Twilight Eyes (69 page)

I nodded.

“Good,” he said. “That'll make for a long, beery evening's tale down in Gibtown.”

Joel told me more. Last Monday morning, immediately after the explosions at the mine, Horton Bluett had gone to the house on Apple Lane and had removed all of Rya's and my things, including the kilos of plastique that we had not been able to carry into the mines. He figured something might have gone wrong and that we might be awhile getting out of the mountain. Soon, searching for the saboteurs who had hit the Lightning Coal Company, the goblin cops would be taking a close look at all newcomers and visitors in town, including Chief Klaus Orkenwold's current tenants. Horton had thought it would be better if the house on Apple Lane was clean as a whistle, all trace of us whisked away, by the time the authorities decided to look there. Not being able to find the young geology students who had rented the place, Orkenwold would try to contact them through the university with which they were supposedly associated; he would discover that the story they'd told the real-estate agent was phony, and he would decide that they had been the saboteurs and, more importantly, that they were gone from Yontsdown County to points unknown.

“Then,” Joel said, “the heat will be off, or at least turned way down, and it'll be safer for us to slip out and head back to Gibtown.”

“How did you—” My voice cracked; I coughed. “How could you...”

“Are you trying to ask me how I knew you needed my help?”

I nodded.

“That professor, Cathy Osborn, called me from New York,” he said. “That was early Monday morning. She was planning to arrive in Gibtown late Tuesday, she told me, except I'd never heard of her. She said you were supposed to call me on Sunday and explain the whole thing, but you hadn't called, so I knew something was wrong.”

Rya and I had set out for the mines with Horton Bluett so early on Sunday morning that I had forgotten to make that phone call.

“I told Cathy to come on ahead, that Laura would take care of her when she arrived, and then I told Doc and Luke that you and Rya must be in need of carnies. Didn't seem to be time to drive all the way up from Florida, so we went to Arturo Sombra himself. You see, he has a pilot's license and owns a plane. He flew us into Altoona. There we rented a van and drove to Yontsdown, Luke and Doc up front, me in back because of my face—which, in case you hadn't noticed, is apt to be too attention-getting. Mr. Sombra wanted to come with us, but he's a pretty striking figure himself, and we thought it would be easier to keep a low profile without him. He's in Martinsburg, near Altoona, waiting with the plane. He'll take us home when we're ready.”

Cathy Osborn (Joel explained) had told him where Rya and I had rented a place, and on arrival in Yontsdown, Monday evening, he and Doc and Luke had gone directly to Apple Lane and had found a deserted house, swept clean by Horton Bluett. Having heard of the explosion at the Lightning Coal Company that morning, and having learned from Cathy that Rya and I believed the goblin nest to be centered there, Joel knew we were to blame for the catastrophe. But he did not know then that all newcomers and out-of-towners were being hunted, watched, frequently questioned; he and Luke and Doc had been damned fortunate to drive across town to Apple Lane without attracting the attention and suspicion of the goblin-controlled police department.

“So,” Joel continued, “in our innocence we decided the only way to get a line on you and Rya was to stop at other houses along Apple Lane and talk to your neighbors. We figured you would have made contact with them as part of your information gathering. And, of course, we met up with Horton Bluett. I stayed in the van while Doc Pennington and Luke went in to talk to Horton. Then Doc came out after a time and said he thought Bluett knew something, that he might talk if he knew we really
were
friends of yours, and that the only way to convince him we were friends was to convince him we were carnies. Now there's definitely nothing more convincing than this misshapen head and face of mine; what else could I
be
but a carny? And isn't Horton something, though? You know what he said when he got a good long look at me? Of all the things he might have said, you know what it was?”

I shook my head weakly.

Grinning, Joel said, “Horton looks at me, and he just says, ‘Well, I guess you have a hard time buying hats that fit.' Then he offers me some coffee.”

Joel laughed with delight, but I could not even summon a smile. Nothing would ever seem amusing to me again.

Seeing my state of mind, Joel said, “Am I tiring you?”

“No.”

“I could go, let you rest, come back later.”

“Stay,” I said, because suddenly I could not bear to be alone.

The stable roof shook in a violent gust of wind.

The space heater clicked on again, and the dark coils glowed orange, then red, and the fan hummed.

“Stay,” I repeated.

Joel put a hand on my arm. “Okay. Just you rest easy and listen. So . . . once Horton accepted us, he told us everything about how he'd shown you the way into the mountain. We considered going up there after you that night, but there'd been a big snowstorm on Sunday, and a new one was moving in that Monday night, and Horton insisted we'd be signing our own death warrants by going up in the mountains in that weather. ‘Wait till it clears,' he said. ‘That's probably why Slim and Rya haven't got back by now. They're probably out of the mountain and just waiting for better weather to make their way down here.' It sounded reasonable enough. That night we got the old stable fit for us, blacked out the windows, pulled our van in there—where it is right now, in fact, just outside this stall door—and settled down to wait.”

(By then, of course, I had been carrying and hoisting Rya through the labyrinth for many hours and had most likely reached the limits of that initial adrenaline-induced miracle of endurance.)

The second major storm had struck Monday night, laying another fourteen inches of snow down on top of the foot that had piled up on Sunday, and by late Tuesday morning the front had passed to the east. Both Horton's truck and Joel's rented van had four-wheel-drive, so they decided to head into the mountains in search of us. But Horton went first to reconnoiter quickly, then returned with the bad news that the mountain roads within miles of the Lightning Coal Company were crawling with “the stinking kind” in Jeeps and pickups.

“We didn't know what to do,” Joel said, “so we chewed over the situation for a couple of hours and then, about one o'clock Tuesday afternoon, we decided the only way to slip in there and out again was overland, on foot. Horton suggested we take bobsleds, in case you were hurt—as, in fact, you were. Took a few hours to get everything together, so we didn't head out until Tuesday midnight. Had to swing way the hell around any roads or houses, miles and miles. Didn't make it up to that old tumbling-down mine entrance till midnight Wednesday. Then, being a cautious man, Horton insisted we hang back and watch the mine until dawn, to be sure there weren't goblins around.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Wait. Are you . . . telling me . . . that it was Thursday morning . . . when you found me?”

“That's right.”

I was astounded. I'd figured it for Tuesday, at the latest, when they had arrived, as if stepping out of a fever dream. Instead I had been hauling Rya from tunnel to tunnel and worriedly monitoring her pulse for three full days before I had been rescued. And how long had she lain dead in my arms? One day, at least.

Realizing how long I'd been delirious, I felt suddenly wearier and full of despair. “What day . . . is it now?” My voice had grown even softer than a whisper, hardly louder than an exhalation.

“We got you back here just before dawn on Friday. It's Sunday night right now. You've been pretty much unconscious for the three days you've been here, but you're coming around. Weak and weary, but you'll make it. By God, Carl Slim, I was wrong to tell you not to come. You've babbled some in your sleep, so I know a little about what you found in the mountain. It was something that could not be allowed to go on, wasn't it? Something that would've been the death of all of us? You did well. You can be proud. You did damn well.”

I had thought I'd used up the tears allotted for one lifetime, but suddenly I was crying again. “How can you . . . say that? You were . . . right . . . so right. We shouldn't have come.

He looked startled, puzzled.

“I was . . . a fool,” I said bitterly. “Taking the world . . . on my shoulders. No matter how many goblins I killed . . . no matter how badly I wrecked their haven . . . none of it's worth losing Rya.”

“Losing Rya?”

“I'd let the goblins have the world . . . if only I could have Rya alive again.”

The most amazing expression descended upon that broken face. “But, dear boy, she
is
alive,” Joel said. “Somehow, hurt as you were, delirious, you carried her ninety percent of the way out of those mines, and you evidently made her drink enough water, and you kept her alive until we found the two of you. She was unconscious until late yesterday. She's not well, and she'll need a month to recuperate, but she's not dead, and she's not
going
to die. She's at the other end of these stables, in a bed just two stalls away from this one!”

I swore I could walk that far. The length of a stable. That was nothing. I had walked back from
Hell
. I struggled to get out of bed, and I batted Joel's hands away when he attempted to restrain me. But when I tried to stand, I fell on my side, and at last I allowed Joel to carry me as I had carried Rya.

Doc Pennington was with her. He hopped up from his chair so Joel could lower me into it.

Rya was in worse shape than I was. The bruise on her forehead, temple, and cheek had darkened and grown even uglier than when I had last seen it. Her right eye was blackened and badly bloodshot. Both eyes seemed to have sunk back into her skull. Where her skin was not discolored, it was milk-white and waxy. A fine dew of perspiration filmed her brow. But she was alive, and she recognized me, and she smiled.

She smiled.

Sobbing, I reached out and took her hand.

I was so weak that Joel had to hold my shoulders to keep me from tumbling out of the chair.

Rya's skin was warm and soft and wonderful. She gave my hand a barely perceptible squeeze.

We had come back from Hell, both of us, but Rya had come back from an even more distant place.

That night, in the bed in my own stall, I woke to the sound of wind in the stable eaves, and I wondered if she
had
been dead. I had been so sure of it. No pulse. No breath. Down there in the mines I had thought of my mother's ability to heal with herbal remedies, and I had raged at God because my gift, Twilight Eyes, was of no use to Rya in her time of need. I had demanded that God tell me why I could not heal as well or better than my mother had healed. Horrified by the thought of life without Rya, I had clutched her to my chest and had
willed
life into her, had poured some of my life energy into her as I might have poured water from a pitcher into a glass. Crazed, mad with grief, I had summoned up all my psychic ability and had tried to perform magic, the greatest magic of all, the magic heretofore reserved for God: striking the spark of life. Had it worked? Had God listened—and answered? I probably would never know for sure. But in my heart I believed I had brought her back. Because it was not just magic I had going for me. No, no. There was also love. A great sea of love. And maybe magic and love, together, can achieve what magic alone cannot.