The Nine Pound Hammer (16 page)

Mother Salagi spread her gnarled hands. “I don’t know what to tell ye, lad.”

Ray pushed the foot deep into his pocket. The rabbit had been his father. He had rescued his father from the Hoarhound. But now his father was taken from him again, and Ray had no idea how he would ever find him.

“Mother Salagi,” Ray began. “Who is the Gog?”

“Now that’s a question, a right confounding one even for me,” Mother Salagi said, nodding over and over. “A devil, maybe. Something worse. There’s been men a-fearing and a-speaking of the Gog and the Magog right on back into the Bible.”

“The Magog?” Ray gasped. “What’s that?”

“The Gog’s Machine!” Mother Salagi jabbed a finger at Ray. “Which be the Gog’s very own soul—exchanged for whatever natural soul he once possessed. How he come to survive John Henry destroying his first Machine. Evil like that, it can just build a new soul. Evil like that ain’t easy to kill.”

Ray looked down at the bowl of stew in his hands, his hunger escaping him. “What’s the Gog want?” Ray asked at last.

“What all the wicked want,” Mother Salagi grunted. “To rule. To steal the destiny right away from men. To possess what never should be possessed. When I come down from the Clingman’s Dome, ye know what I seen in my travels?”

“No,” Ray replied.

“Roads, train tracks, and them poles strung up with wire.”

“Telegraphs,” Ray said.

Mother Salagi snorted. “Aye. Ye seen them. To some, they’s bridges. They’s a-making the world connected. Progress they says. But they’s walls, lad. They’s nothing but walls. It’s a grid that we all going to get shackled to. That’s what the Gog wants. That’s how the Gog’s going to rule.

“But for a person to grow to greatness, they need vast spaces. Wide openness. It’s there the heart and the mind and the spirit can expand to greatness, not a-shackled to the Gog’s grid. Aye, the precept of the Rambler. Ye see?”

“I think so,” Ray answered, not at all certain.

Mother Salagi was about to ladle more stew into Ray’s bowl, when she stopped. “Ye ain’t eat hardly a bite. Ain’t it good?”

Ray shook his head to clear the cacophony of thoughts.

“Yes. Yes, ma’am, it is.” Ray smiled as he began eating. When he finished the bowl, he accepted another.

Ray slept on the ground by the fire, and when he woke, Mother Salagi had already packed up her camp. She was busy putting the final stitches in a small bag of red flannel.

“What’s that?” Ray asked as he stood and stretched.

“A toby. What a proper Rambler carries his hoodoo charms in. It’s for ye, for that coney foot.” She knotted off the last corner and handed it to Ray.

“Thank you,” Ray said, examining the simple bag.

“I stitched a fair piece of protective charms in that toby. It’ll keep your coney foot safe if ye keep it in there.”

Ray took out the silver dagger from his belt and cut the twine from the end of the rabbit’s foot. Then he placed the golden foot in the toby and stuck the toby in his pocket.

“What should I do, Mother Salagi?” Ray asked. “Should I keep looking for my father?”

Mother Salagi winced, her ancient wrinkled face drawing up tightly. “Ye can’t cross into the Gloaming. I don’t know as there’s much ye can do except a-wait until Li’l Bill gets his own way out and comes a-looking for ye. Be patient. Have hope.”

She saw the disappointment in Ray’s expression and tapped a hand to his arm. “I been a-thinking on ye this past night, Ray,” the old seer said warmly. “Thinking on all ye told me about yourself. Seems to most you’re naught but an ordinary boy. But ye opened the Gog’s steel trap. Took something more than the strength of John Henry to do that.

“Ye ain’t a Rambler like your pappy yet. But ye could be. Ye’ve got his very hand therein your coney foot of gold. Ye’ve been a-carrying his lodestone. But ye’ve powers all your own. Ye will uncover them in time.” She collected Ray’s hands in her crooked fingers and shook them gently. “Time ye took up his path.”

Ray narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

She squeezed his hands. “The Gog’s been a-kidnapping
folk, taking people away that nobody misses. I seen it casting bones. Can’t see who, but he’s been taking the weak, the unwanted.” Her button eye narrowed. “Their spirits he’s a-wanting. He’s a-going to use their spirits to fuel his Machine. That’s why he’s seeking that siren your medicine show’s a-hiding.”

“Jolie?” Ray asked. “Why is he after her?”

“I tried to figure it, and way I’m a-seeing: sirens have songs of power to control others. The Gog needs a means to capture those spirits to feed his Machine. Aye, siren could do it. Even if he’s a-capable of finding yours, he ain’t going to convince or even force a siren to do his wickedness. Sirens ain’t a race to give toward threats and such. So he’s a-searching for a way to control the siren.”

The old seer let go of Ray’s hands. “Said your pappy was protecting that siren when he died? Then ye must follow his path. Ye must keep that siren safe from the Gog, as best ye can.”

“So I should go back to the
Ballyhoo?
” Ray asked.

“I ain’t telling ye what to do. Just a little steering is all.”

She handed him a bowl of the warmed stew. As Ray ate, Mother Salagi doused the fire and stowed the final few items in her pack.

“Keep the foot hid. Keep it safe in the toby.”

She gave a grunt and turned to leave. “Ye ever want to learn to work some hoodoo, come find me up on the Clingman’s Dome. I’ll teach ye to do a job of work.”

“Thank you.” Ray watched the old seer leave, beginning the long journey back to her mountain.

After she disappeared into the forest, Ray realized what she had said. To work hoodoo magic was called doing a “job of work.” That’s what his father had said when he left years and years ago. He was going south for a “job of work.”

Ray smiled and shook his head.

How was he possibly going to find the
Ballyhoo
again? They must be hundreds of miles away now. He vaguely remembered that they were going to play the next show in Tupelo, wherever that was.

He decided his best course of action was to get to a town and ask for directions. He might be able to catch up with them in Tupelo or at least ask around to find out where the medicine show was going after that.

Ray headed west, the direction he guessed the medicine show was now traveling. As he walked on through the gray, dreary day, he was no longer certain which way was west, no longer certain where he was even going.

Ray considered whether he should try to find his father despite Mother Salagi’s advice. Maybe the rabbit’s foot could help him cross into the Gloaming.

He took the golden foot from the red flannel toby. It did not move. He had no idea how he could get the strange talisman to do anything. Discouraged, he put it away but
paused to admire the simple toby. A Rambler’s charm. He remembered how his father had carried one back when Ray was just a child in Maine. The same one he had used to fight the Hoarhound. It had been full of herbs and roots and magical objects. Would his one day, if Ray learned to be a Rambler?

That was ridiculous. How could he become a Rambler? He needed his father. Tears burned at the corners of Ray’s eyes, and he ran his knuckles angrily across his eyes.

Jolie. He still felt bitterness toward the siren. But he had to help, even if he wouldn’t be her friend.

Breaking through the brush, Ray found himself before a large, snaking river. The black water was too wide to cross, and he turned to his left to follow its bank. The ground grew softer as he traveled, and by late afternoon, he reached a marsh. The river broke into a hundred traipsing creeks. His pants were muddy up to his knees, and his brogans and socks were soaked.

He was not going to reach a town going this way. All he wanted was to find a dry embankment to rest for the night, but rain began to fall and the bog only worsened. Then he noticed in the marsh a trail made from the broken reeds of grass. The path must have been made recently, he thought, as he saw the broken ends of the grass still floating in the water below.

Someone must have just passed this way.

Maybe they had a boat, he hoped. Maybe they could row him to a nearby town.

As he slogged his way through the marsh, trying to follow the rough path, the wind carried the murmur of voices in the distance. Ray cocked his head to determine the direction. Thank goodness, he thought. He had to hurry to get to them before they left.

He splashed along urgently now. In the muggy film of rain falling among the marsh grass, Ray saw a shadowy figure. He was waist-deep and facing the other direction. “Hey!” Ray shouted.

The man ducked suddenly into the reeds and disappeared.

“Hey! Can you help me?” Ray called, pushing his way into the grass. Twenty yards away, the grasses rustled. Ray headed toward the movement, but it stopped. Tearing his way ahead, Ray knew he was nearing the man. As he snapped aside the gray-green reeds, the man leaped on him.

Ray fell beneath the water, the man’s arms clasped about his shoulders. Ray struggled up for a gasp of air, unable to break from the man’s crushing hold. He was thrown about for several moments, before the man pulled Ray up by his sleeves.

“Ray!” he shouted with surprise. Ray coughed up lungfuls of marsh water, and wiped his hair out of his eyes. Grabbing the man’s overalls to hold himself up, Ray saw who had attacked him.

“Conker?” He felt dizzy with relief. The giant grabbed Ray in a series of hugs.

“Ray! Ray! We’ve been looking for you. … ” Conker laughed until he nearly sobbed.

“In the middle of this marsh? What are you doing out here?”

Conker fished Ray’s apple cap out of the water and handed it to him, never taking his eyes off Ray, as if he feared that if he looked away Ray might disappear. His expression went from giddy excitement to wide-eyed terror.

“They got her, Ray.” Conker’s lip trembled as he spoke. “They took Si.”

“Who?” Ray asked.

“Pirates, Ray! Them pirates got her.”

“I
THOUGHT THE
B
ALLYHOO
WAS OFF FOR A SHOW IN
Tupelo,” Ray said, still baffled that Conker was standing before him.

“We were, but the driving rod broke again. Nel decided to let me and Si go out to look for you,” Conker explained. “We didn’t know where you got to. Thought maybe we accidentally left you behind. What happened, Ray?”

Ray shook his head. “There’s so much … That night when I saw your dream, I saw Li’l Bill helping your father destroy the Gog’s Machine.” Ray took a deep breath. “Li’l Bill, he’s my father, Conker.”

“What!” Conker gasped.

“There’s more, and I’ll tell you later,” Ray said. “But we’ve got to help Si. What happened to her?”

Beyond the rain, a choir of insects began trembling and buzzing.

With worry twitching his chin, Conker said, “Si was leading us using her hand. We’d been following the river a day or so when we ran into this marsh. She thought you were nearby, and she’s so much faster than me. Si went ahead”—Conker gestured toward the way Ray had just come—“to search for you. Weren’t long. Just half hour ago. And Si weren’t far, but that’s when I heard them, voices shouting. I ran as fast as I could manage, but this bog! They already got her in their pirogue. I got lost here coming back to the river.” Conker put his face in his coal-shovel-sized hands.

“What we going to do?” Conker cried.

“We’re going to find her,” Ray said.

“How’s that?”

As if in answer, the twilight breeze again carried the sound of voices. Conker raised his head to listen.

“They can’t be too far away. Ship must be nearby in the river. We’ve got to get moving.”

They made their way through the marsh toward a peninsula of trees and mud. Ray and Conker climbed onto the roots. The purple, leaden sky swirled ominously, occasionally split by a trembling skeleton of lightning.

From the murky marshes a boat glowed. It was a motley paddle-wheel steamer illuminated by swaying lanterns along the railings circling the hull. Ray had seen plenty of fancy steamers in the harbors of the cities. But this was no
showboat, nor was it a working barge. The steamer was not very large, compact enough to be maneuverable in inlets and shallow portions of the river. The hull was battered and spotted with rust. Ray was certain that several of the small speckles were bullet holes. This may not have been
The Queen Anne’s Revenge
flying a Jolly Roger, but there was no doubt that it was a pirate vessel.

Above the ash-gray hull was a long single cabin punctuated by grimy windows. A pair of smokestacks extended above the bow and a raised pilothouse was at the stern. At the rear was a wide paddle wheel, the only portion of the vessel actually in open water. The rest of the steamer pitched up onto a bank of reeds.

Figures were running about the quarterdeck shouting to one another. “Put about, damn you!” “Hoist another outboard, you mangy rats! And heave!” Grappling cables were being thrown from the stern beside the paddle and grunting groups of men from the deck pulled and cursed and moaned.

Ray asked, “You remember that fellow I told you about? Peter Hobnob. The one who could fly?”