"I thought you were an Earth chick," he said.
"I'm not a chick in any sense of the word. I'm not going to grow up to be a hen, and roosters hold absolutely no appeal. But I’m about ready to ruffle some feathers."
"Don't be like that."
She started to pour it on, dump eighty miles of hiking and their being lost and his two-track-mindedness on him and probably she would end up crying in frustration except, before she could really get rolling, she saw the yellow eyes again.
In front of them, maybe fifteen feet away.
This time, even Barry saw them.
"What was that?" He stood and grabbed a long limb from the fire, held it as a torch.
The eyes disappeared in blackness.
"That wasn't a reflection." Susan picked up the closest rock.
"Looked like yellow eyes to me."
"I told you."
"Shh." Barry waved his hand.
The noise came from the left. And the right. And behind them.
Susan turned her back to the fire. The rock was heavy in her hand. The only direction that didn't seem scary was up, with the stars blind in the glow of the moon. Mamaw said the sky hung heavier in the mountains, that it took your breath and then your soul, because you’re closer to heaven here.
The eyes flashed beside her tent. Branches broke. The laughter of wind swept from the trees.
Halloween. Trick or treat. In the land of legends. Mamaw’s territory.
The campfire grabbed some oxygen and jumped for the sky. Smoke burned Susan's eyes and nose. The forest grew wild, unafraid, with Appalachian teeth.
The night swooped in like bats, the trees bent with knotted limbs, the golden eyes closed in. It was coming, whatever it was.
Susan raised the rock. "Barry!"
He jumped in front of her and waved the burning stick as if it were a flag. Embers fell from its tip. He shouted at the woods. The eyes froze, then faded back to invisibility.
The air grew still again. The fire sputtered. Leaves settled on the ground. Susan's heart, the one Barry had briefly stolen, was now back and working overtime.
She should have known better than to head south with a man. Not into this land that Mamaw said was haunted by ancient things. Especially not on Halloween.
"What was it?" Susan's hands were cold.
Barry had long lost his glow, was now just another guy with body odor and the deep-seated fear that all guys tried to hide but was always just a sniff away. He tugged at the waistband of his jeans. "Mountain lion, I bet."
"Mountain lion? The guidebook didn't say anything about mountain lions."
Barry tried to ruralize his speech, hard to do with the nasally Maine accent. "Supposed to be extinct in these parts. But there's a lot about these woods that people don't know."
"I know, I know, the land of legends." Susan edged closer to the fire. It was burning low. Somebody would have go in search of wood. Somebody named Barry.
"Big cats, they'll come right up to a camp. They're not afraid."
"Barry, stop trying to scare me."
He grinned.. "Best thing to do is get in the tent and hope it goes away."
"The fire's dying."
"So?" He crawled into his tent.
Susan looked around at the woods. Painters could climb trees, couldn't they? Were they afraid of fire? What color eyes did they have? All the cats Susan knew had golden or green or gray eyes, but those were house cats. Maybe mountain lions were different.
Bigger.
Wild things in the land of legends.
Creatures with fang and claw that had stalked here long before the Catawba and Cherokee and Algonquin, long before the Scottish and Irish and German settlers, and long before Daniel Boone, that original tourist, had started the Southern Appalachians on its downward cultural slide. The guidebook writers from New York couldn't know much about mountain lions, painters, and distant legends. And absolutely nothing about Wampus Cats that were forever locked in transformation, caught between two worlds.
Something chuckled in the dark, and it sure wasn't the ghost of Daniel Boone.
Even though this was Halloween.
When midnight made promises.
Susan didn't wait for the yellow eyes to appear. The wet rustling of leaves was all the encouragement she needed. Still clutching the rock, she scrambled into her tent. She listened closely to the quiet. To Tuesday night. To October.
To Halloween.
To a mountain lion that shouldn't exist.
The creature's silhouette was now clear, black against the amber glow of the fading fire.
"Williams faced the Yankees thirteen times in 1941," Barry said from the neighboring tent.
"Barry." She wasn't sure if she had mustered enough air to summon this lost fool of the wilderness. She tried again, glad she had a rock in her hand.
He grunted, alreaady half asleep.
"Barry!" The shadow was bigger now. Something nuzzled her tent flaps.
Something with long whiskers.
And October teeth.
The fire died.
Susan was alone with the night. And a snoring Barry. And whatever was outside. In Mamaw’s land.
She held her breath, hoping it would go away.
It didn't.
She listened to the breathing of the big mountain cat. Soft, at home in the darkness. At ease. Something that belonged in the land of legends.
Barry would protect her. Barry would growl and grab a stick and scream stupid words at the stars.
And the cat would . . . what?
Barry's uneven snoring was an insult to the crickets.
Susan lay on her belly, ear at the entrance to the tent.
The woods sang a mountain song, of Rebel yells and squirrels and rustling laurel thickets. Creeks ran quick and cold in the dark. A cat purred, patient as the moon. Mamaw’s ghost sang a lost ballad of wind in the woods.
Susan whispered Barry’s name, afraid the cat would hear. She flicked on her flashlight, pulled down the zipper of the tent, and peered through the nylon netting. More fervid eyes waited in the October blackness. More mountain lions that shouldn't exist. More wild things. More of Mamaw’s painters. And behind them, a Wampus Cat mewling a folk hymn.
She had been wrong all along. Because Barry had seemed like the wild thing, a beast that she must tame or die trying.
Now she saw that he was the danger. He was tame, and his tameness would build a cage around her. His world was one of baseball statistics and environmental rallies and kayaks and snowboards and an endless stream of trail girls, not rocks and trees. He entered this land of legends like a conqueror, with bottled water and wool socks and Yankee pride.
"Deliverance" wasn't a documentary. The Southern Appalachians weren't savage and cruel. The mountains only resisted what didn't belong here. And maybe she belonged, her blood thick through three generations, Mamaw’s heart still beating in hers. A witch’s spell stretching over generations.
The night chill fell away as she left the camp. The eyes surrounded her, warm breath touched her skin, soft paws played at the ground. This was Halloween, a night of trick or treat, when legends came alive. And the legends had come for her.
The forest called, the mountains waited, the wilderness sent an invitation. Mamaw’s song drifted between the trees, beckoning, haunting, welcoming, with a chorus of "Follow your heart."
Her heart was full of the scent of Barry, the stench of his too-human flesh, and her teeth ached for his taste. But he would be easy to track later. For now, the night beckoned.
Susan ran with the painters, free.
Somewhere in the night she changed. At least, half of her did.
###
THE BOY WHO SAW FIRE
He dreamed of hot things.
Red peppers curled like the tips of elf shoes. Stove eyes, their orange coils glaring menacingly. Asphalt, soft and black and casting ribbons of heat on a summer day. Steam baths, mists of boiling dews. And, at the center of his dreams, the point around which these fiery molten ores revolved, was the golden hell of the sun.
He dreamed of cities on fire, of office-workers stumbling from doorways like animated matchsticks, their hair aflame; of yellow cabs driving down buckling streets, smoke churning from open windows; of sidewalks writhing like ant-covered snakes; of glass melting in towering buildings, the warm spun taffy of slag running forty floors down; of satellite dishes withering like sunflowers in a drought; of hot gases pluming from broken water mains; of pedestrians swelling and dripping grease like plump wieners on a 4th of July grill.
He dreamed of a blanket of black oily smog covering the ground, the sky filled with a billion particles of soot; pillars and mushrooms of gray clouds dancing in celebration, twisting like twinkle-toed tornadoes among the hot coals; dead fogs battling the firelight for shadowy dominance; blistering winds urging the flames to wicked heights.
And as the embers died, as the immolating pyres consumed themselves, as the land lay charred and crisp and barren, he dreamed of spring rains, gentle drizzles that carried off the ash in quiet rivulets, water drops that dissipated and dissolved the thick smoke, the dark charcoal ruins swept away by the dust-broom wind. In his dreams, a new sun hovered, a cool and gentle gift-giver, a bringer of change, a rose-colored harbinger.
This morning, as always, he awoke in a sweat, as if the fires and rains had been at work on the plain of his forehead. The real sun was stabbing through his bedroom window with an accusing eye, reprimanding him for sleeping late. He kicked off the blankets and stood up and stretched, his belly-button yawning between pajama halves. He knelt over and tugged up his socks, which had been flagging out beyond his stubby toes.
"Billy, breakfast is ready," his mom called from downstairs. He rubbed his eyes.
"Be down in a sec," he yelled back, then changed into his blue jeans and T-shirt. The sky outside his window was blue and cloudbare. It looked like it was going to be another scary summer day. He jogged downstairs.
His mom kissed him on the top of his head. "Playing ball today?"
"Some of the guys talked about it yesterday." Billy sat at the table and looked at his plate. Two strips of bacon, a circular sausage patty, and two eggs. Sunny side up.
The eggs were like yellow eyes. "I don't think I'm hungry this morning, Mom."
"Are you feeling okay, honey?" She pressed her wrist against his forehead. "I hope you're not getting another one of those fevers."
"I'm fine."
"You feel a little warm to me."
That's because I dream of fire, he thought. And when I wake up, the fire is hiding behind everything like red shadows. It's there in the big oak tree out in the yard. The top where the leaves catch the sunlight is trying to be a torch.
See that fire hydrant by the sidewalk, just outside the white picket fence? If firemen came by and turned the big plug with their wrenches, lava would spew out and burn the grass. And the driveway is a vein coal, waiting to be lit so it can smolder forever.
"It's probably just because of July," Billy said.
"Hmm. Well, you better take it easy today. Maybe you should stay inside in the air-conditioning."
"Aw, can't I go down and play by the creek?"
"I told you to stay away from that nasty water. I don't care if it is shady down there under the trees."
"But, Mom—"
"No 'buts' about it, young man. You can get your pajamas back on and get right back in bed."
In bed, where the heat came to him from somewhere inside his head or heart. But he knew he couldn't argue with Mom.
He poked at the egg yolks until they bled ochre. He forked off a small piece and put it in his mouth. He swallowed, hoping he wouldn't get burned. After the egg slid down his throat, he smiled at his mom. "Can I eat before I go up? I'm getting a little appetite now."
"Sure, honey. You've got to keep your strength up. An eleven-year-old needs good nutrition."
She crossed the kitchen, her high heels clacking on the floor tiles, and went to the bathroom, probably to check on her make-up before going off to work.
Billy put his hand on his glass of orange juice, then drew back as if he had received an electric shock. The liquid was so—so very orange.
He much preferred milk, the cool white silky smooth drink. White reminded him of the hospital, where he had spent most of the spring, back when the winter breezes had flickered and died and the last snow had melted away. The days had started getting longer and the sun glared like a baleful enemy. And the fevers had come.
An endless round of doctors had poked and prodded him, put the cold discs of their tongue depressors in his mouth. But the fevers went away when he was tucked in the windowless room where the only light came from the weak fluorescent tubes. The greenish light made everybody look sick, even the nurses in their sterile uniforms and flat hair.