Summerland (27 page)

And so the last of Mr. Feld's doubts was plowed through and swept aside. He could not deny the vehicle in which he was riding—a remarkable machine, part snowmobile, part Sherman tank, painted black. He could not deny the deep piston
chunk-kachunk
of the machine's engines, nor the collective drumming rumble of the dozens and dozens of other steam sledges all around them, sliding and scraping over the hard shiny bones of the ice. There was no getting around the untold numbers of dogsleds lurching and streaking amid the steam sledges, driven by little creatures wrapped in fur and pulled by what had to be—what could only be—straining, yelping teams of
werewolves
. They loped along on their strong hind legs while by means of heavy tow-straps with their great furred paws they dragged the sleds behind them. And there was nothing at all that the cool, sensible part of Mr. Feld's mind could do about the great sparking thunder clouds, roiling and steaming and boiling with red lightning. They trailed in a ten-mile train thundering train, a herd of thunderheads blackening the sky.

"Ah," Mr. Feld said. He could not seem to think of anything else to add, and so he just said, "Ah," again.

"When Coyote wants to see you, heh-heh," Padfoot said. "Then Coyote will come to
you
"

Just then, as if Padfoot's words had been the cue, the drumbeat of their steam sledge's engines abated somewhat, and they began to slow. All the sledges around them slowed, as well, and the werewolves dropped their towlines. The sled drivers climbed down from the sleds. They threw back their fur hoods, revealing pinched and leering faces furnished with long black beards.

"Mushgoblins," Padfoot said. "The wolfboys don't listen to nobody else."

The mushgoblins tore open heavy sacks and, grinning, spilled their startling contents onto the ice. Big frozen chunks of blood-red meat went skittering in all directions. A frenzied yipping went up from the werewolves, horribly reminiscent of human laughter, and then they fell on the meat, while the mushgoblins cracked their long black whips and sang a tuneless tune. The meat disappeared in under a minute. The werewolves began to roll around on the ice, shoving, playing leapfrog and biting at each other's throats with savage glee. Somebody broke out an ancient football and they got up a great bruising scrimmage, tearing across the ice.

Overhead, the thundering black buffalo of storm caught up to them, and the shadow of the great herd fell upon a wide stretch of ice. Wherever it fell, the ice began to creep and writhe like something that was alive. After a moment Mr. Feld realized that it was not the ice moving at all, but tiny creatures, a million tiny white mice.

This sight really cracked up Robin Padfoot. "They think it's nighttime! Poor little ice mice of the Iceburns! They've never seen a
shadow
before!"

The werewolves broke off their game of football and fell in among the mice, scooping up big pawfuls of them, tossing them back like salted nuts.

A thought—nothing too fancy—that been struggling to make its way out of Mr. Feld's brain finally arrived, somewhat the worse for wear, at his mouth.

"
Where are we
?" he said.

"We're at a crossroads. A big one. It's called Betty's Bonepit. This looks good for you, heh-heh! Mr. C. loves crossroads, you know, rube. And this is one of his, heh, absolute favorites!" Padfoot seemed quite excited at the prospect of seeing his boss again.

Mr. Feld blinked his eyes, squinting through the yellow stain of his lenses. He hadn't realized before that they were actually traveling a road. It was a gigantic road, wide enough for an entire town of humans to march abreast. In the sunshine it sparkled like a road of diamonds. In the shadow of the thunder herd it glowed like a pearl. Just ahead, where the lead sledges had stopped, it ran into six other roads, some as wide, some narrower, forming a crooked, misshapen star of seven rays. Like all crossroads in the Winterlands this was a desolate spot; treeless and unmarked; a place where mortal adventurers came to grief. At the very center of the ragged star lay a hole, roughly circular, and filled, as Mr. Feld could not help but see from atop the steam sledge, with bones. Bones of every description, wind bitten and gray. Skulls, too—antlers, jagged nasal cavities, wicked curving jawbones studded with sharp teeth. One look at this pit and somehow you sensed that it went very, very deep. Someone or something had been eating an awful lot of animals for a very long time.

"Angry Betty was a hungry lady," Padfoot said. "She, heh-heh, nearly ate my dad, back when he was just a puckling."

As the steam sledges drew to a halt, one by one, they sputtered, groaned, and then, with a sigh of their engines, fell silent. Their hatches were cranked open from inside. Great gray clouds of vapor came pouring out, followed in short order by the little grayling crews. They spattered the ice like handfuls of pebbles tossed into a snowbank. As they ran toward the crossroads they were joined by the mushgoblins, and by a bewildering variety of other smallish, yowling creatures, who leapt from beneath the fur tarps that covered the dogsleds and lurched and tottered across the ice. Some of them brought out bagpipes and tambourines. Others beat on iron shields with little black swords. They set up a terrible racket. In the house in Philadelphia where Mr. Feld had grown up, the old iron radiator grilles rang, banged, pounded, and screeched all night long. The sound disturbed your dreams and then when you woke with your heart pounding in the quiet of the night you could hear the radiators, all nine of them, going at once, all over the house. That was how the Rade sounded to Mr. Feld, iron and ugly and joyful.

"What are they all so happy about?" he said.

But there was no answer from Robin Padfoot. The shaggy demon (there was nothing else he could be) was already halfway over the side of the observation platform. As Mr. Feld watched, Padfoot lowered himself to the ice and loped toward the vast crossroads, tossing graylings and mushgoblins and who-knew-whats out of his way as he went. His animal style of getting along was unnerving to watch.

"Padfoot!" said Mr. Feld. "Where are you going? What's happening?"

"It's a crossroads," said a small, droll voice at his elbow.

Mr. Feld turned. On the brass rail, its feathers stirred and ruffled by the bitter wind, sat a raven. Its eyes were ink, its beak lead, and its scaly legs and talons a rusty red like cedar shavings. It had the deadpan, crafty look common to its species, as if it were trying to conceal its thoughts. "That's where you'll always find Coyote."

"Is he here?" Mr. Feld said, turning back to watch Robin Padfoot go shambling across the mirror-bright surface of the Iceburns, deciding not to care, finally, that he was conversing with a bird. He wiped the frost from his goggles, trying to see through the swarms of graylings and goblins that were flooding the crossroads at Betty's Bonepit. "Can I speak to him?" He turned back to the raven, which had its head tucked under one wing and appeared to be searching its feathers for something to eat. "Do you know where he is?"

"Of course I do," said the raven. "All ravens know where Coyote is, at all times. It's just a little gift we have. Got it from Coyote himself, as a matter of fact, back when he Changed the world."

"Is he here? It's very important that I speak to him."

"Relax," said the raven. "He wants to talk to you, too. He's heard about you."

Screeching graylings, grinning like boys, came sledding down the ramps.

"I've gathered that," Mr. Feld said. "I think he wants my—he sent Padfoot to—he wants my airship envelope design."

The low chuckle of the raven took on a suave quality, less raspy and harsh. Mr. Feld looked back at the bird. What he saw made him jump so quickly and carelessly that he nearly tumbled over the side of the observation platform. Where the raven had sat, perched on a length of cold brass pipe, there now stood a man. He was a slender person, slight of build, an inch or two shorter than Mr. Feld. He wore a short, hooded tunic, of scarlet shot through with gold, trimmed at the collar, cuffs, hood, and hem with thick black fur. The hood was thrown back to reveal a flaming shock of red hair. The face under the fiery hair is, and has always been, difficult to describe. It was handsome, but the bones of the nose, cheeks, and chin were drawn too sharply; youthful, but the skin was lined and weathered; merry, but the eyes were cold and unkindly; wise, but the thick red lips were drawn into a cruel and stupid smirk. It was the face of someone who could see no difference between looking for trouble and looking for fun and who, though since the beginning of time he had succeeded in stirring up no end of trouble, had seen nothing of fun in a very long, in much too long, a time.

"It's not your precious
envelope
I want, Mr. Feld," said the person. "It's the truly
marvelous
stuff you spin it from."

Mr. Feld was about to guess (correctly) at the identity of his mysterious companion, when his attention was distracted by the sound of a high, thin voice, uttering the worst string of curses that he had ever heard. Mr. Feld looked toward the wild mass jig now taking place in the crossroads, all around the bonepit, to the icy skirling of the pipes. Some of the graylings, he saw, had formed a ragged line, leading back from the edge of the pit to the place where the lead steam sledge had come to a halt. Down this line they were tossing along a small, furry bundle, over their heads, from one pair of wicked hands to the next. The bundle was of a fiery orange color that stood out boldly against the colorless expanse of the Iceburns, and it was from the center of this bundle that the truly scabrous cursing seemed to be coming.

The language spoken by the bundle was unknown to Mr. Feld. (In fact it was a dialect of West Reynardine.) But so deeply outraged was the bundle's tone, and so fiery its rhetoric, that the meaning of unknown words was nevertheless as plain to Mr. Feld as if he were speaking them himself. The ancestors of the graylings were first compared to a variety of loathsome animals, fungi, and bacteria, and then were accused of having perpetrated on themselves and one another a number of vile and probably physically impossible acts. All this seemed to amuse the graylings considerably. Next the bundle—it had a tail, Mr. Feld saw now, a great red brush of a tail—began to describe to the graylings, who were sending it, inexorably, toward the giant pit of bones, all the horrible illnesses and afflictions that would befall them, and their offspring, and the offspring of their offspring, if they did not, this minute, set the bundle down. Skin lesions, boils, sores, deformities of limb, failures of crucial organs. None of this appeared to make any impression on the graylings. The thing with the tail arrived at the grasping hands of the last grayling before the pit, and then with a heave, and a group shout of "Ho!" was sent sailing. It arced high out into the frost-blue air, kicking and shaking its tiny black fists. Then it landed, with a nasty crunch, on the pile of bones. Its head struck with a thud against something hard. After that it lay there, unmoving, a poor, tiny little creature, familiar somehow to Mr. Feld—a fox, or a monkey, or—

"A bushbaby!" said Mr. Feld.

"It's a werefox, actually," said the young-old man with a polite cough. "Bushbabies, I believe, are rather smaller."

Mr. Feld turned, filled with a pity for the werefox and also, belatedly, for Ethan, stuck with a father who shunned the unlikely and refused—foolishly, as it turned out—to believe in the impossible. He started to reproach the young-old man, to protest the treatment of the innocent werefox whose life had been spared, on the Clam Island Highway, by the sharp gaze of his lost little son. But as soon as he looked at the man, Mr. Feld found that his thoughts grew fuzzy and confused. It was as if Coyote shone with some kind of invisible light that you could see with the deepest animal layer of your brain.

"What's going to happen to it?" he managed to get out.

"Nothing you'd care to see. He served his purpose, old Cutbelly. I told him, he really ought to feel honored. Shadowtail for the last great leap between the Worlds." His gaze flickered like a leaping spark in the direction of the madness in the crossroads, then back at Mr. Feld. "Idiots," he said, affectionately, with a grin so large and cheery that it warmed Mr. Feld from the depths of his fur-wrapped belly to the frozen tips of his ears. "Let them have their fun. In the meantime, Mr. Bruce Feld, you and I can get acquainted."

Nothing changed. There was no sound, no hint of motion. And yet from one heartbeat to the next the endless white world around them vanished completely, and with it the sound of the pipes and drums, the growling of the werewolves, the rumble of engines, the strange half-light of the sky. Instead Mr. Feld found himself seated in a large, soft chair. A fire flickered gaily in a stone fireplace. The walls were dark and handsome. The lamps cast a warm, buttery light. Mr. Feld was holding a cup of coffee, black with sugar, exactly as he preferred to drink it. In his other hand there was a chicken sandwich, with mayonnaise and tomato, on egg bread, the chicken warm from the soup-pot and well salted. His favorite kind. He took a bite of the excellent sandwich and then washed it down with a slug of good hot coffee.