Nuada Airgetlam, whom men called Silverhand. Once King of the Tuatha de Daanan, once disarmed in the most literal sense by a blade of iron, once slain in the Lands of Men—and yet another barrier between Ailill and the war he desired between the two Worlds, between men and gods, if men chose to call them that. But there was another thing Ailill wanted now, and that thing was vengeance: vengeance against Nuada, who had thwarted his plan and made him look the fool in the bargain; and against the mortal boy, David Sullivan, who somehow bore some arcane protection about him whose nature Ailill could not discover, nor his Power break.
He was the unknown, the unloaded die, the rogue element in the orderly plan Ailill was formulating.
He is the one I must control; he is the one whose blood this body would taste this day if I gave myself to it, and if someone—or some thing—did not protect him.
That
is what I must discover, and if it is an object which protects him, then that object I must possess.
The eagle shape he wore spoke to him then, in that part of his mind where instincts had their dwelling. And what it spoke of was hunger.
Ailill gazed about himself, at the glitter of stars in the black sky, at the Worlds—both Worlds—spread below gleaming in the encompassing golden lattice.
And then he narrowed the focus of his vision, so that he gazed only into the Lands of Men.
And there he saw what his body sought.
He folded his wings and dived, felt the air thicken about him, felt his body grow warm from the force of that fall, knowing as he did so that if he put upon himself the substance of the mortal world, as he must do to remain there for more than a few hours, that the thing men called friction would burn him to nothing before he reached his goal.
But he was
not
of that substance. This body, like his man-body, was formed of the stuff of Faerie, and so was bound by the laws of that World.
Below him the land spread wide, the distant coast was a thin-edged glimmer on the horizon, the mountains faint wrinkles in the landscape.
And still he fell.
A moment later fields and rivers took clearer form, and those same mountains rose about him. Trees became distinct, and then the leaves that clothed them. Ailill saw with the eagle’s eye alone now; he let the bird’s own small mind take control so that instincts burned in the place of thoughts.
The eagle saw its quarry: long-eared, brown-furred, white tuft a marker of despair at its tail. Red became the color of the eagle’s thoughts as the hidden part that was Ailill called upon his Power and wrapped his eagle-shape in the substance of the Lands of Men. Only thus could it feed.
The rabbit moved beneath him, running, frantic, sensing the black-winged doom that fell suddenly toward it out of a clear sky.
Now! Wings out! Tail fanned! Brake! Brake! Legs down, talons extended!
There was impact and a squeaking, and then the muffled sound of feathers brushing against dry grass.
An eagle’s shape is an excellent shape—for certain purposes,
Ailill thought, as he prepared to feed
. But there are even better shapes a clever man might wear to achieve his goals.
He gave himself over to the eagle then, and red became the color of the grass as Ailill, who was the eagle, feasted.
Chapter VI: Swimming
(Saturday, August 8)
“It’s hot,” said Alec from his place on the edge of the Sullivans’ front porch. “Too hot to spend half the day helping your dad pull the engine out of that old wreck of a truck he just bought.” “This is Georgia in August; it’s supposed to be hot,” David replied, taking a long draw on a Dr. Pepper and setting it down beside him in the porch swing. Down the hill and across the cornfield he could see a steady stream of traffic flashing by, as it would for the next four months. Tourist season had begun with the fair, and there was nothing he could do about it. “Wildwood Flower” would resonate in his mind for months.
“This is the Georgia
mountains
in August,” Alec went on obstinately. “It’s not supposed to be a hundred degrees in the shade!”
“At least there
is
shade.” David gestured around the porch. “And, anyway, who are you to tell me what it’s supposed to be like up here?
I
was born here;
you
moved in.”
A large yellow tomcat jumped unexpectedly into the swing, upsetting the Dr. Pepper into David’s lap.
Alec’s face wrinkled with laughter. “Still wetting your pants, are you?”
“Damn.”
“Better not let your mom hear that!”
“Damn!” David said again, louder, as he got up and disappeared into the house. In a moment he returned with a wet dishrag and mopped the swing. He had not changed his sodden white cutoffs.
He grinned at Alec. “Leastwise part of me’s cool now.”
“Some way to get cool!”
Silence fell on their conversation then. The air stilled. The only sounds were the muffled roar of the cars on the highway and the soft creaking of the swing. They did not look at each other. David stared into space over Alec’s head; Alec methodically dismembered a daisy from one of the pots that perched precariously along the porch railing.
“You’ve been acting funny lately, Davy,” Alec said at last. “Besides the business with the ring, I mean, which is another matter entirely. You never can seem to get around to giving me the straight scoop on
that,
and lord knows I’ve been trying all week.” The petals continued to fall. He looked up at his friend and their gazes met: blue and gray. Alec’s tone was soft and firm, but something about it hit David like a blow, as if he had just heard one of his secrets told aloud.
David frowned and blinked, breaking the contact. “What do you mean? I always act funny; it’s the way I am.”
“I know that,” Alec replied, folding his arms across his chest and stretching his legs along the top step. “Like when you tried to turn yourself into a werewolf that time. But that’s not what I mean. I can’t really tell you exactly what I
do
mean, but it’s
like…
like you’re not all here. You seem distracted a lot, or something.”
He paused, swallowed, felt for the post behind him before continuing. “I can’t explain it any better, Davy, but you—well, you stare into space a lot more than you used to, and I see you looking at things funny sometimes.”
David didn’t say anything, but he began to rock the swing gently.
“Like you’re doing now, David. You’re not half listening to me. It’s like we can kid around and all like we were just doing, but then suddenly you’re off in space somewhere.” He swallowed again and took a deep breath. “I guess that’s what bothers me most—that you seem to be going somewhere I can’t follow. I mean look, Sullivan, we’ve been friends practically forever and never kept anything from each other, and now something is bothering you, or something is happening to you, or
has
happened to you, and you won’t tell me what it is. It’s like a barrier where there’s never been a barrier—and I don’t like it at all.”
He threw the completely dismembered daisy far down into the yard. The yellow tomcat ran tentatively toward it before retreating into the shadows under the house.
“I’m sorry, Alec,” said David, with a sense of great effort behind the words. “I didn’t realize there was any change. Would it help if I did something weird now?”
“You
are
doing something weird,” Alec replied, looking up with an expression of hurt on his face that shocked David. “You’re not being straight with me, and you’ve never done that.”
“If I told you, you’d never believe me.”
“I’ve heard that line before—and I’ve never believed
it
!”
David took a deep breath. “I have seen the Sidhe.”
His eyes flashed for a moment as his gaze again locked with Alec’s and broke as suddenly. The line of his mouth was set.
Alec shook his head and looked down. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”
“Then you won’t believe that I got the ring from them.”
“Damn it!” Alec almost shouted. He stood up angrily and began to pace the length of the porch, hands clinched into white-knuckled fists. “God
damn
it, Sullivan, will you
never
tell me the truth about that frigging ring? You got it from a girl. You got it from the fairies. Next you’ll be telling me you got it from a goddamned man from Mars! For Christ’s sake, Davy, don’t you see I don’t know what to believe? I might have believed you if that was the story you told first, but it’s not, so can you blame me for not believing it now?”
The speed of his pacing increased, and then he whirled around suddenly to stand glowering at David. He was almost shaking. The swing had stopped.
“No, I don’t blame you,” David said softly. “I almost don’t believe it myself. But I’ve got to do something about it—it’s about to drive me crazy.”
“That’s
your
problem, man.
You’re
the one who’s been flashing it around like it was the crown jewels. I’d have kept it quiet if I didn’t want people to know about it, and I sure wouldn’t have told my loud-mouthed brother.” Alec pounded the porch rail irritably, but the white heat of his anger was already subsiding. Somewhere in the house the telephone rang.
“Twenty-twenty hindsight.”
“You could, of course, just get rid of it—and say that everything was over; that’s what I’d do.”
“I’ve thought about that, but I feel really uncomfortable without it, like something awful will happen if I don’t have it with me, or if I lose it. I nearly get sick to my stomach just thinking about it. The chain’s a reasonable compromise.”
“Well, don’t complain to me. You’ve made your bed, now you can lie in it.”
“David? Telephone!” his mother called from inside.
“Crap,” David muttered as he disappeared through the front door. Alec sat down and looked for another daisy.
*
“Well, David Sullivan,” Liz’s voice crackled on the line. “You haven’t called me since the fair, so I’m taking matters into my own hands.”
Her voice was firm rather than flirtatious, and David couldn’t help but grin. Liz had a way about her—a plain, honest, straightforward way. That was what he liked best about her. She always said what she meant, and if it was tactful, fine; and if it wasn’t, fine; and if it made her look like a fool, well, that didn’t bother her too much, either. He wished he could be as straightforward, but on the other hand, Liz hadn’t seen the Sidhe.
“Sorry, Liz,” said David. “I’ve had things on my mind—and, besides, it’s only been a week.”
There was a flustered pause. “So what are you doing now, Davy?”
“It’s
David,
Liz; David with a
D,
like in
dammit,
and I’m not doing anything except sitting on the porch complaining about the heat and fussing with Alec.”
“Well, I can’t help you with your fussing, except to ask you not to get a black eye if you can help it. I don’t want to be seen with a boy with a black eye.”
“It ain’t that kind of fussing. Call it a gentleman’s disagreement.”
“You two, gentlemen? Ha!
You
won’t even call a girl, and Alec never can seem to figure out when he’s not
wanted…but as
far as your problems are concerned, I can’t help you with your fussing, but maybe I can with the heat—if you’d like to go swimming down in the lake behind my mom’s house. I’ll even be nice and let you bring Alec.”
David grinned. “That’s good, ’cause he’s spending the night over here tonight, and I’d hate to have to leave him to the tender mercies of my pa—or even worse, to Little Billy.”
“Your folks might as well adopt him, as much as he’s over there.”
“His folks’re out of town at some literature conference or another; I doubt the rural life would agree with him in the long run.”
“Well, that’s good; there
are
other people who’d like a piece of your time once and a while.”
“Oh?”
“Never mind, Davy, just get your tail on over here.”
“Oh, right.”
“I’ll see you in a little while.”
“Right…”
He hesitated, not quite knowing how to end the conversation, which, he realized, could have gone on for hours in endless exchange of taunts and inanities. But he had left an extremely unhappy Alec on the porch and wanted to resolve that. Maybe a change of locale would do the job.
“Bye,” he said, feeling somewhat awkward, and hung up.
The door slammed behind him as David returned to the porch. Alec looked up, raised an inquiring eyebrow, then frowned into his third daisy.
“That was Liz Hughes wanting to know if we wanted to go swimming over at her house.”
“So what’d you tell her?” There was only a trace of the former hostility, as if Alec had regained control of his emotions for a while-—or suppressed them.
“I told her yes, of course. I presume you do want to go—considering how much you were complaining about the heat just now. Maybe it’ll wash a little of the mad off you.”
Alec frowned. “I’m not mad,
I’m…
confused—and hurt, a little, to be completely honest.” He smiled wanly as he levered himself to his feet. “But I guess you really do mean well, even if you are crazy. At least I know you didn’t get that ring from Liz; it ain’t her style.”