And sometimes they left one of their own old people about to die, but this was obviously not an old Faery; David’s Second Sight had proved that, and he didn’t think anybody
could
grow old in this part of Faerie. No one he had seen had looked older than about thirty, except Oisin.
Sometimes, too, they left one of their own children. That was evidently what had happened here. The Sidhe had taken Little Billy and left one of their own, and it had spoken its native language in its fright. It was probably just as scared as Little Billy had been, and it didn’t know any English. What his mother thought she had heard must have been the changeling’s thoughts made powerful by its fear. Imagine being thrust into the world of men in the midst of a rainstorm! What kind of people would do that to one of their own children? Well, David had seen enough of the Sidhe to know something about their morality—or lack of it.
Big Billy’s voice broke in upon his reverie. “Call the hospital, boy, call the hospital.”
“Okay, okay,” David said as he dialed the number to alert the emergency room and went back into the living room.
“Just be calm, Mama, just be calm,” he heard his father saying. “You get the hospital, boy?”
“Sure did,” David nodded. “But I was just thinking,” he added slowly, “that I’d better stay here, do the evening chores, and keep an eye on things while you and Ma go with Little Billy, if that’s all right with you.”
“Yeah…
that’d be a good idea I reckon,” Big Billy answered absently.
“But you be careful, Pa. It’s raining even harder than it was. Better take the four-wheel-drive, there’s gonna be bad weather tonight. And you call me the minute you hear anything, all right? And don’t forget to let me know how Uncle Dale’s doing.”
“All right. Good.” Big Billy went over to his wife, took her by the shoulders. “Come on now, Mama.”
“I’ll take care of Little Billy,” David called.
“Poor little changeling,” he whispered a moment later when he came into the room where that which wore his brother’s shape still sat on the edge of the bed. It grinned an honest, childlike grin, and did not resist as David began to strip off its wet clothing. David looked at it. He focused the Sight—he was beginning to learn how to turn it on and off, finally. Apparently there were times and places it worked automatically—places where magic was strong or concentrated, he suspected. But sometimes he could summon it at will, too. As David put Little Billy’s pajamas on the changeling, he looked more closely at the boy, saw that other face: slimmer, more pointed at chin, the hair of unearthly fineness, the ears slightly pointed. And the long-lashed lids, he knew, covered eyes green and faintly slanted.
Yet this was different somehow, not quite like the other times he had experienced the Sight. David frowned, puzzled. Those other times he had either seen the things of the Otherworld very clearly indeed, or else he had glimpsed them as tenuously as things seen in a drifting fog. This time, though, it was not so much as if he looked on a shape—an actual form obscured by magic—as on the
memory
of a shape. There was magic afoot here, all right, but of a type different from any he had ever experienced.
David was still trying to figure things out when Big Billy came into the room, lifted the shell of his son, and carried him out to the pickup.
*
Two hours later Big Billy called from the hospital.
“Everything all right, Pa?”
“I reckon so.” Big Billy’s voice crackled over the line. “Your ma is worse off than Little Billy, I think, but they give her something to calm her down and put her in a room to sleep. Little Billy seems to be comin’ round, but he’s not talkin’ much—or it’s more like he was learnin’ to talk all over again—askin’ the names of things and stuff, real funnylike. I’ve heard of somebody bein’ scared out of their growth, but I didn’t think I’d ever see anybody scared out of their mind.”
“Sorry you have to.”
“Everything all right at home?”
“Power’s flickered a time or two, but I’ve checked the lanterns. You staying the night?”
“Looks like we’ll have to; lots of floodin’ between here an’ home. An’ besides, they want to keep Little Billy under observation—treat him for shock. They think that he might have been hit by ball lightnin’ or somethin’. Poor old Dale’s a little better, though. But I tell you what, boy, I’ve about had it with these know-nothing doctors. Your ma and me’ve done decided: First thing tomorrow we’re bringin’ ’em home, both of ’em. We can do as good as this hospital.”
“You’re probably right,” David muttered. “What was that?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“I was a fool,” Big Billy went on reflectively, “to ask a little boy to go out in the rain like that. A damn fool.”
“Maybe so,” David said absently, and then hung up the phone.
The air suddenly felt empty. David frowned and went over to the refrigerator in search of something to quiet his growling stomach. Once full of coffee, cold roast beef, a peanut butter sandwich, and a handful of potato chips, he began to pace restlessly about the house, unable to stay in one place for more than a minute or two. The radio was full of static, the TV was out entirely, and reading demanded more concentration than he could muster.
He paced the house, and when that became too much, went out onto the front porch to watch the storm. Safe or unsafe, he did not really care. It was raining as if it would never cease, and he stared at that silver-laced darkness for a long time before starting back inside. He reached for the doorhandle and stopped short. His runestaff was leaning in the corner by the door. Liz had left it for him. “Oh, Christ!” he whispered. “If anything happens to
her
…”
But there was nothing he could do about it now, he realized glumly as he brought it inside and retreated to the final sanctuary of his room. Whatever happened would happen.
He flopped down on his bed, ran his gaze blankly over his bookcase. Idly he reached out and snagged the worn blue copy of
Gods and Fighting Men.
He wished he’d had time to scour the local libraries, and the one at Young Harris as well, for more books on Celtic folklore, but there just hadn’t been time. He had prowled around in
The Secret Common-Wealth
a good bit, but all he could remember from that was something about iron and crosses, and he had doubted that those were always reliable. Still, the Faery boy had said he was under some sort of protection, and he evidently was—and fairly powerful protection at that, or else the Sidhe would have carried him off themselves by now. Maybe it
was
the ring, still protecting him from afar. But even if he
had
the ring right now, what good would it do? He couldn’t fancy it undoing what was already done. No, there must be other solutions, if only he could think of them.
David flipped absently through the pages of the book. Names and places once glorious to him flickered by.
And now I don’t care,
he thought.
The glamour is gone.
He looked at the long list of names in the glossary, and thought about the changeling. “One of these people may be his father or his mother,” he whispered. “I wonder where my little brother is sleeping now.”
He slammed the covers.
Chapter XII: On the Mountain
David stood again on the back porch looking out at the rain, barely noticing how it stung his skin. It was falling really hard, sluicing off the tin roof in cold silver sheets, turning the yard to bog, the driveway to a blood-colored river. The sorghum patch was almost completely flooded now; only a few stray stalks of derelict cane showed above the water. The sky hung heavy, almost black. Across the drive the crosshatched shapes of trees and fences stuck up out of the mush like frozen black lightning.
He sighed and went back into the coziness of the kitchen to turn on the coffee pot.
An hour passed.
David couldn’t take any more. He was going crazy with inaction and indecision. Tension throbbed in the air like thunder.
At a loss as to what to do, he slumped sullenly at the kitchen table, gazing out the window, watching the rain, the drops hard and bitter as his own despair. The riverbottoms were completely covered now, and he could only barely see the mountains across the valley. Water was creeping across the Sullivan Cove road, too, and he knew it was only a matter of time before it became impassable. David tried to imagine what the waterfall up on Lookout Rock must look like, and shuddered. It had been raining virtually all afternoon, without a letup—and that was all he needed.
He tried to remember bright, clear skies and lush foliage; green grass and soft, warm winds; and calm, cool water—not this demon-driven stuff. As if to taunt him, a gust of wind banged the screen door, forced its way inside to chill him where he sat with a quarter-cup of cold coffee in his hand. The single overhead light cast harsh shadows around the room, and David hugged himself, for the warmth had gone from the kitchen, indeed from the whole house. It felt cold and clammy as winter.
The door banged again, and David jumped. Probably the Sidhe come for him at last, he told himself grimly.
And I think if they asked I’d go…I’ll give them credit for one thing; they sure know how to get at me: make my house an island, hide the sun, put my friends at a distance, my brother in some other world, my uncle barely in this. Shoot, what have I got to live for, anyway? There’s simply no more hope.
David slammed his fist on the table so hard that the sugar bowl came uncapped.
I’ll do it. I’ll give myself up to the Sidhe.
It was insane, he thought, to even contemplate such a thing. And where would he go? Where did one seek the Sidhe? The Straight Track? Well, it was a thing of the Sidhe, one of their Places of Power—if it could be called a place. But he wasn’t certain how to find it, nor did he know how it worked. It might lead him to Faerie, or it might lead him somewhere else, and he didn’t dare risk that.
Bloody Bald? But it was an island, maybe half a mile from the nearest shore, and though David was a good swimmer, he didn’t want to risk such a thing in weather like this. Idly he wondered why he had never thought of going there before, in all his sixteen years. Many a time he had been swimming in the cove, but never once had it occurred to him to swim out to the island. Nor, he realized, had anyone else he knew ever been there, or even proposed going there. It could only be the magic of the Sidhe turning men’s minds away. He shook his head; he could not do that. With the weather gone wild, such a journey would be too perilous. A dead peace offering was no good.
That left Lookout Rock. Lookout Rock was his own Place of Power; he’d even called it so when such things were only a game. It was nowhere near any place of the Sidhe that he knew of, but he could see Bloody Bald from there, at least on a clear night. That was it, then: He’d go to Lookout Rock and offer himself to the Sidhe. He’d meet them, but on his own ground—not like a beggar at the back door.
He thought about the weather again. Rain. Wind. Even the road was half flooded. If he fell into the ditch, he could quite possibly drown—but then, he considered, there might be worse things than drowning. He had to die sometime, after all.
No, you fool! Don’t think like that!
he told himself, but was not convinced. Of course drowning would solve one problem: With him dead, maybe the Sidhe would leave his folks alone. Or would they? Had his family become so tainted by that Otherworld now, all unknowing, that the Sidhe might consider them a threat as well, even with him gone? And there was still his ring, out loose in the world, one more piece of unfinished business. He sighed. One thing was for sure, things wouldn’t get any better from David’s sitting here moping about them.
He went over to the stove and poured himself a cup of the last of the coffee that had been made that evening. It was mostly grounds, but he drank it, hot and black and bitter as gall. He thought for a moment, took a handful of cookies out of an open package, and crept softly into his room.
Very quietly he stripped and began to dress from the skin out in clothes more suitable to the bleak weather—warmer clothes, for the temperature had fallen with the rain so that it was sometimes perilously close to sleeting. Sleet! In Georgia! In August! Once again he recalled Oisin’s saying that Ailill was a lord of winds and tempests. If he had had any doubts of
that
before, he had none now.
He finished his garb with a black rubber poncho with a hood that far overhung his face, and high hiking boots that laced close about his ankles. As he passed his dresser, he paused and opened the top drawer and took out two things: a handkerchief Liz had made for him the previous Christmas, with his initials embroidered on it in blackwork uncials; and a key fob Alec had given him with the Sullivan coat of arms engraved on one side and an Irish blessing in Gaelic on the other. He smiled wryly, stuffed them into his shirt pocket, and closed the door behind him.
His gaze flickered around the kitchen, coming to rest at last on a comfortingly familiar object: his runestaff—the one Liz had forgotten. It had some magic; it had glowed when Liz touched it. Well, maybe there was some good to magic after all. He picked it up and slung the leather strap over his wrist, thought once about taking an umbrella, but the idea seemed ludicrous. And, besides, the rain was nearly as horizontal as it was vertical.
The wind howled continuously, but the storm seemed to have let up a little—or so he thought until lightning flashed hellishly right outside, and a mighty blast of thunder rattled the windows and doors like some dark beast trying to get in. He checked them quickly, looking beyond to see if indeed something of that other world did not pace about in the yard or on the porch seeking entrance. David wondered briefly if the house would be safe while he was away, but metal screens on doors and windows, iron locks and doorknobs had worked before. He shrugged, drank the final swallow of the coffee, wincing at the flavor, and quietly opened the back door.