Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (68 page)

The frog-man was most odd looking. His nose looked exceedingly frog-like, as did the glistening folds of his head, yet he walked upright, even if his legs were springier than a man’s would be.

“You needn’t pretend not to stare. It’s as you think, I’m neither this nor that, neither man nor frog.”

The frog’s home was merely a hollow dug out of the ground, part cave, part earth, shored up by thick, gnarled tree roots.

The frog gave him a hot drink as soon as they entered. It smelled odd, a hot, bitter smell like the drinks his father sometimes had after dinner. He had a strong feeling that to drink it, despite his thirst and hunger, would be a grave mistake. He poured it down the wall behind the bench upon which the frog had bid him sit, hoping the earthen floor would soak it up.

He wasn’t comfortable in the frog’s home, for it had a shifty feel about it, and he could swear that things moved about when he wasn’t looking, He was certain an old copper pot with a strange insignia had been on the second shelf when he first sat down and now it was on the floor. Small bits of metal and strangely twisted pieces of wood cluttered every surface.

He caught the frog giving him odd looks as the night wore on—half sly, half wondering, and wholly worrisome.

The frog chattered away about all sorts of things, but Jack was so tired he could hardly make sense of the words, much less answer the questions the frog posed. Still, he had a strong sense that he musn’t fall asleep here. He would have to wait until the frog himself slept and then sneak away into the frozen waste of the night.

The evening seemed terribly long. Supper consisted of a thin soup and bread. Jack watched to see if the frog would eat and when he did, determined these two things, at least, were safe. It seemed as though days passed by the time the fire had died to embers. The room was so dark that Jack could only make out the frog’s outline, and the strange lambent glow of his eyes. The silence was so thick that Jack could hear the frog breathing, heavy hissing breaths and each exhalation releasing something vile and cold.

“My home is humble and is only this one room,” the frog said, breaking the silence, “but you and your dog may sleep on the settle nearest to the fire, for let no one say I am not a good host.”

The settle was uncomfortable and the thin blanket that he drew over him smelled strange, like soured smoke and dirty copper. Jack feigned sleep, though every cell in his body shrieked in protest at the idea of closing his eyes or turning his back on the frog.

The house was silent except for the hissing of the fire and the pulsing of something else there in the night, something dark and slithering, something waiting for him, Jack, to fall asleep and leave himself vulnerable. It seemed as though an aeon passed before he heard a sibilant snore issue from the frog where he lay on the hearth.

Jack had clutched his bag to his chest when he lay down and over the last hour had slowly slid his hand inside. He took a pinch of the salt and put it on his tongue. He wasn’t sure what the woman had meant by clearer sight, but he knew he had to do something and hoped the salt would help him decide what that might be.

His vision went entirely black, causing him a moment of horrible panic, but then it cleared just as suddenly. Everything looked different and quite awful. The shelves were still cluttered, the floor still shiny, but not in the way he had seen it before. The various pots, medals and bits of copper were now skulls and bones, of small animals and of children. The floor was sticky with blood and other matter that Jack had no wish to identify.

He slid his hand back into the bag of salt, heart pounding and his breath caught hard in his throat. He felt rather than heard the frog slide off the hearth, the sucking pop of his feet against the sticky floor, and knew the frog meant him great harm, that he would be the next skull on the shelf, his blood the freshest layer on the revolting floor.

He could feel Aengus straining at his side, ready to attack or to bolt. He dug his hand deeper into the bag, clutching it into a fist, feeling the crystals of salt cut into his palms. Then as the frog leaned down, his breath a fetid swamp upon Jack’s shoulder, the long webbed fingers trailing the nape of his neck, Jack turned quick as a whirlwind and flung the handful of salt into the frog’s wide, staring eyes.

The frog howled in pain and reeled back. Jack and Aengus bolted, running for the hole above which the teapot sat. The tunnel seemed infinitely longer than it had on the way into the frog’s lair. Jack was terrified that he had taken the wrong way and would be hopelessly ensnarled in blind tunnels, running until he collapsed, and then the frog would be able to claim him as yet another victim.

He dug in his bag for the bones and held them out in front of him, knowing they were not a real defense against such evil as the frog possessed. Yet there was a strength in them that hummed through the skin of his hands and steadied him as he began to navigate his way through the dark. As he chose the left branch of a tunnel rather than the right, he began to realize that the bones were guiding him, pulling in one direction insistently, telling him where he must go. Still, it felt like hours passed and he was certain more than once that he felt the frog’s hot breath on his neck, the strange penetration of those pupilless eyes. After what seemed miles of endless muck-oozing walls, the ground beneath his feet began to rise toward the upper world.

They came out into the sun, to fields that were green and flowering with wee paintbrush blooms in all the most delicate spring shades. Jack reeled back in shock. How was this possible? He had gone into the frog’s hole only hours ago, in the teeth of a terrible early winter storm, and now it was spring.

He and Aengus paused only long enough to put the bones back into the bag and then they ran far and fast, to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the opening to the underworld.

They did not stop until the sun was sinking into the west, a mass of carnelian flame against a background of dark pointed firs. Jack was still dizzy from the passage of time whilst they were with the frog. He had felt entirely off balance all day, unable to understand how so much time had passed, and frightened of what it meant. Was he losing his grip on reality altogether?

The field where they finally sat to rest was sweet with the smells of timothy hay and the twitter of birds putting their young to bed. Aengus lay beside him, long snout on his paws, a worried look in the deep eyes. Now that he looked at him, it seemed to Jack that Aengus had grown remarkably. More than just a gangly pup now, his chest was deep as a ravine, his bones more solid within the pewter-silk fur.

Jack decided they would sleep there in the long grasses that smelled like lavender honey, for he had not the heart, nor the legs to go any further that night. He lay back, hungry, but at least not thirsty for they had come across a tiny stream earlier in the day, and he had filled his leather water sack. He and Aengus had drunk until the water made their bellies ache.

Aengus curled into Jack’s side as he did each night, his solid ribs and big paws a great comfort. Soon the dog was asleep, though from the way he twitched, his dreams were troubled.

Sleep did not come for Jack right away. He sought comfort in the constellations, and then realized to his horror that he did not recognize any of the formations in the sky. They had changed once again. The stars, bright as they were, blurred into a mass of cold fire that smeared the sky from horizon to horizon. The tears in his eyes were hot and prickly, but there was no one to see nor mind so he let them fall unchecked for he was so tired and confused. The tears seemed to let a little of his sadness out, as if it could be absorbed into the ground and he could leave it behind in the morning.

He put his hand into his pocket, something he did for comfort, even though he knew his dreams were no longer there. But something was, something that he did not remember being there before. His fingers curled around smooth shapes, cool as spring water, and drew forth three perfect white pebbles that gleamed with the soft luster of pearls.

Where on earth had they come from? For if the frog had slipped them into Jack’s pocket he knew he would have to get rid of them immediately lest they were some sort of scrying glass through which the frog could trace him. Yet they did not feel as if they were anything other than ordinary pebbles, unless one counted their polished glow. Holding them was oddly comforting, as though he had regained something that he had thought lost forever.

He fell asleep with the pebbles lodged in the lines of his palm, which his nanny had long ago told him was the tributary of his heart seen clearly there in the skin of his hand.

Part Seven
Another Country
Russia – April-September 1974

Chapter Forty-nine
April 1974
The Poet Commandant

Under the new commander
, the camp assumed a semblance of order. As such things went in Soviet Russia, he was a fair man and earnest in his desire to improve life for the prisoners as much as he was able. While there was no disguising the barbed wire and automatic weapons and the glowering guards, things did improve. In the spring, the garden had been enlarged, with Violet and Shura to be in charge of what was planted when the weather was auspicious enough. The food had improved as well, with larger portions, the bread was fresher and far more edible, and more meat and vegetables in the soup. The vegetables weren’t always identifiable but they were edible, if one didn’t linger too long over the texture or taste.

There had even been a shipment of new blankets, which were greatly appreciated and added to their worn predecessors, kept out the chill Russian nights far more effectively. The ground within the camp was cleaned up, the huts scrubbed down, the dining hall scoured from top to bottom and new uniforms issued. All in all, James Kirkpatrick reflected, it was about as good as a gulag was likely to get.

He was currently standing in the commander’s office. The room looked out over the small exercise yard and beyond to the gates and heavy tree line. There loomed the omnipresent Russian
bor
that had spawned hundreds of dark fairytales, and the home of the great Mother Goddess of the Slavs, Baba Yaga. Home too of the Amba and his own recent brush with death. He shivered and turned away from the window, wondering with no small worry, why he had been summoned to this meeting with the new commander. The man was not yet present and Jamie had simply been told to wait.

He went automatically to the bookshelves, the smell of ink and paper drawing him like fine wine. His fingers itched with the desire to touch them, to run his hands along the leather-tooled bindings, and feel the impression of the letters against his fingertips. It had been so long since he had had lost himself to the delights of a fictional world. Telling stories was an altogether different process, and did not provide the same sort of escape. It was the difference between building a world and fleeing into one. His eyes ran along the titles greedily. The great Russian poets were present; Blok and Akhmatova, Pushkin and Pasternak, and many English ones too. The Greek philosophers were well represented: Aristotle, Xenophanes, Plato and Heraclitus. There was a crumbling volume of Seneca’s
Letters from a Stoic
too. He had his own well-thumbed edition of that particular book at home, and often referred to it on the nights when he could not sleep and the questions of life seemed insuperable. Once, long ago, the words of the Roman philosopher had been a bridge by which he had returned to life.

“Please feel free to look at the books. You may borrow some if you would like.”

Jamie started guiltily.

The new commander was much as Jamie remembered him from his hazy sick visit. He was a tall man, thick through the chest and shoulders. He wore spectacles that belonged to another era and had the slight squint of the perpetual reader.

“I meant what I said. You are welcome to choose a book or two to read, should you care to.”

Jamie’s hands clutched tight with the desire to take the man up on the offer right there and then, but he had lived long enough in the gulag to distrust even the simplest act of kindness. So he kept his hands tight and turned toward the desk where the man now sat, relaxed, a bemused expression on his face.

“It is not a trick nor a trap, only that Volodya tells me you are a man of some learning, and so I assume you must miss books and reading.”

“I do,” Jamie admitted.

“Please sit, and we will have tea.”

Jamie sat, realizing how weak he still was. Extended activity of any sort still put him on his knees in short order.

The commander made the tea himself, proper hot Russian tea in a glass pot, the scent of the
zavarka
heady before the second pour of boiling water. He poured it out into two silver-based glasses when it was done steeping.

“Your tea will want cheering,” the Commander said, pouring a generous dollop of vodka into Jamie’s glass.

The liquid went straight to Jamie’s blood, sending out tendrils of billowing warmth that relaxed him. His head naturally turned toward the bookshelves once again, the way the needle of a compass cannot help but point north.