Summerland (43 page)

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. It's just—the last time I saw him. The last time the glasses really worked. I saw something.…He looked…"

"What?"

"I don't know." But he shuddered, and she saw that he
did
know. He just didn't want to say. "It was like something from a bad dream. It was my father, but I knew it wasn't my father."

"They were malfunctioning," she assured him. "Now they're dead."

"Yeah," Ethan said. His smile looked a little brave. "That was probably the thing."

He put a hand on the door handle, then left it there without opening the door.

"Did you hear her?" he said.

Jennifer T. nodded. She knew that Ethan's mother had broken his heart, too, by leaving him. She could imagine how it felt to him to listen to the sobbing of that wild old La Llorona, night after night.

"Whatever," he said.

He tossed the glasses onto the floor of the car. He got out of the car, and they went over to see what they could do to help with dinner.

"You can keep out of the way until it's time to wash the dishes," Pettipaw said, shooing them away with a flick of his tail. He was a deadly hunter—he hunted with his bare hands and the twin daggers of his foreteeth—with a special fondness for ground squirrel. Tonight he was boiling up a fine ground-squirrel burgoo. "Maybe you can figure out what became of the megaloped."

This was his nickname for Taffy. Jennifer T. looked around, and realized she had not seen the Sasquatch since her announcement that if need be she would carry them all down to the river. Now, Jennifer T. saw, their gear stood stacked in orderly piles, or laid to dry or air out on the rocks, all with the Sasquatch's telltale neatness. But there was no sign of Taffy herself. They hiked back up to the trail Jennifer T. had found, then down to the stream to ask Spider-Rose if she had seen Taffy.

"Nope," the ferisher said. She had her little doll-brother—its name was Nubakaduba (Old Fatidic for "little rocket")—in the stream with her, and just now she was beating its woolly hair clean with a small, flat stone. Since leaving her native knoll, her temperament, if not her outlook on life, had improved somewhat, but she was if anything more attached to the tattered remnant of her lost brother than ever. She sang to it endlessly at night, lulling herself to sleep. She drove Pettipaw wild with her demand that he provide her brother with a bowl of supper every night, suitably mashed. And woe to the one who inadvertently sat on or squashed Nubakaduba in the backseat of the car. "But I think she said she was going for a walk."

"Was that before or after La Llorona started up?" Jennifer T. wanted to know.

"Couldn't say. After, I guess. Why?"

"No reason," Jennifer T. said.

Shaking off her misgivings, she chased Ethan away, and had a brief, frigid, glorious bath in the stream, washing out her socks and underwear and laying them to dry on a stone. Then she changed into her other clean set of clothes and went to find Ethan. He was sitting by the fire, working over the handle of his bat, which someone—Jennifer T. wasn't sure anymore just who—had dubbed "Splinter." She had to admire Ethan for his persistence, or maybe it was
loyalty
. He had decided that, though it caused him to swing late, to swing early, to swing too soft and too hard, to swing himself right out his shoes, he was meant for Splinter, and Splinter for him. In spite of its failure to perform on the field, it had, after all, slain a skriker and healed Cinquefoil. But something must be done about the Knot. And so night after night, he sat glumly working it over with the wicked blade of Grimalkin John's hunting knife. But though the knife blade was finger-severing sharp, all his hours of dutiful scraping failed to do more than peel away a few scant fingernail-parings of ash. It was as though the Knot were not wood at all, but iron or stone.

"I need a sharper knife," Ethan said, stabbing the little giant's knife into a rotting log beside him. As if to belie his words, it sank into the wood all the way up to its haft.

"It ain't a question of the blade," Grim said. "It's the one that's doing the wielding. And that Knot ain't going away till you're ready, like what I told you a hunnert times already. And I guess you ain't ready."

"But I'll wager he's ready for supper." Pettipaw beat on a pot with a metal spoon, and the thin sound of it carried far up into the hills above them. One by one the scattered Shadowtails gathered around the fire and took their steaming bowls of chow. All except for Taffy.

"I'm worried," Jennifer T. said. "She's never wandered off before."

"And I made her a fine poke salad," Pettipaw sulked. "Don't know why I bother."

From far off there was low rumble, and they all looked up. It might have been thunder, or the sound of the little mountain men playing at ninepins, or the bellowing of some distant moose or bull elk. It was nearly night. The sky was a deep, rich color like the heart of a gas flame. Bats swooped and wheeled and stitched their crooked way across the blue, embroidering the night. The moon rose, gibbous and huge, far bigger and brighter than the moon of the Middling. Somewhere off in the woods an owl hooted. And, away down beyond the road, the stream in which she and Spider-Rose had bathed that afternoon bubbled and muttered and spilled down the mountainside. It was beautiful—the Summerlands were beautiful—but at night sometimes it got a little strange. There were things in the woods, all kinds of night-things, both familiar—owls, bats, wolves, foxes—and creepy.

"Ah, now," Cinquefoil said, returning his attention to the burgoo. "Sasquatches love ta wander. 'S just their way."

"Not the girls," Jennifer T. insisted. "They like to stay close to home."

The stew was rich and brothy, spiced heavily with bay laurel, and since eating little chickeny chunks of cut-up ground squirrel was no stranger than anything else that had happened to her since the day she threw her first fastball on the little field at Clam Island Middle School and a werefox had appeared, she ate it. Then she, Ethan, and Thor went down to the stream with the clay ferisher bowls and drinking gourds. They did not say much as they passed the dirty bowls and drinking gourds through the chattering cold water of the creek.

"I want to get a hit," Ethan said.

"You will," said Jennifer T. "Tell him, Thor."

"Absolutely," Thor said. "I think you should try a different bat."

"Maybe one that doesn't, oh, make your hand bleed, for example," suggested Jennifer T.

"No," Ethan said. "You heard what Grim said. It isn't the bat. It's me." He blew on his hands. The water of the stream was so cold it made your fingers hum. "Maybe I'm just supposed to learn to hit
around
the Knot. You know, like that ancient Greek guy who taught himself to talk with stones in his mouth."

"Demosthenes," said a lugubrious voice behind them.

"Taffy!" Jennifer T. stood up and ran to the Sasquatch, and put her arms around her. "I was so worried about you! Where were you?"

Taffy didn't answer right away. Jennifer T. looked up. The daylight was failing and the firelight dim, but nonetheless Jennifer T. could see that the Sasquatch's tiny bright eyes were red from crying.

"I went for a walk," she said at last. "That's all. I'm fine."

Even though she knew that they had been dead for hundreds of years, Jennifer T. could not shake the thought that Taffy, like La Llorona, had been out looking for her lost children.

"Were you—" she began.

"In a way, dear," the Sasquatch said softly. "In a way, I suppose."

They heard the deep rumbling again, nearer this time. It was a rumbling, Jennifer T. decided, in the ground. It caused the soles of her sneakers to buzz. Something big was coming their way. They heard a cry from up toward the camp. It was the sharp little voice of Dick Pettipaw. He sounded as if he might be excited, or afraid.

"What did he say?" said Jennifer T.

"He said, 'Big Liar coming!'" said Thor.

"Big Liar coming," Taffy said. "How about that? They're still around. One of them is, at any rate." She smoothed down the spray of black fur at the top of her head. "Come on. I want to see this."

She gathered up all the dishes and gourds in a single armful and started up the hill, picking her way on her experienced feet. There was another rumbling in the earth. The children followed the Sasquatch up to camp. They kept behind her, not sure what to expect. They knew that the Lost Camps were Big Liar country, because it said so on Thor's map. And their teammates had told them some of the old lies. Lies about shooting contests in which hairs were shot from the hind legs of houseflies. Lies about grinning contests between men and raccoons. Lies about knife fights, poker games, fishing trips, and mosquitoes. Lies about women who rode alligators and carried razors in their boots, and about working men who outworked the Devil and the Machine. Some of them were lies that Jennifer T. had heard before.

"Which one is it?" Ethan said, struggling up the hill behind her. "Can you see?"

She reached the camp. All of the other Shadowtails were standing with their backs to the campfire, watching as a tall man came out of the woods. Jennifer T. had, naturally, been expecting someone
big
. She was somewhat disappointed to see an ordinarily large man come striding from the trees. He was not quite as tall as Taffy, broad chested, thick necked, with a full, black beard. He wore a plaid flannel shirt, red as a flag, black dungarees, and black boots. The boots were so large and so thick-soled that for a moment Jennifer T. thought that they must have been causing all the rumbling. But he was walking now, the Tall Man, coming toward them, and there was no rumbling. Then she saw the great redheaded Axe. It was as long as an oar and the edge of its blade glowed like halogen.

"Wal," said the Tall Man with the Axe. "Lookit this. Visitors."

He grinned, and even though he was not a giant anymore, there was something about the smile that made you feel very small.

"Howdy, cuz," said Grim the Giant. "Nice to see you."

"Visitors!" said the Man. "Heard there was Visitors, and so there are. Ain't had no Visitors in a terrible long time!"

"We're the Traveling Shadowtails," said Cinquefoil. "We're on a little tour o' these parts. Only, as it turns out, the team bus done run out o' gas."

"We need to get to Applelawn," Ethan said. He went over to the Man, sticking out his left arm. "Ragged Rock is coming."

The Man squinted down at Ethan's watch.

"Do you?" he said. "Is it?"

All at once the joy of Visitors seemed to drain from his face.

"You really purpose to get to Applelawn, then. It warn't just some rot the crows and weresquirrels was handing us."

"Is there a problem with that?" Cinquefoil said.

"Not a bit," the Tall Man said. "Not a bit. Only that I cain't let ya pass."

"You don't own this road," Cinquefoil said. Jennifer T. admired him for standing up to the Tall Man. Like his grin, his manner had something giant about it.

"Oh, but I do." Then went over to the nearest tree, a stout fir, and raised his axe to one side. He turned the handle until the blade lay horizontal and then took a sweeping hack at the trunk of the tree. That was when Jennifer T. figured out what the rumbling was. The tree shuddered, and its leaves all seemed to sigh. It hung for a moment, motionless, teetering on the point of the huge notch the Man had gouged into its trunk. Then, silently, it fell. When it hit, the earth shook so hard that Jennifer T. lost her balance, and fell down. Her ears were still ringing when the Man spoke again. "Ya don't wanna mess with me."

There was silence. Cinquefoil looked at the tumbled ruin of the fir tree, then up at the Man's giant grin.

"Fine," he said. "We'll turn and find another road across the river." He gestured toward the children. "Come on, rubes."

He went over to Taffy and took a gourd from her. He stuffed it into the canvas sack they carried their mess stuff in. It really looked like he was planning to leave. Jennifer T. couldn't tell if he was bluffing.

"Wait just a minute, there. Hold on."

The Tall Man reached down and snatched the sack from Cinquefoil.

"I think ya might have misunderstood me, there. No need ta be hotheaded, eh?"

"You said you won't let us pass!" Pettipaw said.

"Did I?" He looked genuinely shocked. "Well, I meant, not without a proper
hello
. Down by the Landing. Me and all the old Liars, we're all staying down by there these days. I know they're all gonna want ta meet ya."