Landslayer's Law (13 page)

It had been a damned fine evening. David had had the time of his life, and he
knew
all these folks and had heard most of them perform more times than he could count. Point of fact, he remembered when Darrell had gotten his first guitar, back when the guy was fifteen. And he recalled when his lanky pal had proudly called him up from MacTyrie two days later, to strum a rough but recognizable “House of the Rising Sun” over the phone.

But until he’d come to UGA, Darrell had
been
his musical friend. Oh, he’d known in a general way that Cal played harmonica and guitar, and that drumming was a necessary adjunct to many of the Cherokee rituals Cal had undertaken, but he’d never actually heard the guy sing until three years after their initial meeting. “A man’s gotta hold some things in reserve,” Calvin had confided. “Otherwise his friends’ll take him for granted.”

And of course there was Piper and LaWanda, who really
were
musicians. LaWanda had long played in a band called Save the Feet for Last, and had likewise performed the music at Gary’s wedding. And Piper—well, wiry, tousle-haired little Piper was a very strange bird indeed: one of the sweetest guys in the world, and spacy as they came. Basically, he lived for rain and LaWanda, his unlikely sweetie. He was also hell-on-wheels on pipes, highland or Uillean, either. And very adaptable.

Which was fortunate, because the assortment of unlikely personnel that evening had also made for some unlikely improvisations and instrumental juxtapositions, if consistently wonderful sounds. Darrell, for instance, had opened with the most obscene blues song David had ever heard, something called “Love Me With a Feelin’.” He’d done a couple more solos, whereupon Calvin (who sometimes collaborated with him) had chimed in with a pair of John Denveresque pastiches. That had been followed by Guadalcanal Diary’s old “Trail of Tears,” which LaWanda had augmented on bass halfway through; and then the Juju Woman herself had ordered the lights reduced to a single candle and treated them to a spooky synthesizer rendition of “Pirate Jenny” (with apologies to Nina Simone), and a rousing rendition of the same singer’s “Mississippi Goddamn”—an old civil-rights ditty, whose implications Myra had to explain to Brock, who hadn’t a clue.

A beer and snack break had ensued, then assorted jams, while Piper got himself properly psyched. Whereupon, with much ceremony, he’d dived in on a new-and-old Celtic martial medley, consisting of “Brian Bones March,” “Roddy McCorley,” and “Foggy Dew” (with LaWanda’s eerie vocals), to end with “Green Fields of France.” The Gary Moore had been Myra’s request.

David checked his watch. They’d have to leave soon; have to shift from artists-and-audience to Trackers. But he certainly wouldn’t complain if there were a few more tunes. Nor, to judge by his rapt expression, would Brock—who, it appeared, would’ve been just as glad to spend the night worshipping Piper’s shadow as waiting by a stretch of leafless ground for an event they had no reason to assume would occur.

Piper raised a brow at LaWanda. “Another?”

She shrugged. “Why not?”

Piper looked straight at Brock. “Requests?”

Brock turned as red as LaWanda’s tank-top. “Uh…” he choked, but then his jaw hardened and a wicked glint came into his eyes. “How ’bout ‘King of the Fairies’?”

LaWanda stiffened abruptly, Myra gasped, and Piper’s eyes nearly fell out of his head. An ominous silence filled the room.

Brock looked around in confusion. “Uh, Jeeze,” he mumbled. “What’d I say?”

More silence.

“I mean, it’s just a song,” Brock went on stubbornly. “Isn’t it?”

Still silence. Then, from Myra. “Actually, no, it’s not—not to Piper.”

Brock stood his ground, scowling under his inky forelock. “I don’t get it.”

Myra gazed about for support, then scowled herself, and dived in. “Well, Brock, the short form is that that particular song played by that particular person, under certain circumstances, isn’t…just a song. You’ve heard us talking about Gates before: Gates between the Worlds, and all. And though we’ve all tried to ignore it ’cause we’ve wanted to have fun tonight and hang out with our friends, and not deal with serious stuff, the fact is, that when Piper plays ‘King of the Fairies’ it can sometimes
open
a Gate—or send him through the World Walls, anyway. And since we know that Lugh—he’s the local Faery king—is real sensitive about any kind of Gates right now, you can see where we’re headed.”

Brock nodded sullenly, choosing attitude over embarrassment, which was typical of his age. “Sorry. Didn’t know.”

David clapped him on the shoulder. “No big deal.”

Piper, however, looked almost as sad as Brock—probably because he hated to disappoint such a totally devoted fan.

“Tell you what,” Calvin broke in suddenly, gazing at Darrell, “how ’bout something completely different, a lot more fun, and a lot more relevant, if not necessarily as wild or weird or imaginative technically?”

Darrell regarded him quizzically, one brow quirked upward. “You don’t mean…?

Calvin grinned fiendishly, even as he fished out his harmonica. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “so to speak”—as he climbing atop a convenient stool—“I give you the ‘Werepossum Blues!’”

And with that, Darrell laid down a blues riff, and Calvin started singing.

“Oh Lord, my name is Calvin,

an’ Indian Blood run through my veins,

Yeah, my name is Calvin Fargo,

and Cherokee blood be pulsin’ in my veins.

I’ve had some wild adventures;

seen an awful lot o’ wond’rous things.”

And from that he went on for nearly thirty minutes, detailing in verse after verse and in perfect blues rhyme and meter, the whole long tale of their varied adventures in Faerie, Galunlati, and assorted other realms, starting with what had befallen David that long ago summer night:

“You know my buddy David?

One day he went an’ got the Second Sight.

Yeah, you know my good friend David?

He fooled around and got the Second Sight.

He saw the Faeries ridin’—

an’ that gave him one mighty fright!”

And so on: first relating David’s riddle game with the Seelie Lords Nuada and Ailill, and Ailill’s attempts to revenge his defeat on David by assailing his family, ending in Ailill being transformed into a horse. That was followed by Ailill’s sister’s failed attempt at revenge of her own, for that insult. Next came Cal’s initial encounter with David and their subsequent journey, with Alec, to Galunlati, the Cherokee overworld, where Alec had been manipulated into betraying them. Which in turn precipitated a war between Lugh of Tir-Nan-Og and Finvarra of Erenn, during which the sun itself had been used as a weapon and which altercation David and his crew had, beyond hope, defused.

The tale became more personal then, as Calvin recounted his own encounter with a shapechanging Cherokee ogress called Spearfinger, who liked to feast on human livers. Brock brightened as he heard his own name come into the song. That took a number of verses, ending with Spearfinger’s dissolution and Calvin’s conscience heavy with guilt at the number of deaths he had inadvertently caused, including that of his father. More verses related events one year later, in which Calvin, Brock, and Sandy had helped the last of the not-so-mythical Water-Panthers evade a Cherokee witch who would have enslaved her, during which time Calvin had himself ventured to the Darkening Land to the West: the Cherokee Land of the Dead.

All those verses David had heard—or read—before, and perhaps he alone knew how personal they truly were, for they were part of Calvin’s private death song, which he had long ago begun composing at the urging of that same shaman-grandfather who had named him. But there were new verses as well (and David tried not to check his watch as time drew nigh to commence the official Tracking, for some things required their own hour and season), and those new verses told a fresher tale, in which David, Alec, and Aikin had all three dreamed dreams which had led each of them to yet more adventures: Aikin-the-hunter as quarry to the Wild Hunt himself, first in Faerie, then on the Tracks, and finally in downtown Athens; Alec as thwarted rescuer of the Faery woman, Aife, who had betrayed him, then loved him, and who now stayed with him in the guise of a cat-nee-enfield; and himself, who’d dared a never-never corner of space—time to win closure with the young martyred uncle for whom he had been named.

And as Calvin’s voice trailed off into a whispered hush, and Darrell’s guitar likewise faded, every sound in the room followed them to silence.

As though on cue, the single candle winked out. And someone—David never knew who—whispered an awestruck, “Wow!”

Silence indeed, then; and breathing. And then LaWanda lit a new taper.

Someone’s watch beeped, signaling that it was now eleven, and suddenly they were all bright, creative, healthy (and to various degrees tipsy) young folks again.

Only Myra seemed unable to muster enthusiasm. David noticed how she lagged behind as they filed noisily down the stairs with a jumble of clothes, coolers, and musical instruments. “What….” he began softly, for Myra’s ears alone.

She frowned. “Scott. He was supposed to be here and he’s not.”

David started, though he’d likewise known at some level that Myra’s friend and sometime lover had not appeared, and indeed, that more than one person had commented on his absence—generally to be reminded that Scott wasn’t very reliable and had been even more spaced than usual of late. “Probably forgot what day it was,” Liz assured her. “God knows, he had as recently as yesterday.”

“He said he’d meet us there,” Myra conceded. “If he didn’t make it here, he said he’d meet us there.”

“Only one way to find out,” David told her with forced cheeriness. And with that he jogged away toward the lovingly restored Candyapple Red ’66 Mustang he still called the Mustang of Death.

* * *

The caravan back to the southern outskirts of Athens consisted of twelve people and a caged cat that was really a Faery woman changed into an enfield; all, now that LaWanda’s Pinto had deigned to run again, scattered across four vehicles. David, per tradition, took the lead in the Mustang, with Liz, Alec, and Aife along for the ride: the three original Trackers, accompanied, in a sense, by the latest. Then came Myra, with Darrell, Gary, Aikin, and most of the musical gear, in Myra’s brand new Dodge minivan. Piper and LaWanda followed, lest the Pinto suffer another calamity, as seemed likely, given the distinctly yellowish cast of its lights; while Sandy, Calvin, and Brock in Sandy’s Ford Explorer brought up the rear. The rest had transport, of course (though not all in town), ranging from Piper’s nonfunctioning Harley through Aikin’s Chevy S-10 pickup, to Alec’s aging Volvo; but in the interest of both simplicity and camaraderie, they always elected to carpool. Nor did it hurt that achieving their goal required invading a place where the presence of too many unfamiliar vehicles after dark might raise more than one set of law-enforcement eyebrows.

In any event, the entire trip from Crawford to Gaines School Road took all of twenty minutes: exactly long enough for Liz to wrest the true tale of his myriad kitty-cat scratches from Alec, and for Alec to promise both Liz and a seething David,
never
to let Aikin talk him into anything that dumb again.

By which time, they were slowing for the railroad tracks where Whitehall Road kinked right, and were themselves preparing to turn sharp left. Alec held his breath (not entirely from tradition) as David braked hard, then swung the Mustang’s tail smartly out as they entered the precincts of Whitehall Forest: the University of Georgia Forestry School’s sprawling sanctum sanctorum. The Whitehall Mansion itself loomed close on the right: a fantasy of turrets, gables, and towers that was Athens’s best surviving example of brick Victorian architecture; and then they were pausing with their lights off long enough for Aikin to dash up and unlock the white pipe gate that barred ingress into the forest proper. A smattering of buildings flashed by on either side, but David could already sense the forest closing in, as the road became narrower, curvier, and rougher by turns. One final sharp uphill left, followed by a trickily abrupt downhill right, and they’d reached Destination One: the combination yard and parking lot of the rustic, log-sheathed cabin Aikin had, for three years, called home. This would be his last week there. Come graduation, he (and the other three forestry jocks with whom he shared space) would have no choice but to vacate in favor of a new batch of underclassmen. Fortunately, none were in residence now, but Aikin was plainly nervous all the same, as he waited for the group to assemble.

Which was odd, David reckoned, given that the Tracking Party itself was Aik’s invention: a stubborn romanticization of Faerie when the rest of them had either become scared of it, denied it, or simply become jaded. Aikin, though—he’d known of Faerie and his friends’ exploits there long before he’d ever visited that realm himself. And at that, he’d only skimmed the fringe—because Lugh Samildinach had closed the borders again well and proper following their last encounter, two Halloweens back.

Now, however, he took the lead, motioning them to silence as they unloaded small coolers and baskets of food. By agreement—and to humor Aikin’s insistence on stealth—they’d every one changed into black: Darrell in Doc Martins and cut-off Levis, for instance; Gary in a mechanic’s jumpsuit; and Myra in a thrift store velvet mini-dress, freshly donned tights and ankle-length cloak. Aik simply wore black fatigues and sweatshirt. David was similarly attired, as were Alec and Liz. Another year, David suspected, and that would become the official uniform.

In the meantime, he had custody of the music: a portable Sony CD player with a custom-recorded disc.

Finally, with everyone assembled—still no Scott—Aikin “Mighty Hunter” Daniels slipped into the Georgia night.

He led them first beside the cabin and down a steep trail that ran through a mixture of woods and brush to the gleaming arc of the Oconee River. He paused there to count heads, then pressed onward toward what once had been a mill but was now merely a jumble of concrete ruins towering over the nearside terminus of a narrow dam.