Ghostcountry's Wrath (13 page)

“Huh?” Kirkwood asked with a start.

“I said I was sorry to be such a pill.”

“I'm the one who oughta be sorry.” Kirk sighed as he nudged Winford the beagle aside in order to clear a phalanx of beer bottles from the path to the door. More ranked around it—everywhere Calvin looked, in fact; unopened and empty, both. A couple even camped behind his chair, though not of his consuming. Tempting though it might have been, especially tonight, Calvin still abstained.

“I'm the one who thought he could wind this thing up at a reasonable hour,” Kirk continued. He sighed again, gave up on the bottles, and slumped down in the rocker next to Calvin's. “I should've known better. God knows I've been around enough Indians
and
anthropologists to know what kind of partiers they are! And put the two together—wow!”

“Those guys were
anthropologists?
The Na Hollos?”

Kirk nodded and sipped absently from a bottle of Corona. “Most of 'em were. Couple of art majors, some microbiologists, of all things. Forestry, journalism—grown-ups. You name it.”

Calvin chuckled—then winced and grunted again. That had hurt!

Kirk noticed it and scowled. “So…how are you? You got back from gettin' poked and prodded just as the party kicked in. I kinda missed the full report.”

“The full report was that I'm shaken, cut up, and cracked, but not concussed or broken—and have a torso mummified with Ace bandages to prove it. Specifically, I've got two cracked ribs and a pair of oddly healed gashes in my chest—which I shouldn't have! Other than that, I'm healthy as an ox, 'cept that I've got some symptoms of stress—which I knew.”

“Well, gee, man,” Kirk said contritely, “I really am sorry about all that. I shouldn't have made you play.”

Calvin shrugged, then realized that his kinsman had probably interpreted his comment as an accusation—which it wasn't. “It was the right thing to do,” he replied. “Favor for favor, and all that.”

“At least you gave the team a rallyin' point. Shoot, those Georgia boys were out for blood!”

“Girls, too. There were girls, too.”

“We beat 'em, though. Boys and girls. Barely.”

A pause. Then, from Calvin: “That's not what I meant, though.”

“About what?”

“About how I shouldn't have been hurt like that.”

Kirk regarded him curiously through tired eyes. “So is this, like,
it,
then? Are we on the edge of the big 'un?”

“If you're up for it. I had a nap; you didn't.”

“Gimme a sec to whip up some coffee?”

“Any munchies left?”

“Oughta be.” And with that, Kirk polished off the beer he'd been nursing and disappeared inside.

Calvin leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, trying to muster his thoughts. Before he'd even begun, though, Kirk was back—with a bag of Ruffles and an enormous mug of what proved to be very black and strong coffee. Calvin sampled it. “Jesus, man; this'd dissolve a friggin' spoon!”

Kirk laughed softly. “So maybe it'll keep a…
wizard
awake?”

A wary chuckle—and another wince. “If that's what I am.”

“You tell me.”

Calvin shook his head. “Why don't you tell me what you saw—or thought you did—first.”

Kirk rolled his eyes and sipped his coffee. He didn't look at Calvin, rather gazed out at the lawn. “I'm…not
sure,”
he began carefully. “But what I
thought
I saw when I finally whipped that bunch of guys off you, was… Well, it looked like your whole body was startin' to shrink, and your arm—which was all I got a good look at—was all drawn up and…and gettin'
furry
!”

“And then?”

A shrug. “I blinked, you groaned, and were back to normal.”

Calvin fished down the front of his T-shirt and dragged out the uktena scale on its thong. Even in the half-light it gleamed: the size of his palm and roughly triangular, milky-clear save at the tips of two of the three points, which were red as blood. Carefully, and with more than a bit of trepidation, he slipped it over his head and passed it to his cousin. “Know what this is?”

Kirk took it, held it in the light streaming out from the window. “Can't say for sure, but if I had to make a stab in the dark, I'd say it was…some kinda fish scale.”

Calvin smiled. “Half right.”

“Which half?”

“It's a scale—but
not
from a fish.”

Kirk eyed him skeptically. “You're not sayin'…”

Calvin nodded. “'Fraid so, cuz. That little bit of vitreous protein you're holdin' is probably one of the three or four most valuable things on this planet.”

“I think I'll let
you
explain why.”

“'Cause at one extreme it represents a challenge to physics as we know it, 'specially the law of conservation of matter and energy.”

“And
a la otra mano
?”

“It's proof that what most folks call the supernatural really exists.”

“You're
shittin'
me!”

“I wouldn't even be
tellin'
you, 'cept that it's part of a larger problem I can't resolve on my own—which is why I'm here. Oh, there're a couple other folks I can talk to, sure—and I'm goin' to. But you're the only one who knows enough about
our
people to help me do what's right from that point of view.”

“Some folks'd say it's the
only
point of view.”

“And some folks'd say there's no such thing as magic.”

“What do you say?”

Calvin's reply was a sip of coffee. Then: “I say that I'd like to know what
you'd
say if I was to take that scale, and cut myself with it hard enough to draw blood,
and
wished to be an animal—it has to be something I've eaten, so that I can absorb the genetic imprint; and I have to have in some sense hunted it, which I think has something to do with adrenaline either priming or fixing the pattern—and then turned into that animal.”

“Sounds like fun,” Kirk replied nervously, but his eyes were dead serious.

“Not hardly!” Calvin snorted as he retrieved the scale. “It hurts like hell for one thing; and you have to concentrate all the time to remind your
self
you're human. See, the animal instincts kinda have to kick in to ensure survival. But they want to override—which you have to let 'em do if you're gonna fly, say—assuming you're a bird, which I have been. Never mind that the smaller you go and the further from primate, or especially mammal, the less space there is in the brain for
you,
simply 'cause there're fewer brain cells available—which means you run a higher risk of forgettin' who you are and bein' trapped in that shape forever.”

“Ah,” Kirk mused, “I see. It scares you to turn, never mind those bigger issues you were talkin' about—and when you get down to it, most folks err on the side of self-preservation.”

“Right.”

“So how does this relate to your wounds not healing?”

Another shrug. “Normally when I get hurt and then shift, the injuries vanish when I change back. I guess the reason they didn't this time is 'cause I didn't shift entirely.”

Kirk exhaled heavily. “My cuz, the coverboy for the
National Enquirer
!”

“Better make that
National Wildlife
!”

“Field and Stream?”

“And prob'ly
Playgirl
as well!”

“Playgirl?”

“Your clothes don't shift with you—nothin' that's not in your genes does. Which means you tend to wind up naked in odd places.”

Kirk laughed out loud. “I'll bet you do!”

Calvin looked glum. “It also means my tattoo's fadin'—the old one, anyway—and that something that was…ahem…snipped off when I was a wee lad's growin' back.”

“I won't even ask.”

“Aw shucks, I was hopin' I'd get to show you.”

Another sip of coffee. “Okay, then. So why don't you tell me the whole thing? I get a sense I'm gettin' ahead of the game.”

Calvin sighed, took a long swallow of coffee. “Okay, man, well, it's like this…”

For the next hour Calvin told his cousin the whole tale of his magical adventures, from the time he'd first met David Sullivan and his Faery friend, Fionchadd, two summers back, through his journey to Galunlati, his fight with the uktena, and Uki's taking him on as apprentice. Nor did he neglect the war in Faerie which had affected the sun in Galunlati, and how he'd inadvertently let Spearfinger into this world. He continued with a detailed account of Spearfinger's tracking of him, which had allowed her to kill four people, including his father. And concluded with his promise to Brock, Gary Hudson's wedding, and the subsequent war-naming ceremony.

Kirk remained quiet throughout, listening intently, and only speaking to ask clarifying questions.

Eventually Calvin fell silent. “That's about it.” He sighed. “Except for the stuff I actually came here to ask about.”

Kirk's eyes were huge. “Like, what you told me already's not enough?”

Calvin shook his head. “'Fraid not—and I have to ask you to keep that under your hat.”

“And if I don't?”

“I know where you live, I can shapeshift, and if I chase you down and sample your blood, I can
steal
your shape, so who'd even know?”

“You'd
do
that?”

“I devoutly hope not. But I could. I suppose I would if I had to…for the good of the world.”

“Shit!”

“A crock of which this is!”

“So what about the statue of your buddy that Spear-finger made and sent to get him? What became of that?”

“It…collapsed. Just fell away to its component parts. As best I can tell, Uki used the magic in it to breach the World Walls when he zapped us off to Galunlati. But that's
not
why I came, cuz. This has all been to give you background on the thing that's buggin' me. Two things, actually.”

“So shoot.”

“More coffee?”

“Fine.”

Two minutes later, Calvin dived in again. “Okay, then,” he said. “I told you about that kid, Brock, right? The one I promised to teach one piece of magic? Well, I've got about two days before that comes due, and I don't know what to do!”

“What do you
want
to do?”

“I knew you'd ask that!”

“Then why'd you come?”

“To absolve myself of guilt, I reckon. But to answer your question: my head tells me to stand the kid up and write off that friendship as too risky.”

“And your heart?”

“It says I've gotta go through with it. It says magic carries an obligation to use it right. But along with that comes the responsibility to do
everything
right. Never to fuck up, in other words. To
always
do the right thing, 'cause if you don't, you're liable to find yourself in a bad situation, and if that happens, you're more likely to use magic—which always causes trouble.”

“So you're sayin' one should only use magic for good?” Kirk countered, gnawing a finger. “That's not Cherokee. We say that you can't separate magic from the rest of reality, as I'm sure you know. That the whole world's suffused with magic, that you can't get away from it, and that everybody uses it, just like any other art or skill—including stuff that might be good for one person but not another. See, every hunter used huntin' songs and such as that. And the myths are full of shape-shifters.
Traditionally,
you wouldn't be that special.”

“Maybe. But
I've
never seen anything good come of it; it only complicates your life and makes you unhappy. And unhappiness
can't
be good—not intrinsically.”

“Hmmm. I'll have to think about that 'un.”

“What about my promise to Brock?”

Kirk leaned back in his chair and puffed his cheeks. “Well, as I see it, you've gotta go through with it. Number one, you'll guilt-trip yourself crazy if you don't, so you might as well at least meet the kid. Do that, state your position clearly and concisely. Tell him exactly what you think, and explain
all
the risks and ramifications. And if that doesn't work…you show him something that scares the livin' pants off him, but that he can't get the gear to duplicate solo.”