Stoneskin's Revenge (3 page)

“Fine as
can
be, e'cept for bein' tired and burned out. I could sleep for a week. We—”

“So where
are
you? Where've you
been
?”

Calvin frowned in perplexity at the hint of irritation coloring the much more obvious relief. “Didn't you get my message? I left one on your machine last night.”

“Oops! Yeah, you're right—though I'm not sure I'd consider ‘Am in Crawfordville, Georgia, and safe…mission mostly accomplished…headin' south…will call again' much of a message. Not when you've heard absolutely zilch for almost two days!”

Calvin rolled his eyes in resignation. Though she was obviously making an effort to hide it, Sandy sounded more than a little pissed. Still, he supposed she had a right to blow off a little steam, given that he hadn't exactly sent her hourly reports about what had happened to him and his friends since they'd vacated her cabin Sunday evening—not that he always could have, since they didn't have phones most places he'd been, never had and never would. But maybe he could have made a better effort…

“I can't talk long even now,” he apologized. “I'm in a restaurant near some place called Whidden, Georgia—that's north of Brunswick and south of about everything else, I reckon—but walls have ears, if you get my drift.”

“So,” Sandy sighed after a pause, “yes or no: did you save the World?” Wistfulness seemed to have replaced her earlier irritation.

“More than one actually,” Calvin chuckled wryly. “But, yeah—or it got done, anyway, though
not
the way we planned. Things went okay as far as Stone Mountain, in the sense that we accomplished what we set out to. But Dave and me got separated from everybody else right after we rescued Finno and had to make an on-the-fly switch to—” He paused and glanced over his shoulder to see the waitress totally absorbed with her nails, which was probably fortunate.

“Uh…let's just say it was that
other
place I go to sometimes,” Calvin finished mysteriously. “And then I wound up havin' to go on
another
errand there, which I pulled off barely in time. And after that I had to boogie back here. I caught up with Uncle Dale last night—that was up in Crawfordville, where I called you from—but we didn't touch base with Dave again until this mornin'. Things more or less came to a head near Cumberland Island—that's where Alec and Liz wound up—but I only caught the tail end of the action. There was some semi-divine intervention at the end, but I'd probably better leave it at that for the time being. I—”

He paused once more, gazing out the window to watch a bronze Chevy Caprice with WILLACOOCHEE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT blazoned on its side ease into the parking lot. The driver glanced his way and continued staring as he executed a leisurely U-turn and headed out again. Calvin wondered if the guy could actually see him through mirror shades, tinted glass, and a plate-glass window.

“Calvin?”

“Sorry. Cop car just cruised by and I thought the guy was lookin' at me. Just my old paranoia kickin' in, I guess. You know how I am about bein' unobtrusive.”

“That not real easy with your looks.”

“
That's
why I like to avoid towns,” Calvin countered gleefully, “especially small ones. In the woods
nobody'll
notice you, if you're careful. Trouble is, folks've got rules and regulations all over every tree and vine, even in the parks, and when you're a little bit different, they tend to get
real
antsy, so it's best not to let 'em see you in the first place.”

“Which makes
you
paranoid, but we've had this conversation before.”

“Good point,” Calvin conceded. “Not the stuff to go over when you're in a rush. Oh…thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

“For alertin' Dave's uncle to what was goin' on. He saved
all
our asses. Brought food, spare clothes, a bunch of campin' gear, just in case. Even brought Dave's bow, which I think he's gonna lend me, since I lost mine.”

“Calvin, no! That bow was made in Galunlati!”

“Tell me about it!”

“You got any money?” Sandy wondered suddenly. “Just a fifty Uncle Dale slipped me on the sly.”

“Need more?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Well, feel free to ask if you do; I'm in the phone book.” A pause while Sandy cleared her throat, then: “So what're y'all gonna do?”

He hesitated. This was it, then: the hard part, the lead-in to the question he'd been dreading. “Well,” Calvin began finally, “I reckon
they're
gonna ride back with Dale…”

“What about
you?
When're
you
comin' home?”

Calvin took a deep breath. “
That's…
a real good question. I—” He cleared his throat in turn, and tried once more. “It's like…well, it's like stuff's just gotten
too
weird, Sandy. And there's a lot of things I need to think long and hard about. And…and I'd like to puzzle on 'em by myself for a while before I spring 'em on you and see what they do to the old Unified Field Theory of Cosmology. Shoot, I'm afraid I'll
forget
'em
if I don't go over 'em again real soon, 'cause they're the kind of things folks don't
want
to remember 'cause they're irrational.”

“So you're saying…?”

“That I'm gonna hang around down here a couple of days and try to get my head straight. Otherwise, it'll be a seven-hour drive back to MacTyrie with the rest of the folks, durin' which I won't be able to concentrate worth crap, and then there'd be debriefin' with Dave's friends, and that'd eat up Wednesday, and then Gary's gettin' married on Saturday, and I can't get out of that, seem' as how I'm a groomsman, only the hoo-ha with
that
starts in on Friday—that's when the rehearsal dinner and bachelor party are—and I'll be up to my ass in all that stuff from then till sometime Sunday. That
might
give me half a day, and I need more than that—which means I won't make it back to your house until Sunday at the soonest, I guess,” he concluded lamely. “Sorry, but I've just
gotta
have a couple of days alone.”

There it was; he'd said it, and he felt like a heel because he knew he really ought to hightail it straight back to Sylva and give Sandy the low-down on what had been going on, then recuperate there. But he simply couldn't face another trip, not yet, not with so much weirdness in his head he felt like it was gonna explode.

“These…
things
you keep referring to,” Sandy ventured finally, and Calvin could sense her trying to conceal her hurt. “Do they have to do with…?”

He started to reply, then realized that a straight answer would make him sound like an absolute loon to the glowering door-warden, who was now giving him quite an alarming scowl and pointing meaningfully at her watch. His eyes quested vainly, came to rest on a pile of eleventh-grade textbooks atop the filing cabinet. “It's got to do with…with geography and astronomy and mythology and biology,” he managed at last. “And with lycanthropy—a
lot
with that. I—”

“I understand,” Sandy broke in simply. And he knew she did.

“Thanks,” Calvin sighed. “You know I'll level with you when I can.”

“I could come get you, then go to the wedding and meet these folks you're always talking about…”

“Hmmm,” he mused thoughtfully. “Not a bad idea. Tell you what, I'll try to find a pay phone and check back with you later in the day when I can talk freely. Deal?”

“Deal. Have fun on your Vision Quest.”

“It's not a—”

A warning cough from the waitress drew his attention, and he glanced up to see her striding toward him, a look of grim determination laying the groundwork for future wrinkles across her forehead.

“Gotta go,” he finished quickly. “I'll call when I c—” And then the girl touched the transparent button atop the phone and cut him off.

“Bitch,” he mouthed before he could stop himself. So much for good impressions, though apparently she didn't notice. Girl had to make a living, too, he supposed; and it really was kind of sorry of him to upset her routine like he had. Still, he wondered what Little-Miss-Evil-Eye would say if he told her that this World wasn't the only one: not by a bloody long shot.

More to the point, he wondered what she'd say if she knew she'd kept vigil not only over a Cherokee Indian, but also over one who just happened to be an apprentice shaman.

He grinned as he trotted over to rejoin his friends. He didn't quite believe it either.

Chapter II: Inconveniences

(five miles south of Whidden, Georgia—oneish)

The sun was straight overhead in a cloudless sky and his shadow a puddle of black on the parking lot pavement beneath him when Calvin saw Dave's brake lights flash on as he slowed what he called the Mustang-of-Death at the entrance to the main highway. He heard a final shouted “Bye,” and then the car passed from view behind a stand of scruffy magnolias, though the tired bellow of its exhaust persisted a moment longer.

And Calvin found himself alone outside an unremarkable restaurant in a south Georgia county he had never set foot in until that morning. It was hot, and there was no breeze; nothing to dispel the sharp tang of the nearby marshes or the sulfur-sweet smell of one of Union Camp's papermills a little farther off to the southeast. There was only the parking lot, the scrap of highway, the unpretentious white cinder-block building, the surrounding loom of pine woods—and himself and his thoughts.

His thoughts…

Where did he begin? With the nature of reality maybe?

With the world as it
really
was? But if he got off on that now, it would lead him…

Nowhere,
Calvin decided, and turned away from both restaurant and road, hoisting a borrowed blue nylon backpack across his shoulders beside the rather special bow Dave's uncle had been thoughtful enough to bring along when he'd joined them. He had not gone three strides, however, before the pack straps began to chafe across his collarbones and tug at his unbound hair. He grunted and paused to resettle them, wishing there was more in it than a change of borrowed clothes, a small assortment of camping gear, a handmade Rakestraw hunting knife (also one of Dale's lendings), and some rapidly mellowing McDonald's biscuits. Comfortable at last, he fished in his pockets and produced a rubber band, with which he secured the bulk of his mane at the nape of his neck. Maybe that wouldn't attract too much attention: lots of twenty-year-old south Georgia boys had black hair. Some of 'em even wore ponytails. But, Calvin reckoned wryly, that was about all he had in common with the local lads. He took a deep breath and marched, with deliberate precision, into the forest.

*

An hour later Calvin had begun to suspect that the overland route was a bad idea, at least as far as speeding his quest for a pay phone. An hour along open highway would probably have put him in Whidden itself, had he any intention of going there, which he did not. Instead, he'd spent most of his time threading his way through close-grown groves of live oaks, circumnavigating spiky clumps of saw-toothed palmettos, peering through endless tendrils of Spanish moss, and beating off armies of gnats. It was hotter than ever, too, because there was no wind. And sticky. Still, he took some solace from the coolness of the ground under his now-bare feet, and the caress of sunlight across his muscular torso. For a time he'd considered stripping naked and navigating the woods the way Kanati had made him—but that would probably have been pushing his luck and local tolerance a little
too
far. Calvin did not want to make waves; not even a ripple. Complete invisibility was his (so-far-unattainable) goal, but he'd settle for being unobtrusive.

And then he came abruptly to the edge of the forest. Before him was a narrow ditch full of rancid-smelling black water and cattails, then a yard-wide strip of sand, beyond which a two-lane road widened into four—he supposed in anticipation of entering the yet-unseen metropolis of Whidden, which a white-and-green sign now promised to be a mile away. Could have fooled him, he thought wryly. The only signs of civilization were the road, the odd beer can among the browning stems, and the distant whoosh of a semi. There were more woods across the highway: still the ubiquitous pines. And a Magic Market.

*

“That do it for ya?” The voice was old, tired; the soft, coastal drawl clipped by impatience.

But, Calvin reflected sympathetically, it
was
the middle of the afternoon and the sunburned geezer behind the convenience store's checkout counter had apparently been on duty since, as he so colorfully put it, “God's tomcat went out to take a
whizz” (which Calvin reckoned as about 5 A.M.). Add the fact that the place was ungodly hot as a result of an air-conditioner failure (“third 'un this month,” the fossil had confided, staring hopefully at the ceiling fan backup) and the poor old soul probably had a right to be irritable—especially as Calvin had been taking his own sweet time making up his mind what he wanted.