The Walking (11 page)

sip of warm water from his canteen.

Nightfall lingered up on top, but it came swift and sure in the ravines, and his camp was swathed in darkness even as the western sky above remained orange.

There was no sound but the birthing winds above, no scuttle of rats, no cawing of birds, no noise from anything

alive. Not only were there no people in this forsaken country, there were not even any animals. Crouching down, he sprinkled a pinch of bone dust on the branches, dramatically waved his hand over them, and spoke a few words. The fire started.

He sighed. Reduced to performing parlor tricks without an audience.

He made the fire turn blue, then green, but it did not dispel the melancholy that had come over him. He had always been something of a loner, but he had never really been alone before. Not truly alone. If he had not always had living companions, he had always been able to communicate with dead ones, to conjure up the spirits of those who had passed on, to discuss his life with those who had finished theirs.

But here he was too far out. No people had lived here, no people had died here. He could communicate with no one. He was all by himself.

He stared into the rainbow-colored fire, surrounded by silence.

Eventually, he went to sleep.

Above the ravine, the night wind howled.

He met William the next day.

Jeb felt him before he saw him, sensed his presence, and he was filled with a grateful anticipation that was almost joy. He could not remember the last conversation he'd had, and it had been weeks since he'd even seen another human being.

And this man was one of his own.

Jeb continued south, his pace swifter than it had been since Sam's death. The land here was raw and hard and open, not blunted and covered and soft like the land in the East. It was what made the west frightening. And exciting. \020The world here seemed to go on forever, and only the lack of companionship had kept it from being a paradise.

A person was dwarfed by this landscape, but Jeb did not need to see the man to know where he was. He could feel him, and when he sensed that the man had stopped, was waiting for him to catch up, Jeb increased his speed even more, practically running across the flat ground toward the mountains.

He found the man sitting underneath a low tree at the mouth of a canyon, his horse drinking from a muddy pool. The man stood, shook the dust off his clothes, and walked forward, hand extended. "Glad to finally meet you," he said. "I'm William. William Johnson. I'm a witch."

William, it turned out, had been aware of his presence for days, and Jeb chose to think that it was because his own skills were rusty, because he hadn't been using them lately, that he had not been aware of William until he was practically upon him.

He had met other witches before, but in towns, in cities, and there'd always been a sort of implied acknowledgment of their kinship, a tacit understanding that they recognized each other but were not going to consort with each other so that no suspicions would be raised.

But out here they were all alone, with no one else around for hundreds of miles, and he and William were able to speak openly about things that had always before been only hinted about or left unsaid. It was a strange and unsettling experience, and at first Jeb was wary about saying too much, being too explicit, for fear that William was trying to trick him into revealing incriminating details about himself, trap him into giving away secrets. He knew intellectually that that was not the case--William was a witch just like himself--but the emotional prohibitions were still there, and only after his new companion had told his story, had revealed far

more than Jeb would have ever dreamed of sharing with a stranger, did Jeb feel comfortable enough to relax and really talk.

They had a lot in common. William had traveled throughout the territories, living for a time in various settlements, keeping to himself when he could, providing help when asked. He d removed unwanted pregnancies, performed small healings, made the infertile fertile. And he'd been punished for it: harassed, attacked, exiled.

Much as Jeb had himself.

They'd both tried their best to fit in, and had both been found out every time, persecuted for their natures, for who they were and could not help being, by the intolerant men and women who claimed to be speaking for God.

He told William about Carlsville, about Becky, the girl he'd loved who had betrayed him. He had never told this to anyone else, but he already felt closer to William than he had to anyone since.." well, since Becky, and it felt good to talk about it, to clear his chest.

He explained how he'd moved to Carlsville after his father's very public death back in the appropriately named town of Lynchburg. He'd escaped his father's fate for the simple reason that he had not been home when the mob showed up to the door of their house, and he'd lain low and headed west, traveling as far away from rrginia as quickly as possible. He'd finally stopped running in Missouri, deciding to settle in the beautiful town of Carlsville, where he was fortunate enough to find work as an apprentice blacksmith.

He was still in his teens then, and he portrayed himself as a young man with no parents who had escaped from a tyrannical orphanage back East.

The blacksmith, and indeed the entire town, welcomed him with open arms, treating him as one of their own. He was given a room at the stable, took

his meals with the blacksmith's family, and went to Church with everyone on Sundays.

He also fell in love with Becky, Reverend Faron's daughter.

From the beginning, Becky exhibited an interest in him that went beyond the merely solicitous. He found her very attractive as well, and discovered as they talked after church services that he enjoyed being with her. Of course, the fact that she was a minister's daughter meant that he had to be extra careful. He could not exhibit any abilities that were even slightly out of the ordinary, had to pretend not to know things that he knew, not to believe things he believed.

Becky sensed in him something that no one else did, a darkness, she called it, and she confessed quite often that this was what had first attracted her. She said there was an enigma at the core of his being, a mysteriousness to the seeming straightforwardness of his past that no one in town had caught, and she was intrigued by that. The more time they spent together, the closer they became, and a year after he'd first arrived in Carlsville she revealed that she loved him.

He discovered that he loved her too. It was not something he'd been looking for, not even something he'd wanted, but somehow it had happened, and soon after he told her, he proposed to her, and they made plans to get married.

One evening they were lying by the creek that ran through the woods just south of town, talking, touching, looking up at the stars. The conversation faded away, and they lay there for a few moments in silence, listening to the high, clear babble of the creek. Becky seemed more subdued than usual, and he was about to ask her if there was anything the matter when she sat up, facing him. "Do you love me?" she asked

He laughed. "You know I do."

"Can we tell each other anything?

"Anything and everything

She thought for a moment, then took a deep breath. The hand that touched his was trembling. "I'm not pure," she said. The story came out in a torrent, a nonstop jumble of words that flowed over each other and on to the next like the water in the creek: "I wanted to tell you so many times, but I did not know how and it never seemed to be the right time. My father took me against my will. After my mother died.

It was only once and I hated it, and he performed penance afterward and we both prayed, but it happened and I'd change that if I could but I can't. No one else knows and I promised him I would never tell another living soul, but I love you and I can't start off our marriage with a lie, and you'd find out anyway, so I thought I'd better tell you."

By this time she was sobbing on his shoulder. "Don't hate me, she cried, don't want you to hate me."

"Shhh," he hushed her. "Of course I don't hate you."

"I couldn't stand it if you hated me."

"I don't hate you."

"But you don't love me anymore."

"Of course I love you." He tried to smile, though it felt as if his heart had been ripped open. He gave her a quick kiss on the top of the head, smelled the fragrance of her hair. "Anything and everything, remember?"

"It only happened once, and it's over now. He apologized and I pretended to forgive and forget, I tried to forgive and forget, but I didn't, I couldn't, and I've been worried ever since because I knew this day would come. I knew I'd meet a man I loved and he'd find out I wasn't pure. I even thought of what I'd tell him. I had a big story all worked out. A lie."

"Shhh," Jeb said. "Shhhh."

She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again her voice was low. "I thought of killing him." Her eyes met Jeb's. "He knew what he was doing even while he was doing it, and no matter how much he prays or apologizes, it still

happened, and we both know it, and I know that every time we're alone together, we're both thinking about it. So I've thought of killing him many times, but but somehow can't do it. I still want to kill him, but I know I won't. He's my father.

She exhaled when she if so, as though a great weight had just been taken from her shoulders. She let out a small harsh laugh. "I never thought I'd admit that to any body."

He didn't know what to do, so he just kept holding her, and when she started crying again, sobbing into his shoulder, he held her tighter.

Eventually the crying stopped, and she pulled back, kissed him on the lips. "I love you so much."

"I love you, too."

"Now it's your turn," she said.

"What?"

She touched his face. "Come on. I want to know your big secret.

You've been keeping something from me, and I want to know what it is."

' 1"here is no big secret. My life's Open book." "With some missing pages." She stood up on her knees, pretended to point a gun at him.

"Come on, buster: Adroit it." Her face was still red from crying, her cheeks glistening with the wetness of tears, and she looked so sad and lost and alone that it damn near broke his heart.

So he told her.

He did not tell her everything, did not go into detail, but he told her that he had powers, that his father had had powers, and that they had both used those powers to help people. He explained that others had not understood, had feared and hated them, that his father had been killed and he himself had only narrowly escaped the same fate.

He told her he was a witch, though he did not use the word. \020She seemed subdued, her reaction not what he had expected. In fact, he did not know that she had a reaction. She was neither understanding and supportive nor horrified and angry. Instead she was politely quiet, pensive, and though that worded him at first, when she gave him a quick kiss before llaey parted and said, "I love you," he. knew that all she needed was a little time to get used to the idea.

He felt good that he'd unburdened himself, freer than he had since living with his father, and he fell into a quick and easy sleep.

The blacksmith awakened him. "Get up!" he whispered. "hey're coming after you."

Jeb stirred groggily, blinking against the lamplight. What? Who?"

"Reverend Faron's gathering up a posse, and they're coming to get you.

They're going to string you up."

She'd told her father.

He felt as if his guts had been yanked out of his chest, and only at that moment did he realize how much he truly loved her.

He'd escaped--with the help of the blacksmith, who understood what he was and didn't care--and he'd been on the move ever since.

"Maybe it wasn't her," William offered. "Maybe someone else found out.

Maybe--'

"It was her."

Even now the wounds still hurt. Just talking about those memories had dredged up the emotions that went with them, and Jeb found himself wondering where Becky was now, what she was doing, who she was with, what she was like. "I've never been in love," William said sadly.

They were both walking, William leading his home, and Jeb looked over at him. "Never?"

The other man shook his head, started to say something,

then thought the better of it. Jeb waited for him to say something else, but he did not. '

They continued on in silence.

They came upon the monster in the late afternoon.

The beast was dead, its corpse rotting in the sun, but even in death it was a fearsome sight to behold. They were well up the canyon by this time, fenced in between high rock walls that blocked out half the sky, and they saw the oversize body lying in the dry creek bed well before they reached it. They could both sense the undiluted malevolence of the creature's lingering presence, like the smell of a skunk that remained long after the animal had gone, and the horse seemed to sense it too because William had to talk to the animal to keep it from bolting.

They approached the body warily. It was easily as big as three men, both in height and width, and was vaguely human in form, but there were claws instead of hands at the ends of the excessively long arms, and what remained of the head was unlike anything Jeb had ever seen. Like the rest of its body, the monster's head appeared to have been deflated, like a balloon, black rotting skin hanging loosely off an interior frame of bone, but even in this ruined shape, he could see that there was hair where there should not have been, eyes and nose that should not have been on any living creature, and far, far too many teeth. Long teeth. Pointed teeth.

The very air here felt heavy, and Jeb turned toward William. "What do you think it is?" he asked, his voice hushed.

William shook his head, not taking his eyes off the monster. He bent forward to look more closely.

Jeb shivered. The canyon seemed suddenly far too small, far too narrow, and he looked up at the top of the rock walls

to see if there were any more of these creatures about. He didn't feel the presence of anything else here, but he did not trust his own instincts, and he glanced both up and down the canyon.