Authors: Michael Chabon
Summerland (39 page)
The iron portal of the laboratory rolled open, squealing, and Coyote walked in. He was dressed in his snowgear, a tunic and trousers of white fur. His white fur hood was thrown back and his bright coppery hair blazed with droplets.
"So!" he cried. "Hard at work, I see! Excellent! Fine! Splendid! And how goes it? Excellent? Fine? Spendid, even? That's good. Mr. Feld, that is just so good. I am
this
close to obtaining an adequate supply of the vitriol. A friend of mine is working on the problem right now. I think she's found someone—someone close to your son, intriguingly—who can be persuaded to get me the stuff." He balled his hands into fists and pounded on his own forehead. He yanked on his own hair. "Oh, I'm
pleased
. I'm
very
pleased. In fact, I am
so
pleased that I would like to reward you. As of now, as of this very moment, you are free of my service. I cannot release you from my
custody
, of course, not, at least, until we have overthrown Outlandishton and captured Murmury Well. But you need no longer work on the delivery system. My smiths can take over from here."
He said this all with perfect sincerity and a kindly tone. Mr. Feld glanced at Cutbelly.
"Uh," he said. "Well."
Cutbelly spat on the floor. "What did I tell you?" he said.
"It's just, I'm so close," Mr. Feld said at last. "I really hate to stop now."
Coyote nodded.
"Knock yourself out," he said. Then he nodded to Cutbelly, and the werefox saw a mean little Coyote smirk on his face. He started back out of the laboratory. "Or should I say, knock yourself
flat
?"
ETHAN STOOD IN THE
middle of a large, green field, with one perfectly square corner, that opened like a grassy fan. Near the perfect corner, inside of a square traced in rich, brown dirt and filled with green grass, stood a tumulus or little round hill of more rich, brown dirt.
"Hey," Ethan said, as he stared across the bright green diamond at Jennifer T. He found himself standing squarely at the back of the circle of dirt where home plate belonged. Jennifer T. was standing on the pitcher's mound.
"Hey," she said, looking around with an expression on her face of perfect wonder. "Did you do this?"
"I…I didn't
mean
to," Ethan said.
The last thing he remembered was letting go of the burning bat in his hands—burning not like a fire, or even an electric light, but with a cold kind of flame like starlight. It had begun to flicker almost from the moment he followed Thor into the side of the knoll. They had gone no more than a few steps when the light blazed up, blindingly bright, and then it was as if someone had put the worlds in a blender. After that he remembered nothing. And now here they were, standing in the middle of a baseball diamond, in the shade of Dandelion Hill.
When they saw the miraculous ball field that had swirled into existence at their doorstep, the ferishers of Dandelion Hill threw down their tennis rackets and croquet mallets, and left behind the scarred gray patch in the grass where their old field had lain. They dived into the thick, new grass, and swam in it like water, and rolled over onto their backs, and floated on it, and sighed.
"Ethan Feld," Taffy called from the angle of third base. "We need that wood, and quickly."
It was on top of the pitcher's mound that they laid the featherweight husk of Cinquefoil the ferisher. Ethan was shocked by his appearance. He looked less like a living creature than the imitation of one, a bundle of rags, like the doll carried by the ferisher girl Spider-Rose. Ethan wanted to believe that his newly forged bat could somehow reverse the process, but it didn't seem likely. And even if the bat turned out to be up to the challenge, he had no reason to believe that
he
was.
"Here," he said to Jennifer T., offering her the bat that Grim had made for him. Jennifer T. took it, gripped it in both hands, studied it with her fingertips. She had been eyeing it with interest from the moment she and Ethan had first faced each other across the infield, with the swirling winds and green chaos of a disturbance in the Worlds settling all around them.
"It's got to be you, rube," Grim said to Ethan. "It's your wood. You found it."
"But I've used Jennifer
T.'s
bat before," Ethan protested. "People share bats all the time. She can use mine if she wants to."
"I don't know," Jennifer T. said, giving it a few practice swings. "There's this little bump on the handle. This knot, or whatever. It sort of hurts my hand."
She passed the bat back to Ethan and he took it. Jennifer T. was right; the knot—he came to think of it as the Knot—on the handle spoilt the feel of the bat in the hands. That was his fault, of course; he hadn't owned the nerve, at the last, to carve it away. He put the shame of his failure out of his mind and turned his attention to the crumpled form of the ferisher lying on the pitcher's mound before him. The Dandelion Hill mob crept closer now, hoping to get a better look at the proceedings. Some of them called out advice and hints to Ethan; others began to lay odds on whether it was going to work at all.
Like all advice, most of the ferisher's suggestions were contradictory—it had been a long time, after all, since anyone around here had seen ash used to draw out the withering sting of iron. Some of them shouted to Ethan to kneel down, and lay the head of the bat right on the wound. Others seemed to feel that he was supposed to remain standing, but wave the bat around over the wound. In the end Ethan settled for some of each. He knelt, and began to draw little circles in the air over Cinquefoil's ruined hand. He closed his eyes, because he couldn't stand the sight of the poor, shrunken chief.
When he opened them again, he saw to his surprise that things were looking much better. The hard little kernel into which Cinquefoil's life had curled itself sprang forth again and sent shoots to uncoil in his face, hands, and feet. His hands opened like buds. His eyelids opened like petals. He was looking right at Ethan.
"Shaved yer splinter, I see," he observed.
A cheer broke out; it was the first time the sound of cheering had been heard at the Hill since the loss of the old ball field to Coyote the Changer's deceit. Then Queen Filaree approached the mound. Her face, alone of everyone's on the field, was severe and unsmiling. Her walk was haughty. She stopped at the edge of the grass and scowled at each of them in turn—Ethan, Jennifer T., Thor, Cinquefoil, Taffy, Grim the Giant, and at the strange little pot-bellied rat-creature—a wererat, Ethan decided, who was standing beside Jennifer T. The wererat stared right back, with his one bright eye. Longest of all, though, the Queen glared at the ferisher girl, Spider-Rose. Spider-Rose admired the line of beech trees beyond right field, as if unaware of all the scowling and glaring that was going on.
"We've been bittered, and ruint, and soured, and mean," said the queen at last. "And worst, we done dishonored the Laws o' Hospitality most disgraceful." She looked at Ethan and Jennifer T. "And ta repay us fer this ill-doing, ya have healt up our long-broken hearts."
"It was kind of an accident," Ethan said, looking down at the bat. "I'm not really sure what I
did
."
"I ain't sure, neither," Grim the Giant said. "But here's the way I figures it. That lot"—he gestured toward Jennifer T. and Taffy—"and us, now, we was all scamperin' through the hillside at the same instant. I done heard of such things happenin' from time to time, an' the way I heard it, people cross each other in a scamper, why then, you always ends up with somethin' very interestin'. Now, let's just say, with this little reuben carryin' that old hunk of woundwood there—what with all that glowin' it did—I think…I think he done pleached two worlds together. This one and the Middling, I'll warrant. Just for a minute, like."
The wererat crept forward and gingerly ran a dainty forepaw along the shaft of Ethan's bat.
"Woundwood, is it?" He frowned. "Then much as it pains me to have to do so, I fear I must agree with that midgety puddinghead over there. Put a piece of woundwood at the spot where two branches cross, it's like you created a tiny, little temporary gall—you know what a gall is? But it wasn't a real gall. It didn't last. And it only stayed open just long enough for a little bit of the two worlds to involve themselves with each other. Just long enough to make a little tiny patch of a magical place."
"A ball field," said Jennifer T.
"It's got all the magic and size we require," Queen Filaree said. "An' we're deep, deep in yer debt."
"Oh," said Ethan, a little put off by her solemnity, and still trying to take hold of the idea that he had, even if only for a moment, brought two worlds together, and made something so beautiful where there had been only mud and gray ashes. "Well, that's okay."
"It is not," the queen said. "Name a price fer yer gift, and it'll be paid."
"Well—" Ethan began. They had already wasted so much time. "I'm really worried about my dad. He's been taken prisoner by Coyote."
"Plus we're trying to keep Ragged Rock from coming," Thor reminded him.
"Oh, yeah," Ethan said. "Also we're trying to stop the end of the world. And we have a really long way to go. So—well, okay. Could we please have our airship back?"
The queen's cheeks flushed until they were the color of blood oranges. She glanced down at herself, then away. A certain amount of dark laughter bubbled up from the assembled ferishers. A certain amount of money changed hands. Ethan took a closer look at the queen's shiny tunic and at those worn by nearly all of the other members of the mob. Now that they were out in the sunlight he could see that they had been sewn—hundreds of tiny garments, glowing soft and silvery as the moon—from the picofiber envelope of Skidbladnir.
"Oh," he said. "Oh."
"I'll have yer wagon fetched out o' the stables," said the queen. "But I regret ta say that it may not fly so well as it did afore now."
A few moments later, the old Feld Saab appeared from around the other side of the hill, pushed by two dozen huffing ferishers wearing thick gloves to keep the touch of metal from their hands. She was dented and dirty and looked, in this enchanted spot, more incongruous than ever. But there was plenty of gas in her tank, and when they tried the ignition, she turned over at once.
"Good thing I couldn't grammer the engine away," Cinquefoil said. "But we got a long ways ta go on a tank o' gas." He looked worried, and he trembled, still pale and drawn, peering in at the gauge labeled BENSIN.
"I'll work a feasting grammer on her for ya, Chief Cinquefoil," the queen said. "What can turn a heel o' bread inta a banquet fit fer a mob. That should stretch things a bit fer ya. And a course we'll outfit ya as we can with foodstuffs and such gear as ya may need."
"Pardon me," said a small, crisp voice at Ethan's feet. "But as long as we find ourselves on the subject of foodstuffs, there was a small matter, I believe, of some Braunschweiger sausage."
