even as the thought occurred to him, Alicia was letting out a warning shout.

He ducked and something smashed through the glass where his head had been a moment earlier, forming a perfect hole half an inch in diameter. There was a thump atop the roof. Frank jerked instinctively and they slid across into the fast lane, tires screeching in protest. The move forced the remaining cruiser into the sandy median strip. It spun out and stalled.

Mouse had stopped singing, unwilling or unable to hold the saving note any longer. Scratching sounds moved from the roof to the walls. Then he saw it, clinging to the side of the motor home and grinning at him through Alicia’s window. Two long, vampirish fangs protruded from the lower jaw of the man-sized cadaver. It stared at him out of tiny, evil button eyes. Then he saw the red revolver. He saw why Mouse’s song had not affected it.

It had no ears.

"No," he whispered as the decaying finger tightened on the trigger.

The shot wasn’t fired. A look of surprise came over the creature’s face as it turned toward the rear of the motor home. As it tried to reaim the gun, its head exploded. Green blood and bits of steaming flesh splattered the window. The decapitated body clung to the metal a moment longer before dropping away.

A dull roar had preceded the execution. Burnfingers Begay closed the rear window he’d been leaning out of and came forward, his expression one of solemn satisfaction. In his right fist he held a handgun the size of a small cannon. While Frank tried to slow his heart, the Indian removed a box of cartridges from his backpack and calmly reloaded the massive pistol.

"Four-fifty-four Casull," he announced in reply to Frank’s unvoiced question. "Not as pretty as our lady singer, but effective in its own way. Even the most eloquent sentence can benefit from proper punctuation."

He finished the loading and slipped the pistol into a leather holster, which he carefully placed back in his pack. Frank caught a brief glimpse of the holster. Arcane Navajo symbols and floating stars had been engraved in the cowhide.

"I wouldn’t think that would be very effective in a place like this. I thought you had to use black magic or something special, like Mouse’s song."

Burnfingers let out a grunt as he closed the cartridge box. "There are all kinds of magic, my friend. Cold lead works very well in Hades."

"Another gift from your father?"

Burnfingers smiled. "No. This I bought for myself, in a pawnshop in Flagstaff. It is not traditional, but I find it comforting. Its chant is short."

Alicia sat up in the seat opposite her husband’s, moaned when she got a look at what had smeared itself all over her window.

"They let you bring a gun in with you?" Frank’s tone was disbelieving.

"It was part of my personal goods. Why take it away from me? They knew I dared not use it back there."

Mouse was gulping lemonade from the refrigerator. The effort of holding the single note for so long had put a severe strain on her throat. "This will not stop them. They won’t give up so easily."

Burnfingers leaned forward for a look at one of the rearview mirrors. "I know they will not, but we have a good start now. In a little while I think we will be out of their jurisdiction."

"That’s no guarantee of safety. Not when the fabric of existence is coming apart. Nothing is as it should be. Realities are crossing unpredictably. Not even Hell is stable anymore."

"Maybe not, but we have someone who I think can drive his way even out of Hell." He clapped a huge hand on Frank’s shoulder.

Frank felt as though he’d just been knighted.

After a while he was able to stop glancing at the mirrors. There’d been no indication of further pursuit for some time. Wendy and Steven filled glasses with ice and soda for everyone. The longer they drove, the more the land outside grew normal. The endless procession of the Damned shrank until the oncoming lanes were empty again save for the occasional car or truck. Cacti straightened, green and brown, once more healthy succulents instead of human beings frozen in poses of eternal torment. The sky brightened and there were no unwelcome stains on the pavement.

"Check it out." He gestured forward. They were coming up fast on another road sign. It gave only the distance remaining to Las Vegas and several small intervening towns. There was no mention of a Hades Junction or anything like it.

"We’ll make it by tonight." He settled back against the padding, the feeling of relief almost painful. "Everything’s okay again. No gambling for a few days, though. I think we’ve done enough gambling for a while." He laughed, but it was a forced sound. Alicia knew it but smiled back anyway.

He glanced around. "Wendy! Why don’t you put a tape in and turn up your machine so we can all hear?"

His daughter didn’t try to hide her surprise. "You want to listen to my music?"

"Why not? Come on, put something really radical on. After what we’ve been through a little heavy metal would be soothing."

"I don’t listen to that much metal, Pops."

Pops. How delighted he was to hear that mildly contemptuous appellation once more. "Well, then, whatever you’re into right now."

"Okay, you asked for it." She removed her earphones and turned up the volume on the compact recorder. Soon they were rolling down the highway to the accompanying strains of Huey Lewis, Bon Jovi, and Cyndi Lauper.

"Real food." Frank whispered as he drove. "Gaming. Television. Civilization."

"It’s funny," Alicia was saying, "but we can’t ever tell anybody what happened to us. No one would ever believe."

"I’m having a hard time believing myself." He raised his voice. "Hey, Steven! Why don’t you come up here and join your folks, kiddo?"

"That’s cool, Dad. I’d rather stay back here for a while, if it’s okay."

"Sure it’s okay." Despite his son’s smile Frank knew the boy had suffered badly from their experience, maybe worse than any of them. Just seeing parents threatened could traumatize a sensitive child deeply. "There’s ice cream in the freezer."

"I know, Dad." The boy smiled wanly. "It’s all right. I’m okay."

Mouse started to turn. "Perhaps I can help him."

"No." Burnfingers stopped her. "It’s been a long time since I had the chance to talk to a worthy child. The few who passed me in that hot place deserved to be there."

Mouse stared up into his eyes, then nodded sagely. "You are crazy. No wonder you were able to keep your sanity."

Burnfingers just smiled cryptically and walked back through the motor home until he came to Steven’s couch. He sat down on the floor and crossed his legs.

"Troubles, boy?"

Steven glanced past him, toward the front of the vehicle where his parents sat. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "I’m still scared, Mr. Begay."

"Burnfingers will do." The boy’s knuckles were white where his fingers clutched at the upholstery. "They cannot bother us no more, Steven. Mouse’s singing made most of the bad things give up. I took care of the rest."

"You sure did." Steven’s grip relaxed slightly and a flicker of interest replaced some of the terror in his eyes. "You shot 'em, didn’t you?"

"That’s just what I did. Want to see my gun?"

The boy drew back slightly. "No! I’m afraid of guns."

"No reason to be afraid, if you know what you are doing. You’re not afraid of a hammer, are you? Or a saw?"

"N-no."

"Well, a gun is just another kind of tool."

"I never thought of it like that before."

"That is because you live in the city, where people think of guns wrongly. Tell me what else you are afraid of."

"Fire. I’m scared of fire. That’s one reason why I was so frightened back there."

Burnfingers shook his head and chuckled. "Another tool. Fire is a gift the gods gave man long ago. If you learn to know it and how to make use of it, then it will be your good friend forever. There is no reason to be frightened of it."

Steven sounded uncertain. "Mom always warned me to be careful of matches and the stove and things like that. I just don’t feel comfortable around them." Burnfingers noted that the boy’s hands had finally relaxed, no longer dug for dear life at the fabric of the couch.

"Be careful, of course. But friendly, too. There’s more than one reason why I am called Burnfingers Begay. Want to see a trick?" He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Just between you and me. Not for your mom or dad or anyone else."

Steven peered past the big stranger. His parents were in the front seats, chatting to each other. Wendy had her eyes closed as her feet tapped time to the music. Despite not reacting to the rhythm, Mouse looked as if she was listening. He turned back to the powerful, soft-spoken man who had saved him and his family, and suddenly he was no longer afraid.

"All right. Sure."

"Good. Put out your hand like this." Burnfingers extended his left hand, demonstrating how to place the thumb against the tip of the forefinger.

Steven struggled to position his much smaller fingers. "Like this?"

"No. Cross them a little more." Burnfingers gently adjusted the boy’s hand. "Now you do — this." He snapped his fingers. A tiny dancing flame burst from the tip of his thumb, burning merrily.

Even for a ten-year-old, Steven’s eyes became very wide. "Wow, that’s neat! How’d you do that?"

"Practice, and knowing how things are." He gestured with his burning thumb. "Blow it out. Go on, go ahead."

Steven leaned forward, hesitated a moment, then exhaled sharply. The flame vanished. Where it had danced was no darkening of the skin, no scorch mark.

"It’s a trick."

Burnfingers smiled. "Didn’t I say so? Most of life is a trick, Steven. Physics is a trick, and chemistry a trick, and mathematics the neatest trick of them all. Now you try it."

"Okay," the boy said dubiously. He concentrated hard on his thumb as he snapped his fingers together. They popped cleanly, but several attempts produced only sore fingers and no flame.

"You do right with your fingers but not with your head. That’s where the trick part is." He leaned close and whispered in the boy’s ear. Steven listened intently, nodding as he did so. "Now try again."

Steven did so, repeatedly. The fourth attempt brought forth a tiny but unmistakable puff of smoke. "Gee!" Steven started to smile, staring at his hand in wonder.

"You see?" Burnfingers sat back, satisfied. "Like most tricks it is just a question of practice and getting your head straight. Concentrate now."

Steven leaned forward eagerly, trying to set his mind the way the Navajo had instructed him. As he concentrated, he relaxed, and as he relaxed, the fear and terror of the past hours faded from his memory.

Which was what Burnfingers had intended all along.