The Singing Well

By Gregg Glory

[Gregg G. Brown]

 



CHAPTERS

00 Introduction

01 "Off Key with the Choir"

02 "Whispers in the Well"

03 "Land's End"

04 "The Devil You Say"

05 "Paper Boats"

06 "Fight at the Mickleswift"

07 "Big! Wind!"

08 "Noises Off"

09 "The Gods of Autumn"

10 "A Long Talk at the Table"

11 "Further In"

12 "When the Moon Melts"

13 "Underneath"

14 "Dinner with a Daggonnath"

15 "A Shadow on the Wall"

16 "Shadows Three"

17 "A Shadow on the Moon"

18 "We Have Your Children"

19 "A Dare, A Bet, A Debt"

20 "The Well Becomes a Window"

21 "Battling the Wind"

22 "A Glimmer in the Stream"

23 "Sarah, Darling"

24 "The Neighbors' Walpurgisnacht"

25 "A Feast of the Gods"

26 "A Giant Surprise"

27 "A Turn for the Worse"

28 "Voices and Choices"

29 "The Rats Help Out"

30 "An Underground River"

31 "The River of Time is Stopped"

32 "Finally!"

 

Introduction

Dear All:

This November, I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, started by nanowrimo.org.  The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of November, having started on November 1st.  This averages out to a little over 1500 words a day that need to be written.

Hemingway at his top rate set himself the disciplined goal of writing 500 words per day for his novel-writing.  By this math, my novel should be a little more than 3 times worse than a Hemingway novel.

I figure, if I am to do this thing during  National Novel Writing Month ("nanowrimo"), I may as well do it under the spotlight and on a highwire.  The home page of gregglory.com will be updated every day by noon.  Oh, there will be a farrago of spelling errors and plot drops!  This is writing in the raw.  A keyboard, a brain, and a headcold.

Each day, yesterday's writing will be automatically deleted, and the new day's barbaric yawp will be standing shining in its place, dew-lovely as the dawn.

Suggestions for chapters are welcome.  Just reply to this email.  For those of you who want to call, I will be home in bed every night by 10PM.  I hope to make each installment a short chapter for continuity's sake, and so I don't have to bother remembering the plot as I plod along.

Why am I doing this?  I have always wanted to write a kids' novel, and have never done it.  The title will be revealed tomorrow when the novel-writing begins.

Sincerely,

Gregg

 



Chapter One

Off Key with the Choir

"Sarah Tone!  Sing out!  You can reach that note yet."  The instructor, in his red Ridgefield vest, gestured upward with a sharp baton for Sarah to keep stretching the note she was hitting into a higher one.  His blue eyes were about to pop out of his fat cheeks, and his belly was as big as a golden tuba.  

"Just a bit higher, Sarah.  Thatta girl!  That's a beauty!"

The others in the choir were falling away as the song reached its crescendo, leaving only Sarah to stretch upward to the highest branch of the melody.  Her voice was as quick as a bird's, and her face became more calm as she drove out all other thoughts.  There was only the sought-after note, the highest and farthest part of a long liquid trill.

	"With sorrow, deep sorrow, my bosom is laden,

	All day I go mourning in search of my love!

	Ye echoes! oh tell me, where is my sweet man then?"

"Very good girls.  Excellent harmony.  Now, Bart and Basher come in as low as you can."

	"'Maiden, oh Maiden,

	He sleeps 'neath the green grass by the furrowed Ash Grove.'"

"Excellent.  Basher, hold the last note a bit longer next time.  'Ash Gro-o-o-o-oveeee.'  Now, just Sarah.  High, high up!"	

	"With sorrow, deep sorrow, all night I'll go mourning,

	A maiden who wanders without any love!"

Behind Sarah, two of her choir-mates, done with their own parts as the echo, noticed that Sarah was standing tip-toe, as if to reach the highest note by raising herself higher up.  Her eyes were closed in total concentration.  Bart grinned at Basher as he surreptitiously rolled a stray crab apple right under the ball of Sarah's left foot.  As soon as she came back down, even by as little as half an inch, Sarah would be thrown off balance and pitch into the grass.

	"With-o-o-u-t an-ny l-o-o-ove....!"

Just as Sarah reached the last note in "love," she began to come back down off of the tips of her toes and put her weight down squarely on the maliciously placed crab apple.  "Wah-ah-oooh!" she cried as she fell heavily into the line of singers in front of her, knocking Betsy Butterworth into Hannah Ringly, who flailed out to grab Alan Baxter by his coattails and Missy Quicknass by her flaxen hair to steady herself.  Before you could count "Two," half the choir had crash-landed wrong-way-up on the sward.

After a few moments of utter confusion, in which Bart and Basher had a great laugh, Mr. Hecatomb tried to restore order with a great deep "Hrrumph!"  When this proved ineffective among all the squeals and yells of the choir members, Mr. Hecatomb did the only thing he practically could under the circumstances.  He gave up.

"Children! Children!  Besty, Bobby, Bart!  Sarah, Hannah, Alan!  Baxter, Missy, and the rest!  Please consider choir practice completed for today.  Dismissed!"

Mr. Hecatomb gathered his dignity, hitched his great red Ridgefield vest as closed as he could get it, turned on his fat heel, and left.

"Sarah," said Betsy as soon as Mr Hecatomb was out of sight, "what's the matter with you? Why'd you have to knock into me so hard?"

"Aw," said Basher, "She's just a gawky squawker is all."

"Yeah," suggested Bart, "she's too tall to sing AND stand up straight!"

The others soon joined in and were attacking Sarah vociferously.  

Sarah didn't pay attention to the mean words flying around her.  She straightened herself up on the grass, pushing down the unruly billows in her skirt, and making shushing sounds with her hands as she tried to brush off the dead grass and dirt.  She soon realized that the grass stains wouldn't come out so easily and stopped brushing to look around her.  She zeroed in on Bart.  She caught his eye and said, just loud enough so that he alone could hear her, but clearly enough so that there was no mistake about what she said.

"You'll regret your foolishness soon enough, Bartholomew.  Every laugh today will be a tear tomorrow."

The other kids were still hurling insults at Sarah and frowning.  But Sarah ignored them and continued to hold Bart's gaze until the laughter died on his lips.  Bart looked away and tugged at Basher.  "C'mon.  Let's get out of here."

Sarah had learned that trick from her Grandmother.  "When someone trips you into a puddle when you ain't looking, you just rear back and give them a straight look, and let them know that you know who done what and who ain't.  And never let someone diminish you in your own eyes, girl.  That's just pushing yourself into a puddle for someone else's giggles."  Her Grandmother was full of sharp advice about important things like playground etiquette, or who was right in a quarrel.  Things which her parents seemed oblivious about.  

Sarah felt sure her Grandmother would have approved of her making Bart and Basher slink off into the woods.  But even so, Sarah was sure that she wasn't half as brave as her Grandmother would want her to be more than half the time.

By now, the others had picked themselves up and were organizing a game around the old well near where they held choir practice.  They began to form a ring all the way around the well.  They were going to play "the singing game."  Each singer intones one note in the song, and then passes the tune on to the next person in the circle.  Before very long, the song is revolving faster and faster around the circle.  The words of the songs they sung in this game were very very old, Sarah's Grandmother said.  Almost too old for even grown-ups to really understand.

Everyone was already in the ring holding hands.  There was no open spot for Sarah.  Betsy with her black curls and light blue eyes was holding tight onto Alan's hand, whose back was to Sarah.  Across the way were Hannah and Bobby;  they wouldn't have let Sarah into the circle even if she hadn't knocked everyone over.  But everyone knew that Sarah had the best voice in the choir, and that the game would be better if she was singing along with the others.  Finally, Missy Quicknass, on the midway side between Betsy and Hannah, slowly looked over at Sarah and even more slowly pulled her hand out of Betsy's grip and gestured for Sarah to step in between herself and Betsy.

Sarah stepped in and took their hands, not looking either left or right, but just at the well.  She could see a little bit into the well because she was taller than the others.  "OK," said Alan.  "Now we can begin."

The game began with a composed silence.  There was only a soft sighing of the wind over the lip of the well, like when you blow across the top of a soda bottle, but deeper.  It was a hollow soft sound like your ear against a pillow, only softer.  The trees surrounding the grassy open area made their endless shhhh-ing.  And then Missy began the song, as it always began, with the youngest voice.

	"Winds may still be blowing

	And gardens still be growing

	When Withers Day wakes with woes."

Missy's voice was as little as a bee in cup, and also somewhat flat.  Singing was still more like sing-song with her.  Then Hannah took up the song, supporting Missy's little voice, followed right on by all the girls together except Sarah.

	"Dead men still are smiling

	And the moon is still beguiling

	Although the worm chokes the rose."

Alan and Bobby came in, with Sarah singing a lulling accent line behind them that had no words.  There were more words about wolves and winter rains and the moon going into eclipse because of a witch.  All this was spooky and just as it was supposed to be.  But slowly, as their voices grew bolder, and as the song passed around the circle faster and faster, it seemed that something more than just their voices were singing.  A something sharp, like sinister laughter, seemed to be coming from the trees all around them.  The children began to glance around at each other as a shiver passed through them, sent along from hand to hand.

Betsy glanced at Alan and smiled.  Alan smiled back.  It was thrilling to hear their voices create such an odd, ghostly effect.  Round and round the old words went.  Storms and murders and more.  The children could feel the hair on the back of their hands stand up as if lightning were about to strike.

"Crack!"  

A sound as big as and thunderbolt came crashing down behind the children.  Their singing stopped on the instant and little Missy let out a sharp yelp.  Even Sarah caught her breath.

END OF CHAPTER ONE

 



Chapter Two

"Whispers in the Well"

Bart and Basher stood up and dusted themselves off.  They had fallen from a great height, but seemed none the worse for wear--which is to say that they seemed just as bad as they always did.  Bart's slouch hat came down greyly and shadowed his black, resentful eyes.  Basher, dusting off his pants bottom, looked about dumbly as if he had just teleported into a strange land from outer space.  And yet, his looks, which held no vivid, malicious intelligence, held a good deal of low cunning.  They stood astride of a great branch of the ash tree that had grown from time immemorial over the old well.

"What the devil do you two think you're doing?" demanded Alan, his straight blonde hair shifting to show a brow intense with anger.  More than half of which, no doubt, was anger at letting himself be spooked by a pair of intrusive bumblers.

It was Bart who answered.  "We were just taking in the view, don't you know?"

"Oh, its the view is it?  And what did you see from up there?"

"Just a lot of children spooking themselves with a dumb kids' game, singing in a ring around the old well."

That stung, but Alan tried not to let it show on his face.  He had always like the singing game, which they all had learned practically since they were old enough to walk.  Alan himself thought there was something juvenile about it, but certainly didn't want to hear the same thing coming from Bart.

"The singing game is what we always do by the well," piped up Missy.  "You're just mad cause Sarah scared you off after you tripped her."

Missy may have been just a very young girl, but she had quick eyes and didn't miss a lot of the things going on around her.

"Be that as it may, Basher and I have a perfect right to climb this old tree, or any tree in the woods."

This was true enough, but it was just like Bart to invoke his rights as a citizen to cover up his mischief-making.  The conversation went on a little ways longer, and Sarah stayed out of it, plopping herself down on the broken branch and pulling up grass blades while the others argued about rights versus duties.  They also argued about who was to blame for being scared, Bart and Basher or the children for letting themselves get carried away by the hooting sounds of the old well.

Sarah noticed that a hive of ants was pouring out of the broken end of the branch.  It was probably their activity that had weakened it enough in the first place to let Bart and Basher fall.  They were red ants and seemed like nothing so much as a slow long spill of blood marching out of one end of the branch on tiny legs.  The old tree that they had known all their lives had lost a limb due to the carelessness of a pair of boys and the neglect of the all, and here they were having a big row about who has a right to do what.

"His right, his rights," said Bobby Findrlesy,  putting his arms out and making a settling motion.  "There's not a one of us who would be deprived ourselves of our rights, so let's give Bart and Basher theirs."

"A right to be careless and stupid and cruel," interjected Missy Quicknass.  

"Nevertheless, nevertheless."

Sarah certainly doubted that such rights as those Missy had expounded existed, or that if they did that they should prevail over the duty to do good and shut up.  At least, in this case, silence would be a relief.

Sarah felt a sharp pinch above her heel that made her jump.  She looked down, and there was a fierce red fire ant biting her through her stocking, right into her Achilles heel.  In fact, her skirt was alive with little red invaders.  This was more than she could stand.  She ran from the branch, beating her skirts, and wound up leaning against the well for support as she shook the last of the ants out of her shoe.  By the time she looked up again, most of the others had moved away.  Their voices were little more than faded squeaks filtering back through the wood.

The sun was a bronze tangle in the trees west of the clearing.  The evening wind was beginning to move over the clearing, and a peculiar sighing was starting up from the well again.  Or from the leaves in the tree.  Sarah couldn't be quite sure.  But it did sound as though something was trying to be said, almost.  This was not the wordless sigh of an animal.  It was something more, like words remembered out of a dream.  At first they may seem so unintelligible that they don't seem to be words at all.  But, if you let yourself fall back into the dream a little bit without quite falling asleep, what came out of the dream begins to reveal its meaning to you again.  That's how it seemed to Sarah as she stood very still against the cold wall of the well.

After all of her troubles today, the staring down of Bart, the ruination of choir practice--the one thing she truly loved at school--and then that great crack of the branch and the fire ants biting her.  And her parents never did understand her.  Sarah wanted to believe that the well was saying something to take the sting out of all these things.  And it did.  It seemed to say that she would be all right;  that her troubles would diminish, and, what was more, she would triumph over those who had tried to humiliate her.

It was almost like a sad lullaby sighing from the well.  Not the sane, peaceful kind of lullaby that mothers sing over their babies.  But something more grown-up, darker and all mixed up with the muted sounds of bugles and distant trumpets.  Like men marching off to war, their hearts full of great deeds and high destiny.  And then again, it was as soft as the back of Roanie's coat--Sarah's father's great Irish setter.  Oh what longing there was in the almost-words! 

Sarah found herself leaning in over the lip of the well, singing in her softest, best voice back at whatever melody she was hearing in her head.  She looked far down into the well, an almost unbelievable depth of blackness.  Sarah had always been more or less afraid of the dark, and it was highly unusual for her to stare so long into someplace where she couldn't see anything.  The walls of the well gave off a clammy damp that normally would have made her shiver, but she was too busy concentrating on the long lines of the song to notice.

Down and down she looked, her blond hair falling all around her face and shutting out the rest of the world except for the black of the well.  She could hear the clear echoes of her own voice floating up out of that darkness as she sang--a pure tone that she sometimes achieved and that had endeared Sarah to the choirmaster Mr. Hecatomb.  It had what he called "the loveliness."  She looked and looked as the song and the echoes rolled on, removing time and leaving Sarah almost floating above the well's opening.  And then, something.  Was that a glimmer or a flash out of the bottom of the well?  Sarah leaned more deeply into the well, her left foot lifting off the turf.

As her eyes focused farther in, she could discern what looked like a small coin of light at the bottom of the well, and even the dot of her face floating below.  She wasn't just floating above the well, she was floating in it too.  Sarah could see that she was down in the deepest dark of the tunnel, in the dampest and coldest place she could ever imagine being.  

"Oh!" she said.  For just as she had leaned farther and farther in, a pebble she hadn't noticed had gotten loose under her hand and had fallen into the well, smashing her reflection into a hundred pieces.  Sarah suddenly stopped singing, but the soothing sighing of the well went on, and she kept looking down, unable to draw her attention away from where her face had been floating in the darkness.  As the waters calmed, Sarah thought she could make out the wobbly blot of her head again.  There, and gone, and back again.  

Now there were two of her for a moment as the waves rolled and slowed.  And then, just as her face was starting to come clear once more, it seemed to her that the other face wasn't her face at all.  It was a much older face, a crone's face, and the eyes in it didn't have anything like song behind them, but only a freezing cold calculation.  Was that a hand reaching over her mouth in the reflection?  A long claw of shadow and nasty determination.  Sarah felt helpless to do anything as long as the well kept sighing on about destiny and fate, the inevitability of some deep plan it seemed.  The shadow hand was almost all the way around her mouth, and Sarah felt as if she could barely breathe.  And then another hand, as long and thin and strong as the first one came around her throat.  The old crone over her shoulder seemed to become more animated, and a gash broke into her face like some sort of hideous smile.

Sarah gasped.

END OF CHAPTER TWO

 



Chapter Three

"Land's End"

The whole train ride out from Marlowesgate had been discomfiting.  Not even Mother was coming, only Granny Pansy.  Abbey glanced over to her little brother Dar who was fast asleep after a lunch of chocolate chip cookies and then back out the window where the landscape was growing greener and less populated by the minute.  What would there be to do out in the country?  Was there even a cinema out here?  And what about her favorite TV show "Tiny Aliens," starring the irrepressible Venusian imp Mistress Girly?  It was as if they were being exiled into some unbearable wasteland, albeit one full of trees and rolling fields full of high corn, wheat, and rye.  And they were going all the way almost to the ocean where everything smelled like dead fish.

"Come on, Abbey.  Enough of your moping.  Take the other end of this Cat's Cradle."

Abbey looked skeptically up at her Granny Pansy.  She was dressed in the old way of country villagers, with a flowery head scarf enclosing her timeworn face as full of wrinkles as a geological survey of the Andes Mountains.  Around her shoulders was a woolen shawl of grey woven in a pattern that was unfamiliar to Abbey.  Granny Pansy also wore a long skirt with another pattern on it as well, this time a sort of geometric representation of waves of the sea.  And those boots!  Great big stomping work boots, same as a man's, although they were in excellent repair and had been, as anyone could see, polished relatively recently.  Taken altogether, the effect wasn't unharmonious, even if it it wasn't the way the elegant senior citizens of the city dressed.  

Abbey threaded her fingers expertly through the proffered net of yarn, and she and her grandmother continued to weave and re-weave the cradle as they talked.  

"There's lots to do in Traeshurstaene, my dear.  I've no patience with idle hands."

"I don't know why we really have to go.  Mom and Dad don't argue too awfully much."

"Abbey, my dear, your parents need some time to work things out for themselves.  They're muddled up in the modern fashion, it seems to me.  And having children underfoot while they come to their senses won't be of any aid either to themselves or to you."

Abbey sulked, but continued to work out the pattern seamlessly.

"Very good, dear.  Do you know this pattern?" asked Granny Pansy, and then began to work through the most elaborate set of maneuvers Abbey had ever seen.  Granny's hands may be gnarled and old, but they were spry and strong as well, and her eye was sharp enough to never miss a switch in the pattern.  

"That's aces, Granny!"  exclaimed Abbey, despite herself.  She had Granny Pansy go through the entire thing again more slowly until she understood it completely and could do it herself.  By the time Abbey had mastered the cradle her grandmother had shown her, the train was pulling huffily into Traeshurstaene station at Land's End and Dar was waking up with a yawp of a yawn.

They passed the docks on their way to Tones' home, but they were strangely silent.  Great cranes stuck up in the late afternoon sky stood idle.  The ships and the machines that tended them seemed eerily unoccupied, as if some sudden plague had left them untended.  Only when the taxi drove past the front gates of the Dockworker's Union Hall did anything seem to be going on.  There long lines of resentful men stood about, mostly without placards, for they had no expectation of arousing public sympathy to their cause.  Some were smoking, some tossing pebbles against the curb idly.  Most were simply waiting without talking for their strike pay.  Abbey thought they looked kind of sad, and maybe just a bit disreputable.

* * * *

"But where will they stay?  We haven't the room to put them up!"  Sarah had returned home from the incident at the well, apparently unscathed except for the fire ants and the grass stains.  And she was in no mood to have anything to do with any intruders, whoever they might be.

"We'll put them into the old room at the top of the stairs."

"Oh no, Daddy!  You can't!"  Sarah composed herself a bit before continuing.  "That room has never been opened for strangers," she explained to Abbey and Dar reasonably.  "That was Gilman's old room before he went away to war and died."

"These children are no strangers, Sarah.  They're your cousins, and up into Gilman's old room they will go.  We've nowhere else for them, unless you count the barn."

"I didn't think of the barn.  It's awfully spacious...."

"That's enough, Sarah," snapped Sarah's mother.  "Abbey, Dar, follow me.  I'll get the key."

Sarah followed them resentfully up the steps, keen for a look into her brother's old room.  The last time she had been in the room, she had been small herself.  Not as small as Dar, but certainly much less tall than she now was.  She and Gilman had played many games there, and Gilman had told many fine stories to her as she fell asleep on his lap while their parents were off working, or engaging in important town matters with the "Political Committee."  They had even played soldier and nurse after he had enlisted.  He had looked so brave and grown-up himself in his khaki uniform.  More than even the photo on the mantelpiece showed where he had a look of foreboding melancholy;  he was tall and good, and always kind.  And now he was gone.  Taken by "the horrible maw of the war machine" as Sarah's mother said.

"The room's dusty now, but nothing's changed since the day Gilman went away," said Sarah's mother.  "I suppose I ought to've dusted and all before you came, but there was so little notice," she said, glancing at Granny Pansy.

"We'll take no mind of that, my dear," said Granny Pansy, and proceeded unceremoniously to remove her head scarf and began dusting the nearest pieces of furniture.  "It'll be in fine shape in three shakes of a lamb's tail."

Sarah was glad of her Granny being there;  she always was.  But these other two!  Cousins?  She knew her Father had a sister in the city, but she had never even met them before in her life.   The girl looked none too happy to be there herself, which Sarah could understand.  She just couldn't bring herself to have any sympathy for her.  After all, her life was difficult enough as it was.

"Wow!  A rifle!" cried Dar.  He tried unsuccessfully to lift the rifle from its rack, but the weight of it defeated him.  Dar contented himself with holding his arm out straight, sighting down his forearm, and squeezing his trigger finger while shouting "Bang! Bang!" at regular intervals.

Sarah looked around the room thoughtfully.  Indeed, nothing had changed in the room.  The decorations were spare and masculine.  The only feminine touch Gilman had allowed in his room were those provided his mother in the form of drapes--done to match the rest of the house so there was a uniform style when the house was viewed from the street--and a curiously carved photo portrait of Gilman's high school sweetheart.  Cynthia stared out of the photo with serious green eyes under redheaded ringlets.  She seemed as intense as a tiger, and Sarah remembered never really liking Cynthia all the much.  She was jealous of even the simple companionship that Sarah could give to her boyfriend without her overview.  But Gilman had never let Cynthia disturb their brother and sister relationship.  

"Bang! Bang!"

Sarah went to the bookshelf and lifted up Gilman's soldier's cap.  He had thrown it high into the air with all the other cadets on graduation day.  He had been so proud of his achievement.  And their parents were proud too.  It was as if Gilman had never left, he was discussed so much around the dinner table.  Where he was stationed, the details of each mission.  Until, that is, his final mission.  After that, and after the closed casket funeral, the room was shut up and it was as if Gilman had fallen off the Earth.  His name was never mentioned, and any neighbors who brought up his memory were not invited back to the house.

While her mother showed the guests the details of their accommodations, Sarah sidled past Abbey and Granny Pansy and over toward her brother's closet.  It was a deep walk-in closet--the only one in the house.  She just wanted to see his uniform hanging up, and maybe hold it in her arms.  The door opened noiselessly, and the bulb after several years of disuse had gone dead.  The clothes rustled to make room for Sarah as she pushed into the closet anyway.  

There was a hummocky musty smell to the room, like earth turned over for a new garden, or to till under the ragged stalks and odd ends of the season's harvest as winter came on.  Sarah tripped over an old dress shoe, and was brought up short by the door closing almost shut behind her.  Her mother must be showing Abbey and Dar the other side of the room, where their clothes would go and such.  When she turned back to the closet's interior, she was a round wobbly pool of light staring back at her.  She almost yelped, for it reminded her of the circle of light at the bottom of the well.  She still hadn't recovered from that weirdness.  There was her face again, dark, with two bright eyes glinting within her shadow.  Sarah began to feel around for Gilman's uniform again, decidedly turning away from the mirror.  

She felt something sharp prick her finger from a breast pocket, and she closed her eyes.  That was his medal for valor which they had given him posthumously.  Sarah pulled herself to the uniform and held on tight, keeping here eyes shut.  Oh, Gilman, she thought, why can't you be here, and banish all of these terrible, pestering people?

END OF CHAPTER THREE

 



Chapter Four

"The Devil You Say"

A man's hearty voice came rumbling up the stairs.

"All right now, Gwynnith.  Settle those children.  We've got a Political Committee meeting this evening as you well know."

"Ay, Daffiyd, I'm well aware," replied Sarah's mother down the staircase.  "Abbey, come downstairs with me to the kitchen.  There's plenty to get ready for the folks stopping by.  Mother Tone can watch Dar, and you can unpack later while the meeting's going on."

"Yes, Auntie Gwyn."

"Mother Tone, please send that recalcitrant Sarah down if you run into her.  I don't know where she's gotten herself.  She's more mystery than daughter these days.  Tell her we've prep work to do in the kitchen."

Abbey trailed Mrs. Tone down the curving staircase and toward the kitchen.

"Bang! Bang!"  Dar's flat, emphatic voice followed his sister and Mrs. Tone down the steps.

"All right now, Sarah," said Granny Pansy, raising her voice.  "It's safe to come out of the closet."

A moment later, Sarah's head peeped around the corner of the white closet door.  "Is that Abbey gone?"

"Yes, she's gone downstairs with your mother.  But her brother's still here, so mind your tongue.  You'll have to join them in a minute if you haven't already heard.  Tonight's that execrable Political Committee meeting that your folks are so wrapped up in.  Nothing but busy-bodies and fussbudgets to my way of thinking.  And the worst kind too.  They always want to change the way things have always been done in this town, and for little enough reason, and to no good purpose I often suspect.  There's no need to switch compasses when the North Star hasn't moved, I always say."

Sarah stood in front of the closet door, secreting an item she had taken from Gilman's uniform into her dress pocket.  

"My goodness, Sarah!  You've a cut on your hand.  Come here and let me tend it."

Sarah went silently over to her Grandmother and held out her hand.  That's dug a bit deep, Sarah.  I hope what you've found is worth the injury."

"Yes, it is," Sarah replied automatically.  "Well, I don't know.  It may not come to anything."

"You don't like your cousins, Sarah."  Sarah began to protest.  "It was not a question.  They've come a long distance to be here.  And I daresay Abbey is almost as displeased as yourself with the whole affair.  You might want to recall that when you're dealing out scorn.  Scratch a foe and find and friend."

"Yes Ma'am."

"There's no need to 'Yes Ma'am' your Granny Pansy.  But I'll take the honorific if I come by it sincerely."

Granny Pansy looked Sarah square in the face.  Without overt judgment, but steadily. Sarah broke down.  "Oh, Granny Pansy.  I'm so glad to see you.  But why do I have to put up with all these strangers?  And in Gilman's room!  It's just not right."

"As you grow older, Sarah, you'll find that many things are not right with this world, and it can take extra hands to help turn it right way round again.  Do you understand?"

"No.  But I guess I have to accept it, right?"

"My dear, you don't have to accept anything at all.  But unless you want to remain ignorant of everything going on around you you'd best start with what's already here and work forward, making the best of it as you go.  Just because there's no steak in the pantry doesn't mean there's no soup in the kitchen.  Now, you get down there and help your Mother and Abbey.  Even Political Committees need to eat."

"Yes Ma'am," said Sarah, and smiled, giving her Granny Pansy a quick hug.

As Sarah left, Dar drew careful aim at her retreating back.  "Bang!  Bang!"

* * * *

Downstairs in the kitchen, the scene was one of high mirth--at least for an onlooker.  Sarah's mother was elbows-deep in a bowl, powdering the crescent cookies.  Crescent cookies were a favorite of Mr. Plimsoul's, a man whose face Sarah thought she could go to the grave without seeing again and she wouldn't mind a whit.  Abbey was reaching far above her head into a deep cabinet for a final ingredient (Mrs. Porridge's butterscotch morsels) and describing to Mrs. Tone the shape and weight of the boxes and bags she was encountering, to which Mrs. Tone would invariably reply.  "No, that's not it.  Left, left."

"Sarah, darling, you're taller than Abbey.  Could you grab the glass tray from above the refrigerator for the crescent cookies?  I'm sure they'll make a fine display against the cut rose glass."

Sarah maneuvered next to Abbey without speaking.  This was the first time she really gave her cousin a good look.  As her mother said, she was shorter--so short, in fact, that Sarah was nearly twice her height.  Sarah had gotten her first growth spurt just this past season, and still occasionally tried to throw on her old clothes when she wasn't thinking, and wound up looking like a straw wearing a pair of shorts.  Abbey had dark black hair, with a severe cut and a horrible curl like a scythe at the bottoms.  She wore plain gold-rimmed glasses, and her eyes were a sort of murky blue, a sky before storm.  She was a little younger than Sarah, but not too much, may just two summers or a year and a half.  Sarah thought she remembered that Abbey had skipped a year in the city school system, so they would probably be in the same classes come Monday.

Sarah placed the tray on the counter beside her mother, while snaking an arm into the cabinet above Abbey, far to the right, snatching the butterscotch morsels wordlessly and plunking them into Abbey's hands.

"Thank you, darling,"  said Mrs. Tone when Abbey offered the morsels for her inspection.  

Then the front door opened, and they could all hear Mr. Tone's big voice engaging with two other male voices in the foyer.

"Oh, devil!" exclaimed Mrs. Tone.  "The committee members are already arriving."  She glanced around briefly.  "Abbey, display the cookies on this tray, if you would please.  And Sarah, finish up the morsels;  the recipe's right on the back of the package that Abbey retrieved from the cupboard."

"But Auntie Gwyn, I didn't..." began Abbey, but Sarah interrupted her.

"OK, Mom.  Consider it done.  Shall we bring the trays out when everything's ready?"

"Oh, no, I'll check back in.  Children aren't allowed in the committee meeting, so you two just stay in here."

And as fast as that, Mrs. Tone abandoned the kitchen to attend a knock at the front door.

"Thanks," said Abbey.  She and Sarah got the trays ready as the crowd in the living room grew larger and more boisterous.  The girls could hear strange bits of talk float through the counter top divider.

"Ah, Mr. Hecatomb, a pleasure to have you in the house.  You're the apple of Sarah's eye."

"His dog gave my dog fleas."

"Dirty great rascals loiterin' in every doorway.  Ought 'ter increase the constabulary, I says."

"Our men need work.  It'll be revolution soon enough if this keeps up."

"There's some who are profitin' in any case.  When goods are rarer they who own can call the tune."

"Well, The Dublin House seems to be doing a booming business in thirsty patrons."

"I see that Burrbuckle lout is here."

"There's more in his heart than's on his tongue."

"And there's some that want your trust merely to take advantage of it."

"Plimsoul's not a man to trifle with, and all here know it well enough."

They opened the folding room divider just enough to pass the snack trays through to the other side, and then shut them again.  Sarah knew that once the influential gathering had reached a critical mass, her mother would never remember to come back into the kitchen for the crescent cookies--or for anything else for that matter.  Mrs. Tone thought kitchen work was beneath the dignity of a modern enlightened woman, certainly one meaningfully engaged in politics.  

The front door opened and slammed shut several more times in quick succession.  Just when it seemed the living room could hold no more noise, a loud bell was rung several times, and then returned to its place on the mantle.

"Hear, hear," began a gilded voice.  "Let the Political Committee meeting come to order."

"Who's that?  His voice is so smooth," asked Abbey in a whisper.

"That's Berny Cottswold," explained Sarah, whispering in return. "He's the man who was defeated for mayor in the last two elections.  His family have been mayors and judges here since before there were automobiles."

The two girls turned down the lights in the kitchen and peered through the divider cautiously.

"All right now.  There's serious business before the Political Committee tonight.  Tonight we must decide if we are for or against the dockworkers' strike."

Immediately there was an outcry in the gathered crowd.  Feelings on the topic were obviously high.

"Now calm yourselves.  Naturally, we of the Political Committee must speak with one voice on this topic if we are to have any impact at all."

"We must be wasacally wabbits, ay?"

"Mr. Plimsoul, your levity's misplaced."  

"The devil you say!  If we can't laugh at our troubles, our troubles will have the last laugh on us."

"These strikers are serious.  And some of them may get up to no good if they think that their grievances are being dismissed or made fun of. 

In fact, the leader of these strikers is out making a name for himself in the newspapers.  Prospering on the misery of his workers."

"Very well, very well.  Point taken."

"That's my brother your talking about, Berny!"

"I know it is, Barnabas.  Just you settle down.  We haven't come to any decision yet.  I'm merely stating that we must come to one."

"All right.  But tread light.  Better wise silence than foolish prattle."

"Thank you, Barnabas.  As I was saying, if the Political Committee doesn't want to be sidelined, we must come out in front on this issue that is affecting so many of Traeshurstaene's citizens.  We cannot let events overtake us.  We must be seen to be leaders on this."

Just on the other side of the divider, a quiet but intense conversation was starting that the girls were uniquely positioned to overhear.

"He must be seen as a leader he means," began the first voice, a sibilant female slither that sounded peculiarly apt at spurring unpleasant insinuations.

"Two terms on his ass out of the Mayor's office and a new election cycle coming up.  If he doesn't make a good show, our faction will find another pony to ride," responded a second, male voice.  This voice sounded smooth as well, too smooth, as if it had no sides, the way ice disappears in a glass of water.

Something in the voice brought Sarah to attention, and with a shushing gesture and a glance over to Abbey, she squirmed noiselessly up onto the counter, trying to get close enough to the where the divider parted to get a look at the speakers.

"The time is drawing nigh.  We may not have time to choose another."

"Well, there is time, and there is time," remarked the man mysteriously.  Sarah had just about given up trying to peer through the divider.  The man and woman were simply too close to the opening.  And then she noticed a small band of light on her hand.  One of the slats in the divider was broken, and it had fallen down on one side to let the sliver of light pass through.  Sarah put her eye to the narrow opening.

"A useless fool is only one thing--an impediment to our plans."  This was a third voice, but Sarah couldn't see who it might be at all.

"Yes.  But we would have to be quite careful."  When the man spoke again, Sarah couldn't make out his features.  His face was one long sharp shadow.  Sarah turned her glance to see the woman.  What Sarah saw was a perfectly composed, elegant figure of a woman, sporting a long black boa.  Her eyes were large and somehow strange, as if they saw nothing and everything at once.  She had the suavity of a snake in her poise, relaxed, and yet alert enough to attack at a minute's notice.

"Give us a crescent cookie," the invisible voice said.  "All of Berny's speechifying is giving me an appetite."

"Has rather the opposite effect on me, I must say.  Not that I'd eat one of these miserable cookies if Betty Crocker had made them herself."

The thin man turned abruptly toward Sarah to retrieve one of the crescent cookies from the rose-colored glass plate.  It was Mr. Plimsoul!  Sarah gave a little involuntary intake of breath, and then froze stock still.  His eyes were leveled directly at her.  Had he seen her?  Sarah had only known him as a physics instructor in the high school--a class she wasn't old enough to take yet.  Sarah couldn't tell if he had spotted her spying or not.  He took a cookie and took a bite out of it coolly, smiling at Sarah's mother, standing up by the front of the room.  If he had seen her, his self-possession was enviable.  

"We haven't used all of our influence as of yet, Simon.  They are ways, and there are ways.  The old ways."

"Don't speak of such things here!" hissed the man.  "The walls are thin," said Mr. Plimsoul, and gave the divider a quick rap.  

And that ended the pair's colloquy.  Or the unusual threesome's, perhaps she should say, although Sarah hadn't been able to see even the shadow of the invisible voice's diminutive speaker.

Berny Cottswold's sticky voice came barreling back over the crowd.  His pronouncement had the inevitability of a coronation and the warm hope of a harvest seen from the height of mid-summer.  How could anyone doubt that whatever Berny said simply had to be true?

"Our success," he began.  "Our success will lie in unanimity.  Once we've taken a decision, dissenters must be suppressed."  He looked around the room, waiting for some voice of protest.  Through the broken slat in the divider, Sarah could see Barnabas shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably, a great slow bear full of long thoughts, but hesitant to commit his strength unwisely.  He held his tongue as the votes were passed forward in silence and then tallied by Sarah's mother, Mrs. Tone.

END OF CHAPTER FOUR

 



Chapter Five

"Paper Boats"

For all the grumbling of the grown-ups, Saturday dawned as innocent and fresh as any October day any of the children could remember.  The wind from the sea was picking up as the seasons began their change, and sent a renewed invigoration throughout the landscape.  What Sarah's Grandmother called "The Gods of Autumn," were being roused to their full force as Halloween appeared on the kitchen calendar, a large red X having already been drawn through it by Sarah.

It was a day to bring a smile to the grumpiest crone, or scraggliest old bachelor who might sit by a closed window in obedience of the calendar date rather than walk abroad following the common sense of his nose and skin.  Sarah forgot all about her worries for the strangers in her house and threw the window in her room open wide.  Surely Missy would want to come out and play on a day like this.  And just as surely, her parents would let her.

Sarah gazed out over the long downward slope that moved toward the bay, where a glint of the everlasting sea blinked back at her with a silvery dimness.  There was a bustle of birds and critters outside;  squirrels were racing each other over the roof and burying fallen acorns all over the yard.  They knew winter was still on its way, and they were going to make the best of their time before the world was one unending sheet of snow from hill to shore.

Sarah virtually raced down the stairs once she was dressed.   Her mother was singing in the kitchen.  Apparently, the voting at the Political Committee had gone the way her mother had wanted, and Mrs. Tone was singing in a flawless contralto a traditional tune about the great wheel of justice rolling on and on.

	"Oh the wheel is blind that crushes us down

	The wheel is deaf that raises us up

	The wheel is well that takes us onward,

	Ever onward where no harm breathes a word."

"There's Eggo waffles and veggie bacon in the microwave, my dear Sarah."  Mrs. Tone waved toward the toaster, which popped as if on command.  Sarah accepted the gold-trimmed plate her Mother handed to her and flipped the Eggos onto it with a clatter.  A large pot of heated syrup stood in the middle of the kitchen table, and Sarah poured it liberally over her waffles.

Mrs. Tone was listening to morning opera on the radio, which was interrupted with local news and weather. As Sarah ate, the radio nattered on. 

"A massive storm front is moving in over the sea.  In local politics, the Traeshurstaene Political Committee, lead by Berny Cottswold, has carried a motion against the strikers of the dockworkers' union...."

Just as Sarah was polishing off her first Eggo waffle, Granny Pansy entered from the back door, trailed by her cousins Abbey and Dar.  On her arm was a large woven basket full of fresh vegetables.  "Oh, put that out of your mouth, Sarah.  We've fresh-picked here, and I've let some bread dough rise overnight.  It should just be coming out of the oven now.  Gwynnith..."

"I thought I smelled something wonderful!"

Mrs. Tone was in such a good mood that she didn't even mind being ordered about by her mother-in-law.  In two shakes of a lamb's tail, as Granny Pansy might say, there were fresh eggs benedict, saffron cakes, real bread, and actual bacon on the table.  The basket also held a dozen oranges that Dar squished on the juicer with a fierce glee.  Abbey had carried in a bouquet of late daisies to garnish the breakfast table, and by the time Mr. Tone made it back in from some early morning chores, there was a peck of happy talk and a mountain of good food to eat at his table.

"Whay, its Christmas dinner!  I ain't seen a spread like this at the table in mony a fine year."  Mr. tone seemed more happy and relaxed than Sarah had seen him in some time, as if some noisome burden had been lifted from his shoulders during the night.  Like Sarah, her Father was always glad to have his mother, Granny Pansy, in the house.

Mrs. Tone rose up and put Mr. Tone into his place, tying a kerchief around his neck, and running a warmed plate of breakfast across the kitchen to his place mat.  Mr. Tone wasted no more words, but tucked in with a hearty appetite.  The only reservation he expressed was when the newscaster repeated the news about the dockworkers' strike.

As Sarah gladsomely cleared the plates and began to wash up, she mentioned her intention to run over to the Quicknass' and fetch Missy out for a day full of mischief.

"Oh, no, Sarah, sweetie.  Take your cousins with you.  The wood'll be lovely today."

Sarah protested this maternal command with an appeal to her father.  "Daddy, do I have to?"  

It seemed to Sarah that her Saturday was about to be commandeered by these strangers who had their gear thrown all over Gilman's room.  

"Now, do as yer Mother says," her Father recommended, wiping the last of the syrup from his lips with a corner of the tablecloth.  Sarah could see that no appeal would be effective against her Father's full stomach.  "Your mother an I have some important business to discuss as it is."  And with that, he snapped open the paper, which had an above-the-fold picture of Berny Cottswold.

"OK," she sighed, defeated, but still, despite herself, full of expectation for the open day.  "Follow me."

Abbey smiled openly, and Dar followed the girls out the door, drawing aim at a squirrel in the yard burying the last of its treasure.  

"Bang!  Bang!"

* * * *

Their walk was slow and monotonous, but not without appeal.  The trees were almost singing with color, and the sun made them shiver with a joy just at walking.  After all, it was still Saturday, even if it meant that Sarah had to share the day with Abbey and Dar.  Maybe they wouldn't be so bad.  Abbey was picking flowers from the roadside as they crunched down the pebble path toward the wood that overlooked the Traeshurstaene Inlet. 

"Riv-ver!" cried Dar evenly as they came upon a stream in the wood. This was the Mickleswift, as it was known locally, and many faeries had been seen beside its banks by late afternoon picnickers or midnight revelers.  Some say that such sightings had more to do with the local brewery than with the Mickleswift.  The water gushed and flattered the banks with laughing activity, and there was a brightness to it in the strong October sunlight that seemed more than the golden yellow rocks at the stream's bottom could account for.

"Ooh, Granny never said anything about their being a stream so close by," said Abbey excitedly.  "We had walked the other way into town and had never even heard it.  And now, it seems so loud!"  This last Abbey said with a raised voice, as if to prove her point.  But indeed, the were coming upon the notable Crossamum Falls, which was more like the fall beside a mill stream than a proper falls.  Down at the bottom of the falls was a secluded pond, overshadowed with limber birch trees and a reedy patch at one side where there was some marshy run-off.

Sarah hurried to the pond and knelt carefully beside the water.  She pulled a few sheets of paper from her large front skirt pocket.  This was a homework assignment that her Granny Pansy had usefully tucked into the pocket as Sarah and the others sped out the door from breakfast.  Now Sarah took a sheet--of algebra homework, she noticed--and began to artfully fold a small boat on the bank.  Actually, it was more of a galley or barge than anything, and Sarah could imagine members of the Roman navy rowing bravely forth to battle in the long open-decked craft she was fashioning.  When it was done, Sarah bent over the river, and without further ado, set the boat sailing in the wet.  It took off in a straight line without a waver in its course.

"Boat!" said Dar, and came hurrying from his inspection of a rotten log half sunk in the weeds.  Even Abbey turned from her preoccupation with flower-gathering and came over by Sarah to see.  

"Boat!" repeated Dar, and added, "sail!"

"Please show us how you made it," Abbey requested.  "Dar'll love it."  Sarah looked at her keenly, not completely unlike the look she had given Bart the day before.  "And I have some interest myself," admitted Abbey.  She knelt respectfully beside Sarah, who handed her a sheet of Latin homework, took up her unfinished geometry answers, and began to demonstrate her unique boat-folding technique.

Abbey chuckled when she saw that the paper boats were to be made from unfinished homework assignments.  "Best use of schoolwork I've ever seen.  Brilliant!"

Sarah laughed.

Abbey watched Sarah's fingers carefully.  "How do you get the keel quite like that?  It seems a bit tricky."

"Its really not hard to do this at all, once you know how," started Sarah.  "But I've added my own touch to the keel that makes 'em go straighter than most."  

"I'll have to teach you a cat's cradle Granny Pansy showed me on the train ride out here."

"All right," agreed Sarah.  Somehow, with the beautiful day all around them, Sarah was looking forward to the lesson.

For a few minutes, they were all busy folding paper and listening to the Mickleswift continue to fill the pond which already seemed perfectly full.

Before you could say "Jack Frost," there was a virtual flotilla on its way to Carthage, with a few stragglers winding up embattled in the reeds.  The girls and Dar were chasing the boats around the pond lightheartedly.  It seemed that the girls might get along well after all, despite being cousins.  The paper boats were light enough to just skim the running surface of the pond, using the currents underneath to propel their untroubled brightness.  Dar was in ecstasy over the nimble gyrations of the fleet.   After a few frantic minutes of chasing the paper boats about the pond and calling out guesses as to which boat was whose and which was winning, Sarah and Abbey came to a panting halt, the galleys slowing down as they started to get soggy.

"Oh, they're sinking!"

"Bound to happen," said Sarah.

"Yes, I suppose it must.  But somehow it makes me sad, is all."

Sarah let there be silence between them.

"I'm sorry we're messing up your home and everything.  We really couldn't help it.  Mommy and Daddy just aren't getting along is all.  They're separating."

The word hit Sarah like a cleaver.  For all her parents' problems, Sarah couldn't even dream of them not being together.  It would be like watching the earth open up under her feet.  She looked up at Abbey, who gave her a weak smile.  Sarah didn't know what to say.

"That's awful," she managed.

"Yes, it certainly is.  And now Dar and I have to bunk together in that horrible dusty old boy's room."

"You take that back," said Sarah, instantly angry.  "That dusty old boy's room was my brother Gilman's room.  You take that back."

"Well, its a horrible old room.  Its full of war nonsense and scouting badges and pictures of pouting girls."

Sarah knew that the only pouting girl in Gilman's room was the photo of her that he had.  It was taken just after Sarah had come in second in a singing contest;  she'd had no interest in memorializing her losing.  But it was Gilman's favorite picture of her nevertheless, and so there it stayed.  The picture of his high school sweetheart was smiling.  The more Sarah thought of it, and of the injustice that Abbey should be able to spend so much time in Gilman's room when she had been locked out of it all this time since he was killed.  And now, adding insult to injury, Abbey didn't even care that she had the privilege of being in Gilman's room.  It was too much to bear.

Sarah punched Abbey in the mouth.  "You just shut up," she practically screamed.

Abbey took an involuntary step backwards, and reached up to touch her mouth.  She looked, at first, indescribably surprised.  And then, her eyes began to shine as tears welled up in them, and then rolled down her face.  Dar, poking a sinking galley unconcernedly with a stick, sensed something was wrong, and started walking back toward his sister and Sarah.  Sarah looked at Dar approaching innocently along the water's edge, and then at Abbey's now uncontrolled weeping--for she was crying not just about having been struck by the only girl who night have been her friend in the strange, new place, but because she was losing her parents.  And because of all their long nights of arguing when Abbey had lain helplessly in bed, holding her hands over Dar's ears so he wouldn't hear.  But she heard.  Abbey always heard.  And now it was as if each of those bitter words had turned into tears and were itching their way down her cheeks.  The whole pond and everything simply melted into a sunny blur.  Dar came over and held onto her leg.

When she had quieted down enough to hear the reeds whispering again, she wiped her tears and looked around.  Sarah was gone.

END OF CHAPTER FIVE

 



Chapter Six

"Fight at the Mickleswift"

Sarah followed the Mickleswift as fast as her feet would carry her.  She blazed down the pathway beside the river, drawing an odd comfort from the strength of the stream to just keep running on and on.  I'll be like that stream, Sarah thought.  Who needs cousins and bumblers?  I know the way I must go.

Sarah marched away from the tearful Abbey without even looking back.  Serves her right!  Sarah thought spitefully.  And I thought we could be friends after all.  Why, Abbey and her boring brother were an absolute desecration of the Gilman chapel!  Sarah was so busy thinking up punishments and prosecutions for the pair of interlopers, that she didn't even notice when a second pair of footsteps began crunching through the leaves behind her.

"Sarah Tone."  The creepy voice brought Sarah to a halt.  She spun around.

There was Bart Hecatomb, his hands on his hips, looking as if he owned the world.

"What do you want, Bart?"

Bart surveyed her evenly.  He didn't look at all worried.  What kind of trick did he have up his sleeve?

"I don't have time to stare you down again."  Sarah thought she might be borrowing trouble, but somehow she just didn't care.

A look of irritation passed across Bart's face.  That had gotten to him.  But still, he didn't say anything.  Bart's wide face and closed mouth remained in a contemptuous curl.  He tapped his foot contentedly, as if he had all the time in the world.  Sarah was tempted to just turn around and keep going, but Bart would just start following behind her again.  Besides, she didn't think it was a good idea to turn her back on him.  In one swift movement, Bart stooped and picked up a big stick that had been lying under some leaves near his foot.  This he began to swing in front of himself like a scythe.  Back and forth, back and forth, as evenly as a pendulum.  It was threatening, but Bart didn't advance.  

He was staring intently, his eyes manic and other-worldly, almost glowing.  It was as if he couldn't quite make her out, as if there was a pane of fog between himself and her.  And yet, the sun was as sharp as a dart.

Sarah plucked up her nerve.  "Don't you know its not polite to stare?"  Bart blinked, either he was rousing from some stupor, or he was able to see her more clearly again, for his eyes narrowed on her face.

"You're going to get flunked out of the choir.  I heard my Dad talking to some other teachers, and they're going to have you dismissed from the choir because your grades suck."

This was unexpected.  Choir was the one redeeming thing about school.  They could keep the rest of it--the rigidity, the dumb unfunness of things.  Things like having to do work with your classmates as lab partners, or doing whatever some finicky teacher arbitrarily demanded.  When else would she need to recite the chief exports of the Ukraine in her life?  Bart would have been hard-pressed to bring Sarah more alarming news.  Still, she persevered.

"That's a lie, Bart Hecatomb.  And when your father hears the tales you've been telling out of school, you'll be properly tanned for it, I'd reckon."

Bart was unfazed.  The stick swung left to right.

"You think you're my Daddy's favorite because of that squeaky high voice of yours.  Well, you're not that great.  My Dad says its because your Father runs the Political Committee, and they pick the teachers that get tenure.  My Dad hates your Dad, and he hates you too and your sissy soprano."

These words turned Sarah's world on its head.  If Mr. Hecatomb was against her....  If she really didn't have such a special voice as she'd always thought....  Bart's grin spread to the other side of his face.  He was actually enjoying this.  This wasn't like his usual dirty tricks--this was more forceful--and more clever.  These words were like acid eating into Sarah's self-respect.  She could feel tears starting to form at the corners of her eyes.  But she'd be damned if she'd let Bart see a single one fall.

"Well, if that's true, then my Father will get your Dad fired if he tries anything."

At this, Bart's grin, if anything, got even wider.  It seemed as though his face would split from vicious merriment.  A cruel light danced in his eyes.  Did Bart want his Father to get fired?  The stick he held continued to swish back and forth with the regularity of a metronome, as if guided by other hands.

"Your Father's to be replaced on the Political Committee.  It happened last night during the secret ballot, as a matter of fact."

Sarah stooped with a blinding suddenness, picked up a large, water-smoothed stone that was laying in an eroded turn of the Mickleswift by her foot, and beaned Bart right in the eye.  He let out a howl like a kicked cat.

Sarah almost rushed over to help Bart then.  She had gone too far.  But as she took a step closer to him, Bart let out a low laugh under his whimpering.  It was one of the most confusing things Sarah had ever heard.

"Just like a girl," Bart said, down on one knee in pain.  He had dropped the stick and was paying no attention to where Sarah was.  Sarah fought an impulse to take the stick and brain him right on the spot.  Or rather, didn't fight it as much as she scared herself with the vehemence of the feeling, and turned on her heel and stalked off in silence along the gabbling Mickleswift.

The sun shifted easily through the hazel branches, and then a stand of oak, and finally a grove of lovely ash trees, all turning festive with autumn as Sarah stalked onward through the wood.

Now Sarah was even more wound up than before.  Blast that Bart!  Why had she let him get to her?  Had she forgotten all of her Granny Pansy's advice?  It was as though something inside her was egging her on to lose control, to express a ferocious side of her personality that Sarah was sure their choirmaster Mr. Hecatomb would be astonished to find out even existed.

Sarah was virtually running through the woods now.  The day was still as beautiful as it had been at breakfast, but it didn't matter.  The sunlight, the leaves, the energy of autumn seemed to mock Sarah and her heartache.  She wished it was night so that she could hide her face.  She would run away where no one would ever find her!  That would show them--if they would even bother to notice.  Bart would probably sing and dance.  And Abbey would probably move into her room.  Just the idea of that happening was almost worse than her and her snotty little brother's desecration of Gilman's room.  His sanctuary, as Sarah had begun to think of it.  Sarah wished she'd never had breakfast with those people;  that she'd never taught Abbey the secret of her paper boats.  If she was back at the pond now, she'd tear them all to wet sheds--every one of them!  Soggy homework would litter the woods, would fill it up like a gigantic snowstorm.  There'd be destruction and wildness in every corner of Traeshurstaene.  

Suddenly, Sarah had come to the clearing by the well.  She paused here, not really sure why.  She still felt an overwhelming need to express the rage inside her, but simply plowing through the woods at a hectic pace wouldn't do it.  She felt suddenly and totally exhausted, defeated.  Sarah plunked down as if the air had been taken out of her.  She had never felt so tired, she thought.  It was as if she were a puppet and the puppeteer had gotten tired of her silly antics, her ridiculous gestures of defiance and fraughtfulness, and had simply cut her strings.  She leaned her back against the well, unable to move an inch.

Sarah closed her eyes and clasped her fingers around the pendant that had been in Gilman's breast pocket.  It must have flown out of her blouse during her fight with Abbey, and when she ran away afterward.  If she hadn't pricked her finger on Gilamn's medal of valor, she never would have discovered what had become of it.  It was a misshapen silver pendant with some old runes carved into it.  It was shiny with the passing of many fingers around it.   It had been one of Gilman's most beloved objects, and Sarah had sort of assumed it had been interred with him.  Gilman had always let her play with it, and it had never ceased to calm and fascinate her.  She ran her thumb over the runic letters.

Her mother would never have allowed Sarah to have the necklace, so Sarah had placed it carefully under blouse that morning.  Mrs. Tone didn't even like the fact that Gilman had owned it.  But it was given to him by Granny Pansy, and there was precious little chance that Mrs. Tone would ever be able to over-rule Granny.  It wasn't long after Granny had given Gilman the runic charm that Gilman had enlisted.  At the time he claimed, rather cryptically, that he might might as well join up since he was, as he said, a "warrior anyway"--whatever he might have meant by that.

Sarah began a little wordless tune in her head, a comforting nothing as she let the struggles of the morning drain out of her.  Her head was still as full of anger as an ant's nest, thoughts colliding with thoughts in such confusion until she couldn't make out which thoughts, if any, were genuinely her own.   Gradually, with the light switching back and forth among the leaves of the ash trees, Sarah felt as though she were drifting off to sleep.  Her arms were tired from punching and throwing rocks, and felt as heavy as seaweed pulled from the ocean.  Her legs were useless from running the length of the Mickleswift.  Her eyes were becoming more and more weighted, and a darkness began to creep into the world, a portion of oblivion.  The last thing she remembered doing was tucking Gilman's rune stone back under her blouse and leaning her head against the side of the well.

END OF CHAPTER SIX

 



Chapter Seven

"Big! Wind!"

The storm that the radio had predicted that morning had arrived in full force.

The music of the leaves was enhanced by the pattering of drops.  And there was a thin, cold voice floating high behind the entire scene.  Sarah opened her eyes to a world of grey catastrophe.

The wind was surging through the branches, rocking the trees as easily as if they were saplings.  Sarah was soaked.  Her skirt clung to her as coldly and closely as the wind.  But Sarah didn't feel it.  What she felt instead, as she arose from the ground, was a sort of exultation--a surging shake of strength and dim purpose rolling from her feet to the very top of her head. 

Sarah felt as weightless as a suit of clothes on the washline.  The cold, thin song wrapped her in itself.  The grass shone with the wet, slick as a patch of fur.  The sky was full of boiling clouds, small lightning shifting through their bulk in the distance.  Everything was alive with energy.

Sarah put a hand out to steady herself, and felt the edge of the well.  It seemed both smoother and more cut, more carven than usual.  The voice in the wind gained some unusual strength, and Sarah turned around to face the well itself. 

The well hunkered darkly before her, squat, detailless.  It was as round, definite and truncated as an amputated limb of the hill.  Her fingers traced the grooves in the surface of the well that seemed more than the random marks of the rock.  Again, the voice intensified, growing from thin to girlish. 

A flash of lightning made Sarah jump back from the well.  But it was in that brief flash, with the water enveloping and simplifying the stones of the well into a single surface, like wet concrete, that she was able to see that very definite letters were carved into the side of the well.  All around the rim of the well, as a matter of fact.  It wasn't mere pattern or decoration, but letters and words.  But words of a language, and letters of an alphabet that Sarah couldn't guess at. 

"Aetheldonablescroothallygyllethalsoome." 

Sarah said the words all together as they ran.  They were the same as the letters on her brother's silver runestone necklace.  She put her hand over her heart and felt the inscription.  Some of the letters were the same.  Sarah squinted and tried to say what she could read around the rim of the well. 

"Aetheldonablescroothallygyllethalsoome," she said, or sang, rather.  For now Sarah realized the the voice she had been hearing before was her own.  She had woken up singing, and now her voice, as it sang through the strange words in the ancient script, grew stronger and fuller.  And a second voice, hooting and hollow, but deep, began to come very definitely from inside the well itself.  This wasn't just the wind hooing, this was a song rising from the well. 

The words of the ancient script continued to come from Sarah's mouth.  She had no idea how she was able to say them, but she did.  Sarah looked out across the well into what was now a sturdy downpour descending on a darkened land.  The rain was as thick as a sheet, and there across from her, on the other side of the well, it looked like tall figures of men were coming through those sheets of rain.  Or that they were made of the rain, the rain running off their forms.  They had a dire aspect to them, grim and tall.  Sarah couldn't make out their garments, but they seemed to be wearing some kind of headgear and held long poles in their hands.  It may have just been a trick of the lightning, and Sarah's exhaustion, but an irrational conviction told her that it was somehow real.  And that frightened Sarah. 

"Aetheldonablescroothallygyllethalsoome," she sang, louder and stronger than before, as if to ward away her fears, and keep the watery men at bay.  She must seem unbowed before this weird vision, she knew. 

The voice in the well swelled like the baying of a pack of hounds, and Sarah's attention shifted from the strange, halflit men, who at least were not moving, to the well itself again.  A glow seemed to be reaching up from the belly of the well.  And in the side light cast from that glow stood the flat shadow of another figure with a stick.  It was the crone who had had Sarah by the throat!  And the long stick she held disappeared into the mossy light of the well, stirring the depths. 

"Sing," the shadow crone commanded.  

Sarah wasn't sure if the crone was addressing her or the well, but both obeyed.  A sinewy duet developed from their voices--Sarah's as high and tense as a struggling bird's, the well's as low as a freighter's fogblast, but tuneful, a sort of roaring song. 

"Aetheldonablescroothallygyllethalsoome," they sang together.  The figures in the rain started to shift and become solider, as if they would step from the rain that composed them and into the clearing.  Watery horses now pawed the ground behind the men, their wet manes a-shake. 

Sarah felt in the grip of some terrible tension, as if she were being held by iron bands, and the only hope of escape she had was through her voice.  She sang with her need, and with the wild hope that the watery knights appearing before her, for that's what they were she was now sure, their chain mail swaying from their shoulders to their knees, would help her escape the crone. 

The men's faces were starting to appear in the wet dark of the rain, and when another stroke of lightning blasted the woods, Sarah could make out the grim determination of their features.  She had never seen such men, such hardness in a face--despite their still being formed of no more than raindrops. 

"Sing," the crone commanded.  Although such a command was needless now.  Sarah couldn't remember a time when she wasn't singing.  All the sounds of the world, wracked with rain and lightning, seemed to be a song--vivid and electric.  Sarah watched the crone stirring the well, and leaned up against the edge herself to look in.  Her face was underlit by the wan blue glow emanating upwards from the interior of the well. 

As Sarah looked down into the well again, her voice faltered.  "Sing," repeated the crone.  But what Sarah saw in the pit of the well held all of her fascination for a moment.  There, down in the silver center of the well, as plain and bright as daylight, Sarah saw her reflection.  But it was not her entirely as she was, for her reflection bore a steel cap, and ringlets of chain mail flowed from her shoulders, silvery as a fish's scales. Sarah fell back from the well's edge, her voice singing on, but more torn from her that thrust from her now.  What Sarah had seen in the well both stirred and disturbed her.  And it seemed that a toothless gap broke into the shadow across from her, the same horrible grin that Sarah had seen before.   

"Big!   Wind!"  

A black shape rocketed into Sarah's knees from behind her, sending her rolling to the ground, and cutting short her song.  An instant, songless silence enveloped the hill, and only the crashing of the trees, the rain and the wind remained. 

"Big!  Wind!"

Dar's flat voice shouted across the greensward.  In a moment, Abbey and Dar were at Sarah's side.  Abbey was pushing her wet hair from her face and looking up at Sarah.

"Come on," Abbey yelled through the storm.  "We don't know how to get back to the house from here.  We need you." 

Abbey took another look into Sarah's eyes.  "Are you all right?"

Sarah had no idea if she would ever be all right again.  "The men!  The crone!  Watch out!  You must run!"

Abbey looked at her quizzically.  "What?  I can't hear you.  What are you talking about?  What men?  What bone?"

Sarah sat bolt upright.  She stood up as fast as she could.  She spun around, looking for the solemn rain men.  There was nothing there but the rain, and the suggestive shapes of the ash trees on the other side of the clearing. 

Sarah shook her head in disbelief.  Had it all been her imagination?  What about the dark shape that had bowled her over?

Sarah felt a hard shove at her back, insistent.  Was this the crone shoving her with her long stick?  Sarah turned menacingly, ready to strike.

"Roanie!" she cried in surprise.  It was her father's hound, big and real and welcome as a hot cup of apple cider.

"He's the one who found you!" Abbey explained loudly, holding her little brother's hand.  "We followed him!"

The storm was too noisy to talk now, and Sarah felt a kind of relief--a relief she didn't really understand, to see Abbey and Dar and their normal, soaked clothes.

"All right!"  Sarah managed.  "Let's go!"

END OF CHAPTER SEVEN

 



Chapter Eight

"Noises Off"

Monday was their first day of school together for Sarah and her cousin.

At the bus stop, everyone wanted to know all about Abbey, and made a great fuss of asking her all about herself.  Abbey deflected many of the questions.  She didn't want to discuss the real reason why she and her little brother had been sent to her aunt and uncle's house out in the country.  It was bad enough to have to face the reality that her parents were separating, and in all likelihood would wind up getting a divorce, let alone have to discuss it with all the new faces at the bus stop.

When the bus topped the last hill, Abbey could see Ridgefield High School squatting at the bottom of the slope.  It was a shambling red brick structure, untidy in a country way it seemed to her, and not at all like the trim sandstone titan of a high school she attended in the city.  Abbey and Sarah parted ways soon after they entered the building, since Abbey was a grade lower than Sarah.  Sarah pointed her politely toward her first classroom, with a friendlier parting than she could have managed on Saturday, and then headed off to her own first class.

Sarah floated through her days in a haze of routine.  She was still feeling bewildered by the events of the weekend.  They had left her with the emotional thinness of a wet page.  Granny Pansy's soup and a good long time before the fire may have gotten the chill out the children's bones, but the air of sinister mystery that Sarah's time at the well had left her with was harder to shake.  As Sarah made her way from class to class, she'd pass other members of the choir.  Disappointed instructors shook their heads, or sneered with condescension when Sarah had no homework to hand in.  

The week skirled by without many changes or much trouble.  There were increased reports of unrest among the dockworkers, but that was about it.  Sarah spent most of the week in a drifting daze, looking forward only to Friday's choir practice.  Sarah had not forgotten, but she had repressed Bart's threat of expulsion from the choir.  She was inattentive to Abbey's progress during her first week, and they didn't talk on the bus.  When Friday came, it was the same as the rest of the week had been.  During lunchtime, Sarah and Abbey ate together at the same table, along with two of Sarah's friends, and a new friend Abbey had made.

"The school is just tremendous!" gushed Abbey.  "I mean, the homey old corridors, the creakity chairs, they way everyone seems to know everyone else's family.  And the janitor looks just like an extra from a set of Oliver Twist!"

"It'll do, I suppose," said Sarah.

"So, Abbey," came the first question, from Betsy.  "What part of town did you and your folks move into?"

"We haven't all actually moved in just yet," Abbey artfully dodged.

"We live over by the canning works, where the sardine boats put in to dock."

"Abbey's staying with my family for a while, Betsy," interrupted Sarah, adding sarcastically, "we live above the town, with a good view of the inlet from the second floor."

Betsy looked as if this answer wasn't at all satisfactory, but since she couldn't imagine why anyone would move in with the Tones' in the first place, she couldn't think of a follow up question.  Missy Quicknass, who often played with Sarah, was arranging her cheese sandwich, cranberry cake, McIntosh apple, and half pint of milk into one of her famous "food pyramids."

"My Mom always says, it's not where you live, its who you love that makes the difference in life," she said, just as she manged to get the half pint of milk to balance back at the top after having taken a precarious sip from it through a straw.

"So, you're finding your way around all right, Abbey?" asked Sarah, who felt bad knowing that she had done little enough herself to help Abbey and Dar get their bearings, let alone feel at home.

"Oh, yes," replied Abbey.  "Shelly's been the greatest help.  She's escorted me from class to class, even if she wasn't in it, and had to run all the way to the other end of school to get to her class.  I can't believe my luck!  And she introduced me to each of the instructors personally, so they knew just who I was.  Although, most of them already knew because Granny Pansy had phoned the school last week to say that Dar and I were coming."

"Really?  Well, Shelly, take a bow!" said Betsy.  Sarah silently agreed, but knew it would be rude to say so, and besides, she was starting to feel guilty that she hadn't thought to extend the same courtesy to her own cousin as a complete stranger had managed.  Maybe her teachers weren't just ganging up on her.  Maybe they were right, that she was being lazy and "under-performing" her potential.  Sarah was starting to long for choir practice at the end of the day out in the fresh air.  

"Abbey's over stating things a bit, I'm afraid.  You're really being silly, Abbey.  I've just done the minimum."

"Well," said Abbey.  "I don't think so.  And I really appreciate it."

Shelly, whose flame red hair was caught back in a large blue ribbon, had a good portion of string beans, and a toasted ham sandwich on her plate.  The latter was a specialty of Mrs. Carmine who worked at the lunch counter.  She had been creatively filling up kids with nutritional meals for three generations of Treashurstaneians.

"Sarah," Abbey began, "I've got some really exciting news..."   But Abbey's announcement was interrupted by a noise from the far side of the cafeteria.

"Hey!" cried Bart from over by the window.  "Look outside!  Its the strikers!  There's trouble down by the quay."

All the kids abandoned their meals and rushed to the windows.  "What is it?  What can you see?" cried a voice from the back of the crowd.

"About a million police cars," said Bart, who was standing on the sill.  "They're waving their clubs around like they're on a seal hunt!"  The large patch over Bart's left eye didn't seem to diminish his relish for a good set-to.  "They're gonna clobber those lazy sods!"

A moment later, Mr. Plimsoul appeared.  He was on cafeteria watch that week, and was the sole court of appeal for disputes that might arise during lunchtime at the school.

"Bart, you'll have to curb your tongue when speaking of the laboring masses of Traeshurstaene.  And the window sill is no place for feet."  Bart jumped down reluctantly from the sill, but was secretly glad that his misbehavior hadn't merited a detention.  "I'm certain that our local constabulary is up to the task of maintaining order in our fair town.  Now, your job is to eat a healthy lunch so that you are ready to learn."

Mr. Plimsoul was making his way back to the cafeteria door as all the kids were moving back to their seats.  He passed Sarah on his way, and noted, "I recommend a second helping for you, my dear.  Your teachers are reporting that you're having a peculiarly challenging week.  Perhaps a little afterschool study detention is in order for you."

Mr. Plimsoul had never directly addressed Sarah in her life, and yet he seemed to know all about her--down to how her week was faring scholastically.  "Oh, no, Mr. Plimsoul.  I can't.  I've got choir practice right after school today."

"Currently, that is true," said Mr. Plimsoul, and glided back toward the door as smoothly as a wheeled statue.

"Currently?" exclaimed Missy, once it seemed that Mr. Plimsoul was out of earshot.  "What can that mean?"

"I'm afraid to find out," said Sarah.

The bell at the end of the final class rang with what Sarah would have sworn was an audible relief.  She sprang from her chair in Algebra, sped down the corridor past a flurry of notices and explanatory artworks describing the circulatory system, and how the lungs ferry oxygen into the bloodstream.  Did you know that blood is red because its rusty?  When blood mixes with the atmosphere, it oxidizes, just like the steel on the side of a ship.

She was just about to race out the door to the choir practice bus, when she saw out of the corner of her eye a blaringly bright Ridgefield vest ballooning above a knot of kids.  It was Mr. Hecatomb and the choir!  He was making some sort of brief announcement, and they started shuffling down the corridor away from the buses.  What could this mean?  Sarah started down after the group, and heard the buses outside the school begin to head off with their loads of relieved school children.

Mr. Ridgefield's voice was barking around the corner, directing the choir here and there, as Sarah barreled into the music room--and right into Bart Hecatomb's back.

"Ow!" exclaimed Bart, regaining his balance, and coddling his eye.  "It's not like you need to be rushin' in here, Miss Silvery Tone."

Sarah stiffened.  Was Bart going to strike her?  "Um, sorry," she mumbled.

"Well, all right," said Bart, hushing her.  "I don't care.  Just get away from me."

Bart seemed not to recall that it was Sarah who had beaned him the Saturday before in the woods.  He turned his back to her, and paid attention to his Father's instructions.

"Today we have a new member in our choir," Mr. Hecatomb announced.  "Come here, lass."  Mr. Hecatomb pulled at someone's arm who what standing behind big Betsy.  "This, ladies and gentlemen, is Abbey Darlington.  She's from the city for at least until Christmas and will be singing all the carols and holiday numbers with us."

The children applauded politely, and Missy even called out "Good job!" to Abbey.  "Yes, well, fine enough, my little ones," continued Mr. Hecatomb, "but of especial note is that Abbey fills a desperate need in our choir--for a contralto."  The children around Sarah glanced her way.  Sarah had a good range, but it was mostly at the alto end, which strained the choir upward.  Having a contralto in the choir meant that all the songs would be easier for everyone to sing, and that Sarah would have much less to practice, and maybe no solos.

"All right.  Places everyone."

"Why can't we practice outside like we usually do?" Sarah asked.  "Its nice outside."

"Well, the ground's bound to still be soaked from yesterday's storm, for one thing.  And, I suppose you're all bound to find out about this as soon as you're home anyway.  The principal is worried about your safety with the dockworker troubles.  One of the workers was killed in clashes with the police this afternoon, and there's rumor of a riot after dark, a town-wide protest.  They're calling it: 'Cwyr Mirhannon, Our Rebellion.'"  That didn't seem to make complete sense, but was accepted without question by the choir.  "And, I'll need to speak with you after practice today, Sarah."

Great, thought Sarah.  This day is going from bad to worse.

END OF CHAPTER EIGHT

 



Chapter Nine

"The Gods of Autumn"

The news on the radio that evening spoke of a high level of violence in the doings of the dockworkers.  Some were climbing over the locked gates at the dock and breaking up machinery by the wharf.  Several desperates had taken a boat out and dumped its catch of fish back into the inlet.  Others were grilling townsfolk and taking down names in a great red log book, tallying who "was on the side of the angels, and who was not," and noting the addresses of the respondents.  A few of the union organizers were demanding that the town paper publish editorials in their favor.  Some were simply carousing non-stop at the Dublin House and Cwilliam's Pub, refusing to let the owners close after lunch between lunch and the evening hours because they had nothing else to do.

"Terrible," exclaimed Mrs. Tone. "What a herd of brutes."

"Ay, that's one possibility," admitted Mr. Tone warily.

"Well," Mrs. Tone continued, "at least its out of our hands."

"That it is," remarked Mr. Tone amiably.  "Although, its still in our town."

"Hush," chimed in Granny Pansy.  "There's an alert on the radio."

"....seemed a queer determined lot, y'ask my estimation o'it.  They wouldna take 'No' for an answer.  Not that they'd succeed.  I daresay they knew well-enough that it were a fore-doomed effort.  It just didna seem ta matter to them at a'....That was one Barnabas Burrbuckle, revealing the inside story of the Dockworkers' Union meeting earlier today.  Stories and sources have been coming forth, claiming that the whole union is under some kind of, almost, possession.  Peaceful protests and picket lines have been sparsely populated for the last few weeks in front of the Traeshurstaene Quay, and it seemed to most observers that, despite the strain on the quiet community, an accommodation would soon be reached between the Dockworkers' Union and the Traeshurstaene town corporation...."

"Come, that's enough of sorrow."  Mr. Tone clicked the radio off authoritatively and put the day's newspaper in the rubbish bin.

Mrs. Tone and Granny Pansy united in protest.

"I tell you, those men are simply driven by evil!" cried Gwynnith.  "You can hear it for yourself.  They're reporting that they're possessed."

"Well, let's not bring the report of their evil into our home, then."

"Daffiyd, turning a deaf ear to the world only leaves you blind to you own benefit," advised Granny Pansy.

"Be that as it may, Mother.  Let it rest.  There's no more room in this house for the world's troubles."

"But Daffiyd, be reasonable," Granny Pansy and Gwynnith said in unison.

"I say enough.  You two girls off to bed.  You'll be staying home from school activities tomorrow.  No soccer practice, or choir, or any of that.  Off you go, and put those big eyes back in your heads.  There's no profit in borrowing misery.  That's one of your's, Mother."

The girls went up the stairs.  But at their back, they could hear a heated conversation continue between the three adults.  Long after they were under the covers, they could feel Mr. Tone's gruff voice shake the floorboards.

"Daffiyd, honey.  We need to be available if the committee calls on us for special service tomorrow.  We made a solemn oath that cannot be unsworn."

* * * *

Sarah awoke at midnight, clear and cold and fully conscious.  Without any warning, she was abruptly and fully aware of her surroundings.  Every crisp bit of frost on the pane spoke to her.  She could count the filaments of the spiderwebs in the moonlight.  She was alert and arose to her full height.  Her nightgown fell from her in long scrolls of flimsy fabric, gossamer and light. 

Sarah hopped off of the bed to the floor, and dashed to the window, which looked out on a moon-transformed landscape--the slope of the hill outside the house rolling seamlessly down to the edge of the inlet in the distance.   There was a frosted quality to everything under the moon.  The branches of the trees stood stark in their darkness.  The storm and its wind had taken most of the colored leaves off of the trees.  Sarah opened the window onto the darkness, unconcerned with the deathly temperature drop that had occurred outside.  

The wind made itself felt vaguely against her skin, as though there was nothing beyond the window but the memory of winter.  Sarah stepped onto the windowsill, and the out onto the sloping roof that extended back out over the kitchen.  When she reached the gutter, she put her foot into the wet runoff and lost her wakened memory of the moment, gliding toward the gutter hole at the end of the roofrun.  

Sarah felt like a mouse thrown down a mousehole.  The drain opened up to a diameter to accept her plummeting form.  Her wet foot led the way.  Before she could blink, Sarah found herself gliding down the Mickleswift, a moveless statue in a fidgeting gown, beautiful and pale in the moonlight.  Her face had a serious, almost grim, aspect to it, like the rain warriors that she had seen the other day at the well.  Her volition was absent, and the world slid by like a slideshow pulled over a stark field of ice.

The shadows of the skeletal trees of the Welkin wood stood austere guard over her progress, long tall guardians of a darkness that appeared to be accepting Sarah into their midst.  Their blurred aspect went by with a superhuman speed as Sarah raced down the Mickleswift to its interim destination of the well.  There, the uneven surface of the stream threw Sarah off onto the cold grass, unceremoniously dumping her on a downhill slope that rolled her against the wall of the well, bathed in a moonlight that allowed her to make out the charms of the runes ringing the stone circle with an unexpected clarity.

The well was cooing and calling already when Sarah arrived.  The eerie blue glow that had inhabited its depths was welling still over the lips of the hole.  The clouded sky, now a solid midnight hue, arched over the small scene to lend a secrecy to its doings.  The well sang out with a stronger voice than Sarah had heard before, a voice certain of its place in the order of things--as certain as Sarah was uncertain of her own place, it seemed to her.  Her world, although having returned in many ways to normal during the school week, was still an abominable mess in Sarah's mind.  Sarah wasn't sure of which way to turn, and new turns in the road seemed to be continually appearing before her as autumn rolled toward Christmas, and the deadest days of the year.

Around the well, out of the shaggy dark of the woods, shambling figures approached the blue glow, and Sarah, slowly with ungainly gaits.  Almost as if hypnotized, the forms of muscular dockworkers moved toward the central light of the well.  Their aspect seemed overlaid with a more elemental aspect than daylight allowed, which highlighted their individual stories and, as Sarah's Mother condescendingly referred to them, their particular "cases."  

In an unbidden reaction to the implied threat of the dockworkers' immediate vicinity, Sarah found herself humming, and then singing, the tune and the words that had been suggested to her during the storm the previous Saturday.  The well took the lead in the song;  indeed, it seemed to have been singing without Sarah's voice all along.  Now the well was the master of the duet, leading Sarah into a dream world she did not understand.

The witchy shadow that had been stirring the cauldron was absent, and there were no warriors--in the rain or elsewhere.  The dockworkers had an almost sub-human appearance, as their brows jutted more morosely forward, and their shoulders were bulkier with thoughtless strength than they had ever seemed exchanging cigarettes and small talk while loitering outside of the Union Hall.  Sarah began to look around for the watery soldiers.  Although grim, something about their presence had been a comfort to her, and even though she had been disturbed to see herself as one of them when she had glanced into the well and saw her reflection.  The blue glow from the well, instead of shedding a clarifying light on the clearing in the ash grove, actually obscured Sarah's vision, making her put up her hand and squint to try and see what was in the surrounding area.

The foot of the trees on the far side of the well had taken on an unusual character, she thought.  They seemed to be actual feet--but of an incredibly large size.  The height of someone with those feet would have to be....  Sarah sent her gaze upward toward the tops of the trees.  And all along the way, she saw a sinewiness to the trees that she hadn't ever noticed before.  It seemed the trees were flexing against the prevalence of the wind, moving and doing as they wished, and not as the wind suggested.

In the upper boughs of the tree Sarah studied first, a long twirl of branches seemed to form a great green mustache, with two stars shining behind a leafy face for eyes.  Sarah questioned what she saw, but then heard terrible, rushing, roaring laughter pour down from the figure above her.  It was alive!  And not as a tree is alive, but as a moving creature would be.  Sarah stared from tree to tree--and in each tree a different figure appeared.  some with long beards, and some with strong, ugly features like a nightmare, and some beautiful women, with long flowing leafy gowns.  For the trees of this ash grove had not shed their foliage yet, and clothed the night time figures with leafy dress.

"Adsagsona Aerfen Aeron Agrona Afagddu," sang the well distinctly.  Sarah could hear each word, and knew somehow that they were the names of the figures around and above the well.  Sarah sang the response, joining the well in calling forth what she knew now had to be the Gods of Autumn. 

"Adsagsona Aerfen Aeron Agrona Afagddu," she sang, and the figures pulled themselves from the trees as if from a net.  They had a shadowy blue substance now, as though drawn in a outline by the blue glow of the well.  Soon, they were fully fleshed.  Sarah continued to sing, fascinated by the gargantuan figures moving slowly around her.  One goddess was combing out her hair and putting it into a giant braid.  Several of the male gods were flexing their limbs, as if arising from a long sleep.  They all had an active look in their eyes, as if they had been long dreaming of this night and were not prepared to let it pass idly by.

Two of the gods bowed deeply to each other and then began to dance, a long, courteous, and even grave dance to the music swelling up from the glow-hole in the ground.  Other gods stooped to take a closer look at the strikers standing numbly around the well.  One of these smiled when he saw the stupor on their faces.

Sarah felt calm, yet alarmed.  She felt herself walking toward the well.  The well was somehow the key to it all.  If only she could understand what the well was about, she could understand what was happening around her--and to her for that matter.  She was impelled by a sudden overwhelming curiosity to see if she would appear in the reflection at the bottom of the well as a warrior again.  Would her face be weighted down by a steel bullet-cap?  Or would the fish-scale armor be running from her shoulders instead of her filmy nightgown?  Where had those warriors gone who had stood such grim guard in the rain the other day?  

Sarah placed her hands on the edge of the well.  The runic letters were glowing too--outlining the names of the awakened gods in the same burning blue that had swollen above the well like one half of a beach ball.  They shocked her with their intensity, and a strange, strong current passed from the names into her hands.  Sarah felt that the hair was standing up from her head.  She scrambled to the top of the well, and leaped in.

Sarah fell and fell into sudden silence, thinking only that she had heard a heavy "Oi!" as she fell.

END OF CHAPTER NINE

 



Chapter Ten

"A Long Talk at the Table"

Sarah didn't remember exactly how she came to be walking home at dawn with Barnabas Burrbuckle.

"Here we are," said Barnabas, stopping by the side of the cobblestone walk that led to the Tones' house, and politely holding the gate open for Sarah.

"Thank you, Mr. Burrbuckle," said Sarah.  "I'm still not sure how I got into that well.  Or even why I was down there."

"This is no time for filling yourself with worries, Sarah.  You get inside, and let's hope no one saw us walking up together."

"But why?  You rescued me."

"There's things afoot that're nay so good, lass.  Just forget all about this well business and keep to yer schoolwork.  Keepin' low's the best thing a young girl like you can do."

"Oh, Mr. Burrbuckle.  I'm grateful to you for your pulling me out of the well, but I'm not about to forget about those humongous creatures stepping out of the trees.  Where are they now?  You know you saw them as well as I did."

"Heard the trees groanin' and swayin' as if the devil were in 'em.  But, no, lass, I didna see no gods nor goddesses stomping about the clearin'."

"But they were there just as you and I are here!  Surely, you saw the dockworkers milling around.  What were they doing there?"

"I didna know myself.  That's why I was there.  A group of men started goin' all star-eyed and broke away from the Union meeting last night, as if some strange song had got in their heads.  Jonas and Steerwell among 'em;  and they're as level a pair of lads as any two I know.  I just followed 'em to see what was what.  I don't like such doings in town.  What's usual is what's best, I always say."

"So you were there because you followed the other workers?  Did you hear whatever was dragging them to the well?"

"This is no talk for daylight, Miss.  Nor for nighttime neither for one as young as yerself.  Now go on in and have yer Granny fix you up summat that'll stick to your ribs."

"Well, you come in, too, then.  I'm not going to eat a fine big breakfast while you go hungry.  You've been on strike a good long while now."

"We've the strike fund still, Sarah.  It's not much, but we're well short of starvation.  The lads at Cwilliam's Pub are a testament to that.  Its a shame to see such fine blokes going overboard as they're doing."

"Granny Pansy always makes enough to feed double.  And she'd never let me live it down if I didn't at least have you in for breakfast after rescuing me."

Barnabas Burrbuckle seemed to consider this argument.  His great brows drew together with slow concentration, and he surveyed the surrounding countryside surreptitiously, as if gaging some obscure risk of discovery.  Finally, a backfire coming from the direction of the Vonnegaunts' house decided him, and he hustled Sarah in through the kitchen door with no more ado than one might herd a wandered calf.

The sight that Sarah saw next made her gasp out loud, and back into Mr. Burrbuckle with a sharpness that forced a small "oof!" from his lips.  Sarah's eyes widened just as if she had seen a ghost.  Mr. Burrbuckle put his hands on her shoulders with an admonition.  "Steady on, girl.  Tha's nobbut yer Granny there."

And indeed, there in the kitchen was an old woman stirring a large iron cauldron on the electric stove with a out-sized ladle and wearing a tall conical hat with a wide, black brim.  In fact, it was a witch's hat.  And under that hat was Sarah's Granny Pansy.  A look of unusual concern was on her face, and she addressed the pair of intruders without changing the pace of her stirring one whit.  

"Good to see you, Sarah," said Granny Pansy in an unperturbed tone of voice.  "What brings you to our home at this early hour, Mr. Burrbuckle?"

"Oh, just happens as I was passin' by, and seen your granddaughter about without her hat.  Seems a bit of a chilly day to be going about without one."

"That's an understatement.  Sarah, why're you running around outside in your nightgown?"

Sarah didn't know what to say.  The smell coming from the cauldron was anything but an edible delight, which usually accompanied whatever Granny Pansy did in the kitchen.  Instead, this smelled more like old laundry that was being boiled down before being recycled as a mess of cleaning rags.

"Granny Pansy, are you a... a... a witch?"

"Sit down, child."

Barnabas swayed back and forth on his feet, turning his cap in his hands.  "Well, Ma'am, I mun be goin'."

"You sit down too, Barnabas.  There's a good deal of the truth to go through before you leave."

"Well, Ma'am, I don't know.  Mr. and Mrs. Tone may not take a likin' to it."

"Daffiyd and Gwynnith have been out all night on Committee business.  And there'll be plenty of good breakfast to go through before we're done as well.  You just sit down right there."

"Yes, Mum," said Barnabas, finding a seat a quick as he could.

"Sarah, we have some important things to discuss.  Take your coat down off the peg and put it on.  And then fetch the frying pan from under the counter."

"Yes, Ma'am," replied Sarah, her hand already reaching up to get her coat.

There was a long discussion around the table that morning as Granny Pansy asked many sharp questions of the pair.  They started with the night at the well, Barnabas telling how Sarah seemed to tip into the well as if she were asleep, and about his following the other dockworkers out to the old grove.  He thought perhaps some of the younger ones were on drugs, but knew that Old Jonas never touched even strong cider, and he was as zombified as the rest.  Granny Pansy nodded, and she and Sarah put together a large breakfast of eggs, pancakes, a rasher of fresh ham, and lots of other delicious things.  When they sat down to eat, Sarah told her story from the beginning, starting with the weird witch-shadow that had tried to choke her reflection it the well, and which had made her jump when she saw Granny as she and Barnabas first came in through the kitchen door.  Sarah told all she could remember, although much of what had happened to her was like trying to remember a fevered dream.  

Sarah told about finding her brother Gilman's runestone necklace, which made her Granny Pansy start unexpectedly.  And by the time Sarah was recounting about the watery rain men and seeing her armored reflection in the well, her Grandmother had begum to nod deeply to herself, as if she was just starting to understand some pattern in these disparate happenings.  And when Sarah told of the Gods of Autumn moving free of the ash trees in the grove, with Barnabas confirming only that he still couldn't shake the "queer feelin'" that had come over him, Granny Pansy merely kept a cautious look on her face, and then began to gather up the dishes.  At that point, Barnabas jumped up from the table, and took the plate from Granny Pansy's hands, and said he would do the job as well as she.  

"Those that eat free, must pay with courtesy.  That's what my Grammum always said,"  Barnabas offered, by way of explanation.

"Thank you, Barnabas," said Sarah, who was watching her Granny Pansy carefully.  Granny Pansy hadn't shaken off her serious countenance yet.  It was as if she were looking far far into a distance the others could only guess at.  Although that may have been partly because of the deep shadow the witch's hat cast over her face.

"Well," said Granny Pansy at last.  "Its my fault, and no mistake."  

"Granny, what you talking about?  How can any of these things possibly be your fault?"

"I've known for a long time that my family was a target for those who might mean to do us ill," she continued cryptically.  Sarah had no idea what her Grandmother was talking about.  It made even less sense to her than the great green gods of the grove stepping out of the trees.

"That pendant you're now wearing, I first gave to your brother Gilman.  I knew he would be wanted by those I speak of.  When Gilman was killed in the war, I thought that the story had passed out of our family history.  Your Father never had any strong interest, and after her met your Mother, he had even less.  Gilman's death made her positively hostile to the whole idea of magic.  I had no idea that the warrior crown could pass from brother to sister."

"What does the pendant have to do with it?"  said Sarah, holding her hand over her heart where the pendant lay.

"That pendant invokes Adsagsona, mistress and weaver of charms.  Its purpose is to disguise its wearer from prying eyes.  I gave it to Gilman, hoping that he would be able to go unrecognized by our enemies."

"Our enemies!" exclaimed Sarah.  "Who would they be?  I didn't know there were any enemies in Traeshurstaene.  Do you mean spies of the country Gilman went off to fight?"

"No, Sarah.  I do not mean our nation's enemies.  I mean our enemies, the followers of Agrona and Afagddu.  The Mistress of Slaughter, and the Master of the Utter Darkness."

END OF CHAPTER TEN

 



Chapter Eleven

"Further In"

Granny, Sarah, and Barnabas (who seemed more resigned than surprised to hear that magical enemies resided in Traeshurstaene) discussed the possible implications of Granny Pansy's insights.  Granny Pansy backed off of her assertion that "enemies" were aware of Sarah.  Perhaps Sarah had merely roused the old magic inadvertently.  And then again, perhaps not.  Granny felt they needed to be certain before they could proceed.  She hadn't lived in the town herself in several years.  She would have to get "the lay of the land," as she said before she could know how to proceed in these magical matters.  That's what she had been doing with the cauldron, trying to create a window into current events--a sort of way of going "through the mirror," as she put it.  But all she had been able to discern was a fog in the other realm, dim activity taking place in a thickening mist.  An occasional figure bobbed closer to the surface now and again, but not with any reliable clarity.

"You're quite strong yourself, child," Granny noted.  "Your voice has grown into a surgical dagger, and can cut through in any direction.  Such a skill, used without training, might on its own arouse the Gods of Autumn, or hurry along some sequence of events."

"My voice?" inquired Sarah.  "You mean just because I was singing their names, the Gods of Autumn are reappearing?"

"Well, it may be child.  The old gods are always just under the surface of things, anxious for any chance to break back into the world of active mischief."

"Can that truly be so?" doubted Barnabas.  "I didna see naught, as I told ye.  And Sarah herself was sort of tranced, as if sleepwalkin'."

"Hmm," mused Granny Pansy.  "The gods' careless havoc is just the sort of sowing of confusion that our enemies would delight in."

"Are you sure you're not leap-froggin' yer guesses, Gram Tone?"

"No," she admitted.  "I am not sure.  I'm not sure at all.  What we need is some hard intelligence, and not this frivolous guesswork."

Granny Pansy had put her hat on a chair and was pacing the kitchen nervously, hands clasped behind her back.  The sight of her Granny Pansy looking so uncertain was in many ways the scariest thing Sarah had seen yet.

"Well," said Granny Pansy finally.  "Why don't you and Abbey go play outside after you've had a shower and cleaned up from your misadventure, young lady.  And when you do go outside, wear that pendant on the outside of your blouse.  Barnabas, keep an eye on those two, would you please?  I have to go into town for a little while and pick up some supplies and whatnot.  I'll take Dar with me."

"Granny Pansy, can't I come into town with you?  I don't want hang around and play with Abbey."

"Why not, she's your cousin.  And you've hardly had any time to get to know each other.  Why, when I was a girl, my cousin Charlie and I had all sorts of adventures all over Traeshurstaene.  Those are memories that I still value, and lessons that I could've learned in no other way, my dear."

"All right," moped Sarah, who knew better than to argue with her grandmother.

"I'll keep an eye on the pair o' them," promised Burrbuckle.  

* * * * 

"We'll go no farther than the Crossamum Falls," Barnabas Burrbuckle informed Sarah and Abbey as their Grandmother drove away in her son's ramshackle station wagon.  "I've promised yer Grammum."

Sarah and Abbey looked about as thrilled as a pair of pooches in the dog pound.

"Barnabas, as long as we're going to be spending the day playing together, would it be all right if I called up Missy and had her come over too?"

"And Shelly too," added Abbey quickly.

"Yes, and Shelly too," agreed Sarah.

"Well, I don't know," thought Barnabas aloud.  "Yer Grammum didna say one way or t'other about having more friends come by."

"Well, if she didn't say ..." began Sarah.

"Then its up to you," finished Abbey.

Barnabas looked at the empty driveway where Ganny Pansy had just left.  

"Its just a couple of friends," said Sarah persuasively.

* * * *

The four girls were chatting away like a brood of birds as they skipped along ahead of the lumbering Barnabas Burrbuckle.  Occasionally a ripple of giggles would flit through them as they enjoyed the cold afternoon.  They all had good hats and coats on, but Barnabas made sure that Sarah kept her pendant plainly visible on the outside of her clothing.

The afternoon went by before any of them were aware of it, including Barnabas, who enjoyed watching over the girls with a sort of Dutch uncle's indulgence.  Before any of them expected, they could hear the gurgling sound of Crossamum Falls just beyond the next turn in the road.  It was that very waterfall from which the fabled Aedh was said to have leaped when her true love was slain in battle.

"Look!" noticed Missy Quicknass, running ahead and away from the path toward a low stone wall that ran along the dirt roadway.  "An overturned turtle!  Let's get him right side up again."

The other girls gathered to Missy's side swiftly.  They were examining the markings on the underside of the turtle's shell.  It was a very large turtle, at least two and a half feet in diameter.  Barnabas looked down with a mild curiosity, making sure that this wasn't a snapping turtle that might mistake a little girl's finger for a tasty worm.

The turtle's slow legs rotated at the four quarters of its shell, churning mildly in the crisp autumn air.  "There's where he went awry," noted Barnabas, pointing at a sloped rock in front of the tortoise, leading through what seemed to be a large break in the stone wall.  "He fell off of his sunning stone, I've little enough doubt."

The girls knelt down by the opening, trying unsuccessfully to shove the turtle over, while Barnabas got to his knees, and lifting the heavy tortoise easily, set it on its legs in the grass.  Once having regained its freedom, the turtle set off sluggishly.  Just as the children were about to set off down the path again themselves, out-racing the turtle in a few skipping strides, Barnabas caught sight of something that disturbed him through the crevice in the wall.

"He walks kind of like Mr. Burrbuckle," said Missy, looking at the turtle.  The other girls all laughed.  They were in high spirits, thrilled to be only under the permissive purview of Barnabas.

"Oh," chuckled Abbey, doing a fair, if squeaky, impression of Burrbuckle herself.  "I wouldna say he's all that slow-footed."

"Hush now," came in Barnabas in a harsh whisper.  "There's them that we wouldna want ta hear us just across the way now."

The girls immediately fell silent and crowded close to the wall.  Five pairs of eyes looked across an empty backyard at an ungainly Victorian house that perched on a sandy hilltop, with one crooked, bare tree beside it.  Four long shadows marched down the slope toward Barnabas and the children, crossing to a basement entrance at the side of the house in the gathering dusk.  Two black cars had moments before swum into view along the noisy gravel drive.  It was the loud sound of the cars' rapid braking that had first alerted Barnabas to the fact that someone was on the other side of the wall.  There looked to be three adults and a child.  Between two of the larger figures, a long box was being handled.  It seemed to be quite heavy, causing the men to walk with deeply bent knees.  All of them could hear the basement entrance clang shut with a shudder.  After a few more moments, when no one else appeared from the cars, the girls began to pepper Barnabas with questions.

"Who is that?" started Abbey.

"Why must we stay secret from them?" added Shelly, looking bemused by Barnabas Burrbuckle's continuing to stoop lower than the stone wall.

"Are they the enemy?" asked Sarah tensing up visibly in her crouch.

"What enemies are you talking about, Sarah," said Missy, clearly astonished to hear such a word.  The other girls turned surprised faces toward Sarah, who continued to look intently at Barnabas, hoping against hope that he would tell her "No."  For clearly, these must be the very people they were warned against at the breakfast table.  And for all his doubting then, Barnabas had taken every syllable of Granny Pansy's warnings with utter seriousness.  When Sarah didn't answer, the girls all turned toward Barnabas too, and looked up into his large, kind but impassive face like so many flowers turned toward the sun.

"Well, now," said Barnabas slowly.  "We'd best be on toward home."

The girls waited to see if Barnabas would add anything to this laconic summation.  But when he continued silent, and made as if to turn back up the road, the girls all erupted in a sing-song of protest.

"Hush now.  Hush now!" Barnabas commanded.  But it was too late. None of the girls would stay quiet until they at least got some answers.  None, that is, except Sarah, who looked fixedly through the gathering shadows at the narrow house up the slope.

"I may as well tell you what is there, so that you'll all agree to go back quietly," Barnabas began.  "A peep's as good as a roar when yer bein' hunted, me Da always said."

Barnabas gave the girls an abbreviated lowdown on what had been happening to Sarah.

"You mean all that's happened to you, and you haven't breathed a word to me!" said Missy, thoroughly offended.  "Well, you won't keep me out of your adventures any longer, I'll tell you."

"Adventures?" said Sarah, incredulous at her friend's attitude.  "Are you insane?  You don't have any idea what those people in there could be doing."

"Well, neither do you," Missy countered reasonably.  "And neither do any of us.  What do we know about magic?"

The other girls looked at Missy with blank faces.

"What we need to do," she continued, also reasonably, "is investigate."

In moments, all the girls had taken up Missy's cause.  All except for Sarah, that is.  Sarah stood quietly looking at the house, now black in the spreading twilight.  The full moon was on the wan.  The only light coming from the house was a twinkling glimmer in a single basement window.

"Well, Sarah," began Barnabas.  "You mun say.  Its your fate more'n ours what goes on in yonder house.  I'll abide by your decision.  Toward home, or to the house?"

Sarah didn't turn or make any gesture that acknowledged Mr. Burrbuckle's words.  She continued to contemplate the house in the distance.  Finally, she said, quite simply, but with a look the seemed as if she was about to vomit, "the house."

"Bravely said, Sarah" approved Missy.

"More'n you are like to know," said Barnabas with a quiet respect.  Sarah began to move through the crack in the wall, and Barnabas put his hand out in front of her.  "No, that's not to happen.  I'll go first, crawlin' and sidewinding up the slope to the winder.  When I get there, I'll signal for you lot to come on up after."  The girls all nodded in unison.  "If I don't get fried by some wizard's lightning bolt, that is," he ended with a grim smile.

"If anything happens, anything at all, even if its just a fox slippin' through the underbrush, you lot just high-tail it back to the main road, and flag down a car to take you all home."

And with that, the ungainly laborer put his cap in the front pocket of his jacket, and slithered through the narrow opening just as gamely as a snake.  The girls watched him carefully, and were impressed by the fact that, even though they were watching him the entire time, they still lost track of him in the high grass and shadows no less than three times.  They were all surprised when, several long minutes later, they saw his outline waving his cap in the flickering light thrown by the basement window.  The girls threw themselves down in the grass and tried their best to imitate the expert infiltration that Barnabas had just demonstrated for them.

The girls lay in a deflated semi-circle around Barnabas, flat on the ground, their legs splayed.  They had chosen their spots carefully, and if anyone had looked out from that basement window, the most they would have thought they saw were ten blinking fireflies clinging to the frosted grass.

Inside the basement, Mr. Plimsoul and his lady friend from the Political Committee meeting were bowing with great concentration over the long box that had been carried in earlier.  It was set on a pair of sawhorses, and was as slick and black as a coffin.  Around the pair, and around the coffin-like box, strode Mr. Hecatomb and a small, very ugly, man.  They were holding braziers of incense, which let our thin streams of scented smoke that penetrated even the night air outside where the girls and Barnabas lay watching.

"What is that stuff made of," hissed Missy Quicknass, unable to stop herself from commenting.  "It smells like burnt rattlesnakes."

Just at that moment, the woman in the basement straightened up.  She looked around with a whiplike speed.  She seemed to ask a question imperiously of all within the basement.  Her boa, the same she'd had on the other week, writhed with a sinewy agitation as if alive.

Everyone on the lawn held their breaths.  It would not do to have such a woman notice your existence.  

Mr. Plimsoul turned his head, and seemed to say a few sharp words over his shoulder.  The woman looked subtly annoyed by his insolence, but after a considered moment, snapped her own command at the dwarf and then turned back to face the box with Plimsoul.

The dwarf put down his brazier laboriously on the floor of the basement, and then stepped nimbly over to a corner neither the girls nor Barnabas had a view of, and then returned with a peeling ladder which he put up against the wall with a startling clack.  In a moment, they could all see his hideous face pressed up against the basement window.  After a short struggle with the latch, the window opened inward;  a brown cloud of smoke huffed from the low window.  Missy coughed involuntarily, suppressing it as much as she was able.  

"Gar," said the dwarf.  "Its a night to catch leeches in."  

None of those lying in the grass knew why such a night was a good one to catch leeches in, but apparently, the dwarf would rather have the room full of the hideous smoke they were generating in the ornate braziers than the clean night air.  Now, at least, the children and Barnabas could hear the conversation happening in the basement with relative ease.

END OF CHAPTER ELEVEN

 



Chapter Twelve

"When the Moon Melts"

The dwarf's hideous face retreated from the basement window, an array of grimy grey whiskers and a radish nose.

	"When the moon melts

	And the Gods of Autumn roam

	Evil and good are equally felt

	And nothing certain is known,"

Chanted Mr. Plimsoul and the lady together.  Wild shadows flickered around them, and they gestured toward the shut box, black and shiny as a beetle's back.  They seemed to be trying to compel the box to open or spontaneously erupt in flame...or something.

"Casket of Augersaal, I command you: open!"  Mr. Plimsoul shouted, making a weird gesture at the box.

"By Neamiahas' eye, by Qyudditch's kin, I say: unfasten!"  the lady hissed, her boa and her long arms gesturing in the flickering light of the braziers.

The casket hopped on the sawhorses once, as if a person inside were being tickled or kicked, and then was still.  A thin jet of purple smoke sizzled from one end of the casket and then stopped.

Mr. Plimsoul and the elegant, scary lady stopped in their tracks.  Their shoulders unhunched, and their arms dropped back down from their gestures of invocation.  Mr. Hecatomb and the dwarf continued to solemnly circle the pair of practitioners, bearing their braziers before them.  Mr. Hecatomb, tall and fat in his red Ridgefield vest, holding his brazier in front of his out-sized belly, and the dwarf, a sock cap on his wiry head, holding his brazier above him on the tips of his dirty fingers.

"Put those down, you fools," snapped Mr. Plimsoul.  "There's no more to be done with this tonight."

Mr. Hecatomb and the dwarf stopped like clockwork automatons.  Mr. Hecatomb heaved a great sigh of relief.  The dwarf pulled a half-chewed cheroot from under his hat and began chewing it meditatively.

"Dash our luck!" Mr. Plimsoul cursed.  "This was the optimum hour for the task."

"Perhaps it was not our luck, but our skill that was wanting."

At this the basement filled with instant tension.  Even those outside could feel it, and tensed up.  The dwarf stopped nibbling at his cheroot in mid-chew, and even Mr. Hecatomb stood up straighter.

Mr. Plimsoul let the comment pass, but his face darkened, and he looked as though he had been slapped in the face.  

"Perhaps," he managed.

"Well, Simon," said the lady soothingly.  "At least the gods are roused.  The town will have much news of them, and much to-do because of them."

"The Gods of Autumn," Mr. Plimsoul countered, "are utterly uncontrollable.  They were not even a part of our original plan.  They are beyond our scope, and beyond our power to manipulate."

"We must take such comfort in their chaos as we can."

The woman could see there was no consoling Mr. Plimsoul, and she had very little interest in doing so in any case.  She turned away from him and lit a cigarette.

"Eva, I'm sorry.  Its just that everything is so nearly in place for our ultimate triumph."

"Do not speak of triumph," Eva hissed, clearly disturbed at his words.  "It is not in our power to either grant or deny."

"Yes, Eva.  You're right, of course."  And then he seemed to speak into the air: "It is the powers that move through us, and not we who command them."

That's how Granny Pansy often spoke, Sarah thought.  It also reminded her of how the workers on the inlet discussed the treacherous rip currents that course just inches beneath the water's black surface.  Sarah was absorbed in watching Eva make her cigarette smoke into the shape of asps which fought and struck at each other before dissipating.  Sarah was already closest to the opening, and now inched just a smidgen closer.  She could have easily thrust her hand through the open window.

The dwarf was chewing his cheroot again, and Mr. Hecatomb seemed to be casting about for something to fidget with besides his pocket watch.

"Cover those braziers," ordered Mr. Plimsoul absent-mindedly.

The dwarf, quicker than Mr. Hecatomb by a long chalk, covered the braziers with a pair of bronzen lids.  And as quick as that, the room was plunged in utter darkness.

Those outside could hear footsteps tromping up the basement stairs.  Were they all coming up?  Would they be headed back to their cars?  Or were one or two still down in the dark of the basement?  If they tried to move away from the house and made any noise, they might well get caught out.  And then what would happen?

Barnabas made a commando gesture for the children to roll away from the house and back down the hill to the wall.  Abbey and Shelly, farthest from the house, began to move at once, and Barnabas followed them.  They were out of earshot of the house just in time to hear the front door slam.  One of the cars started up and a pair of headlights pulled away from the hill, down the opposite side from where they were gathered at the wall.

Barnabas kept the children on the same side of the wall as the house.  Abbey almost protested to ask why they weren't walking back up the road right away when she heard a car vroom down the roadway they'd been strolling when they had come to the overturned turtle.  Headlights blazing, the car squealed around a corner and was gone.  Barnabas and the two girls hopped over the wall and dusted themselves off, ready to head back the half mile or so to the Tones' home.

"Where's Sarah?" asked Barnabas in a whisper.

"Missy's missing too," noted Shelly.

"This inna good," drawled Barnabas Burrbuckle.  

He looked desperately back up the slope to see if he could spot the two girls.  But there was nothing to be seen on the dark swaths of night grass.  Barnabas could see some evidence of their passage down the hill, but counted only three trails from the house to the wall.  He squinted at the basement. It was difficult to tell if Sarah and Missy were still by the house.  The hole of the basement window seemed as large as a maw.

"You two stay right here," Barnabas began.  "I'm goin' back up there."

But just then, the lights in the main part of the house all came on at once.  There was no way someone as noticeable as Barnabas could make his way up to the house across an open field without being spotted.  He plopped back down anxiously, leaning his great back against the wall heavily.

"We mun wait and see what happens," he said resignedly, his face looking as sad as a punished dog's.

Meanwhile, back at the house, when Abbey and the others had begun rolling down the hill, Sarah had waited until they were all partly away from the basement window, and then she had squirmed through the opening.  If Missy Quicknass hadn't seen Sarah's foot disappearing into the basement, she would have kept rolling down the hill with Barnabas and the rest.  Instead, she stopped herself in mid-roll and then elbowed her way right back to the window.  She held her breath and tried to peer into the midnight opening.  It was no use.  There were some sounds coming from the basement, but Missy couldn't tell what they were, or how many people might still be in there.  There were no voices, she was sure.  But that's all that she was sure of.

Missy looked over her shoulder back down the hill.  When it seemed that Abbey, Barnabas, and Shelly were all down by the wall, Missy pried the basement window back open, which Sarah's foot had helped snap shut as she went through.  Missy strained for more information, some recognizable sound, anything.  Nothing came out of the basement but more clouds of the horrendous dead rattlesnake incense.  So, Missy held her nose, and plunged into the dark.

END OF CHAPTER TWELVE

 



Chapter Thirteen

"Underneath"

Missy felt two cold, wet hands clamp down around her mouth just as she lowered herself into the basement and her feet touched the invisible cement flooring.

"Shhh," a voice hissed in her ear.  And then the hands moved away from her mouth.  Missy, for all her temerity, almost screeched right then.

"Sarah, what're you thinking, coming in here?"

"Let's look around," Sarah replied, moving away from Missy and touching things lightly that lay scattered around the basement.

"But I can't see anything," Missy protested softly.

"Your eyes will adjust."

Indeed, Missy's eyes sharpened and she began to be able to make out dim shapes in the musty room.  When the lights came on in the rest of the house, reflected light from outside combined with light sifting down through chinks in the floorboards provided more than enough illumination for them to scout out the contents of the basement.  They could also hear the adults in the house moving about above their heads and talking, although they couldn't make out what they were saying.

The place was littered with intriguing detritus.  Elaborately carved candles three feet stood on tall wooden spindles covered with stiff drippings.  A wall of cubbyholes sat behind a rough stone altar that was covered in runic symbols and which had been worn smooth with use and age.  Missy shivered to consider what kind of sacrifices might have been offered up there.  Many of the cubbyholes held rolled up scrolls made of parchment or goatskin.  Sarah and Missy both avoided the black box atop the sawhorses.  It seemed to radiate an ill will all of its own.

"Oh my God!  Look at this!"  Missy pointed to a mummified severed hand, stuck on a sturdy pin over a board marked with the degrees of the compass.  North, South, East and West.  Right now, the mummified hand was pointing South East.  That was the direction in which Sarah's house lay.  "This is creepy."

Over their heads they could hear a big argument roiling into a yelling match.  Evidently, tempers hadn't cooled since the unsuccessful invocation of whatever it was that lay sealed in the black box. 

"I tell you, we no longer need the Casket of Augersaal!"

"But our whole effort has hinged on acquiring it!"

"With the girl and the gods, we have all that we need!"

"That's patent nonsense!  Madam P. would never let us have her!"

"Oh, its not up to Madam P., you ignoramus.  We merely have to convince---"

The voices evidently took their argument into the kitchen, for they grew less comprehensible, but no less loud.

The girls looked at each other for a moment, and then continued their exploration of the reeking basement.

Sarah discovered a purple glass globe filled with smoke.  When she touched the glass, the smoke began to shift and form a shape inside the ball.  After a moment, it solidified into a small purple harp being plucked by ghostly purple fingers.  Sarah thought that she recognized the tune, even though it was nothing they had ever sung in choir or at the church her family used to attend.  

"Missy," she asked quietly.  "Do you recognize this song?"

Missy trotted over from her ghoulish fascination with the severed hand and bent close to the globe to listen.  She repeated the tune softly as the fingers played.  Unconsciously, Sarah began to do the same.  Soon, the song from the globe began to change, responding to their singing, it seemed.  Their eyes lifted from the globe, and Sarah began to substitute words for the notes in her part of the song.  She didn't understand what the words could mean, but that didn't stop her from singing, although very softly:

	"When the moon melts

	And the Gods of Autumn roam

	Evil and good are equally felt

	And nothing certain is known."

The harp began to glow within the globe, dimly, and then bright enough to read a scroll by.  If the girls hadn't been so entranced by the song, they might have stopped singing for fear that the light might give them away.  They could see each other's faces turning purple in the glow.  They weren't sure what the song was doing, if anything, other than exciting the little hand in the globe.  Their eyes were becoming glazed, as if they were under some sort of enamoring spell themselves.

Behind them, so quietly that they did not notice it at all, the Casket of Augersaal was beginning to waken.  A thin line appeared around the edges of the casket, green like a Christmas trim, but this was an eerie shade of green, the color of a sick toad.  The casket lid began to widen away from the rest of the box in gaunt imitation of a sickly grin.  

The rest of the house was now so silent that the pair could have heard a soundless owl land.  The girls put their hands out, as if to warm them by the glow of the purple ball.  Now they had shut their eyes, and their voices twined together in a seamless harmony, the harp leading.  The years of choir practice together helped them to block out all distractions and concentrate on the unbidden song, whose words came from they knew not where.  And then, without warning, another energy entered the song.  Not another voice, for there was no more singing than before, which Sarah and Missy, even in their distracted state, would have noticed.  Just another energy.  The casket behind them clamped shut like an oyster when disturbed--looking to all the outward world tight and lifeless.  But still the song beat on with and altered energy.  

Missy was the first to sense that something was radically wrong, and that they should hardly be singing in the basement of Mr. Plimsoul's gang's house in any case.  She came to her senses, opening her eyelid just a slit.  What she saw in that final moment stayed with her for the rest of her life.

Eva had her arms out, akimbo, ready to seize Sarah by the throat.  Each end of her snake-boa was writhing with an evil ecstasy, moving in and out just inches away from Sarah's face, wide mouths agape, and fangs literally dripping with venom.  The song clotted in Missy's throat, but the scream she ached to express just wouldn't come.  

Sarah sang on obliviously.  It was not until a dark hand from over Missy's right shoulder grabbed the purple ball, turning the harp back into a piff of mist, that Sarah opened her eyes with a jolt.  The snakes wrapped themselves around her throat, and Eva's slender hands held themselves tightly over Sarah's mouth.

Missy screamed.

"That's enough."  A rough hand slapped Missy in the face.  "We will have silence."

Mr. Plimsoul turned her around in front of him.  Missy could see the closed casket over his left shoulder, far in the periphery of her vision.  It seemed as if something had changed about it, but she wasn't sure just what.  He seemed somewhat surprised to see Sarah and Eva materialize out of the blurry darkness in front of Missy.  But he didn't let this surprise show more than momentarily.  Only Eva registered it.

"Missy Quicknass," Mr. Plimsoul continued, recognizing her as one of the students from Ridgefield High.  "What brings you to this house?  Answer quick, Quicknass.  And tell the truth."

Missy grew rigid in his grip.  She didn't know what to say;  she had no idea what was really going on.  Behind her, Missy heard Sarah struggle from Eva's grasp, freeing her mouth and saying.  "She followed me.  I sneaked over here, and she followed me."

Now Eva spoke, annoyed that a child could elude her grip.  "Do tell, child.  And why, then, did you come breaking in?"

Suddenly, Missy and Sarah simply seemed to be in the hands of two neighborhood grown-ups.  Despite the incantations and the grumbling dwarf, Mr. Plimsoul and Eva seemed to be just two ticked off adults who were upset by a pair of meddling kids interrupting their private argument.  As usual, Sarah didn't want to give any authority figure a straight answer.  But, in this case, she didn't really know the answer herself.  Why had she broken in, really?

"I don't know."

Mr. Plimsoul look skeptical.  "Come, Sarah, isn't it?  That answer will hardly do."

"But I don't know.  Not really.  We saw you arrive with that, that box, and we were curious."

"So, you were spying as well."

"No!" Sarah tried to dig herself out.  "We were walking down the roadway, and we just happened to see you pull up."

Missy refused to be cowed.  "You and that ugly dwarf.  Why did you grab us?" 

Mr. Plimsoul fielded an answer.  "How were we to know that you weren't a pair of desperate hooligans?  As you have discovered, there are a great many peculiar and precious antiques in this house.  And there's been a lot of looting and tomfoolery in town.  No doubt you've heard of some of the dockworkers' mischief from the radio in the past weeks.  You were in the cafeteria when Bart Hecatomb reported rioting from the window ledge."

"Yes," admitted Sarah, who with her own recent experiences of being misunderstood and marginalized--especially by that nasty Bart Hecatomb--understood some of Mr. Plimsoul's tetchiness when it came to his property.

Eva let Sarah go entirely.  She spoke to her with a honey smoothness, and her boa returned to such quiescence that even Missy began to doubt that it had snarled and nipped at her friend just a few feet away just a few moments ago.

"Come, dear one," she began, each word more dulcet than the last, "let us go upstairs, you and I.  We have much to discuss.  Besides, it is past time for dinner. You must be hungry."

Sarah admitted that she hadn't eaten since breakfast.

"Your parents must be worried about your whereabouts."  Sarah thought that might not be true, but that her Granny Pansy undoubtedly was worried.

"If they're back from running around for the Political Committee," she offered.

Eva and Mr. Plimsoul shared a small, satisfied smile.

"Sarah!" snipped Missy.  "Don't talk about your parents like that--not to these people."

"Sarah, darling," purred Eva.  "Come up stairs with me."

Sarah and Eva turned to go up the stairs.  As they did, Mr. Plimsoul's hand went back over Missy Quicknass' mouth.  He had never loosened his grip on her arm after all.

END OF CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 



Chapter Fourteen

"Dinner with a Daggonnath"

Eva lead Sarah swiftly up the stairs.  As they passed the entrance to the kitchen, Eva called out.  "Dinner, Boroshkovic, and quickly."  Then they turned a short corner into a surprisingly luxurious dining room. 

A long table set with black napkins, black candles already burning, a black paisley-patterned tablecloth, silver flatware, and a bowl of gorgeous black olives sat in the center of the room.  The chairs around the table were upholstered in black velvet, and when Sarah sat down, she felt as though she were being allowed to sit in a queen's padded throne.  On opposite walls hung two portraits, draped with black bunting trimmed with fringe.  The portraits had a queer, unfinished quality, as if their subjects had posed for them while holding their breaths underwater.  They were portraits of a man and a woman.  The man, or boy, really, with a bold Roman nose, wore an outfit of colossal armor made entirely, it appeared, of gold.  He had a black feather floating from the top of his helmet, and a coat of arms that consisted of three rats jumping from a shipwreck in a lightning storm.  The motto emblazoned across the shield in blood-red letters was discernible as 'superstes ego.'  

The woman's portrait was more complex, more compelling.  For one thing, the woman in the portrait looked like it could easily have been a younger version of Eva herself.  She was supremely elegant, with a poise like a dagger.  Her ears, drawn out through her upswept hair, were pointed, as were the small teeth in her modest smile.  Other than that, she had on a timeless queen's regalia.  Black ostrich feathers served as an exotic backdrop behind her ebony throne.  Her royal dress was of black silk, gathered in bunches and drapes that only accentuated the utter smoothness and suavity of her form.  Even seated, the figure in the portrait seemed more coiled than resting.  But it was the eyes that you could not turn away from.  Black, black eyes like the dead of night, like the back side of the moon.  Like a moonless swamp at midnight: moist, mysterious, infinite.  There was a sense in the whole thing, not of menace, exactly, but of certainty.  That woman knew just what she wanted, and she had always, always gotten it.  If the table were not between Sarah and the painting, she might have stayed standing by the doorway herself so that she could effect a quick getaway.

"Do not be alarmed, Sarah."

Sarah looked from the portrait to Eva.  "But those...."

"Sit down, my dear.  The portrait behind me is of my ... great ... Grandmother.  She was regent for a sickly prince for many years.  It was painted in the old country.  Behind you is the prince."

They sat in silence for some time.  There was no sense of time passing as they sat.  They simply existed, here at this table, as they always had.  Sarah, and the woman across from her, Eva, waited for nothing, expected nothing, wanted for nothing, asked for nothing.  They simply were.  The room had a stuffed quality to it, as though the air itself were full.

Sarah almost jumped when the hideous dwarf appeared at her side, holding an ewer made of an enormous black rhinoceros horn that had been hollowed out.  

"It is to wash your hands, darling," Eva explained smoothly.

Sarah dipped her hands in the liquid.  It was not clear.  It was not water.  But whatever it was did have the effect of leaving her hands tingling, with a sense that they had been stripped clean.  Sarah dabbed her hands on the towel draped over the dwarf's crooked arm, which was thrust toward her for her convenience, and then folded her hands in her lap and resumed waiting.  The towel was black.  

When Eva was done with her ablutions, the dwarf dexterously shifted the rhino horn and towel to one hand, and poured out a tall glass of dark wine for Eva, and a smaller glass of wine for Sarah.

"Oh," said Sarah, stopping the dwarf from pouring with a gesture.  "I'm not allowed to drink."

Eva looked discontent with Sarah's response, and then disappointed.  "Surely you have had a swallow of wine at the communion rail."

"Well, yes, of course, but..."

"This is no different."  Eva nodded, and the dwarf poured Sarah's smaller glass half-full.

Sarah's eyes kept wandering back to the gorgeous portrait of the be-feathered woman again, her extraordinary eyes, and her....

"Her teeth, they seem so...."

"She was the last of the great Daggonnath."

"Daggonnath?"

"Do not concern yourself.  The Daggonnath are of an ancient lineage and tradition."

"In the old country."

"Yaaas, darling," drawled Eva.  She looked at Sarah closely, estimating how much to share with her, and whether the impact of that information would ultimately be beneficial.

"The Draggonnath are magical creatures, imbued with special and rare gifts.  These gifts, and their special, magical nature, often made them subject to ridicule and relegated to pariah status.  Do you understand?"

"I think so.  But she sees so, so royal too somehow."

"Very perceptive of you Sarah," Eva commented.  "Yes.  My Great-Grandmother befriended the king, and under his patronage she eventually became regent to the prince...when the king died unexpectedly.  Her friendship with the king benefited not only herself, but all Draggonnath.  Once again, they could raise their heads proudly in society, and were beholden to none.  It was as it had been in ancient times, when the respect due them was naturally granted."

"You mean, before she was, was regent, she was a nobody, an outcast."

"Exactly.  This was against the nature of things.  And when the opportunity arose to set this wrong to rights, she did not hesitate to do what was necessary."

"'Do what was necessary'... It sounds so, so harsh."  Sarah wondered what sort of things had been necessary for the woman in the portrait, the Draggonnath, to do to go from being a powerless nobody to the most important person in the old country except for the king.

"Justice may seem harsh to those who do not want it, darling."  Eva seemed to hesitate.  "But what would you be willing to do to see that the right thing happened, if you were given the chance to do something?"

Sarah reached into the olive dish and sucked the pimento out of one.  Silence again engulfed the room.  The dwarf left with his horn and his towel, dancing from foot to foot like a penguin.  A few moments later, he bustled in with an armload of black plates piled high with every kind of food.  Sarah's eyes grew large with hunger.  This wasn't dinner, this was a feast.

"Now, Sarah, let us eat and discuss things as they are, as they have been, and as they should be."

Sarah reached for the first scrumptious morsel on the plate before her.  "OK."

"Sarah, is there anything in your life that you are unhappy with?  Anything at all?"

Sarah's mind whirled with the injustices dealt out to her, especially lately.  From Bart's teasing her, to her cousins moving in and desecrating Gilman's room, to being excommunicated from the choir, to her parents ignoring her, to getting soaked in the bone-chilling rain.  But what she said was, "Um, no ma'am, not really."

"Sometimes," Eva continued smoothly, examining a piece of perfectly roasted meat which she pulled slowly apart as she talked, "life is not as we would wish it to be.  We imagine friendships to be lasting, parents to be consoling and supportive;  we expect our talents to be recognized and rewarded;  we may even, in some unspoken corner of our heart, hope to one day be loved."

Sarah was speechless.  This Eva was talking to her like a grown woman, and not treating her like some kid.  All the things she was talking about sounded just like Sarah felt.  Did Eva really hope to be loved?  

Eva sat there chewing calmly, looking at Sarah as though they had been intimate friends for years.

"Well," Sarah finally began.  "There might be a few things that aren't so great."

"Oh, darling."

Sarah pushed her feet against the pillow that had been thoughtfully placed under her chair by the dwarf.  We might be talking for awhile, she thought, and kicked off her shoes so she could enjoy the pillow more fully.  Sarah went on at some length about her woes, eating and taking a break from complaining sometimes to enjoy the forbidden wine that Eva had offered.  Eva offered her condolences, and never seemed bored or irritated with anything Sarah had to share.  When she was finally starting to run out of steam, Eva asked her a nettling sort of question.

"And what do you plan to do about these terrible things, darling Sarah?"

Sarah stopped chewing her dessert toffee.  She looked tiredly across the table at Eva.  All of the eating she had done had put her out a bit.  The rich foods weighed her down, as wonderful as they were.  Her mind was sluggish, and she was feeling perhaps a little confused.

"I don't know."

"Come now.  These problems will not settle themselves.  You are a capable, and, from what Eugenius Hecatomb tells me, a very very talented young woman.  Surely you must have thought of some approach to resolve your difficulties."

Sarah thought bleakly that the best way to "resolve" her difficulties was the same way she had gotten away from Bart back by the Mickleswift.  Then at least she wouldn't have to deal with the incessant demands everyone was always making on her.  Nobody would expect anything from her.  And if they did, it would most like be just they were expecting a punch in the nose as much as anything else.

"I don't want them to be around me."

"That's good.  You don't want them around."

"They're emotional vampires.  They suck my heart out.  It hurts." 

"Yes, darling.  It hurts, that's the problem.  I understand.  But what will you do about their hurting you?"

"Get them."

"You will get them.  What does that mean, 'get them.'  What do they deserve to have happen to them." 

"They should hurt.  Like they hurt me."

"Yes, perhaps they should hurt.  Perhaps they should be punished.  But tell me, Sarah, does a vampire feel pain?"

"No...?"

"No, they do not.  They are immune to our mortal frailties."

"Then what can I do?"  wailed Sarah, who was already starting to feel guilty for wishing so many people ill.  People that included her choir coach, her cousins, her parents, her dear Granny Pansy, and maybe even Gilman, who hadn't done anything to protect her from having these problems now. 

"Well, Sarah," suggested Eva in her softest voice, slowly.  "Perhaps simply removing these roadblocks from you path is all that is required.  One does not need to wish a roadblock to suffer to remove it.  Simply by setting it to the side of the road, it ceases being a roadblock at all.  It merely becomes a part of your past." 

"A part of my past," said Sarah dreamily.

"Precisely, and you are free to go forward to meet your destiny."

"My destiny," said Sarah, who felt a dim stirring in herself at the words. 

"Yes, Sarah.  It is no ordinary life that is meant for you.  This much, I, a great-granddaughter of a powerful Draggonnath, am privileged to know for certain."

"Do you really know it," said Sarah, an obscure hope beating in her heart and causing her eyes to lose their focus.  "Do you know it for sure?" 

"Yesssss," said Eva softly.  "It is written.  You are the destined one, my darling Sarah."

Sarah's determination to take her own fate into her hands, which had lead her to climb through the basement window when the others had rolled back down the hill, had only strengthened during her interview with Eva.  She knew she must take charge of her future, and all that that might entail.  She was ready, she thought.  As ready as when I slid through that window.  "You can do what you can do," wasn't that one of Granny Pansy's sayings?

Silence gathered momentum for a minute, two minutes, the walls breathing.  And then Eva, who seemed to be absentmindedly stroking the feathers of her boa, suddenly plucked a feather from its dark, suave length.  The boa curled abruptly, as if it would choke its owner, and then relaxed back as if stilled by a paralyzing sting.  It was limp against the beautiful Draggonnath's alabaster neck.

"Take this feather, Sarah," said the Draggonnath, holding the feather across the table to Sarah by its nib.  She released the feather, and it danced across her palm in a series of miniature arabesques, a weightless dancer on a stage of skin.  Sarah extended her own hand, palm up, and held it level with Eva's own, larger palm.  Eva gave a brief puff behind the feather, which skittered over to Sarah's palm and continued its writhing dance.

"Place this feather upon your palm, as you see now," began Eva, her voice gaining a trill as she continued.  "And then sing to it this song."  Eva had a very talented singing voice herself, Sarah noticed. 

	"Feather lithesome, feather bright

	 Feather dancing day or night

	 When my lonely heart has fears

	 Dance my saving graces near."

"When you do this," Eva continued.  "You will not be far from me.  I will see and hear you as though you were before me.  And, what is more, you will feel as balanced and graceful again in yourself as the feather appears before you.  A calm will come over your mind, and you will see clearly what you must do."

Sarah put the feather very carefully into the front pocket of her skirt.

* * * *

Eva and Mr. Plimsoul watched Sarah and Missy retreat down the road into the night, holding hands and strolling as if they had never encountered any danger at all.

"Will she do it?" inquired Mr. Plimsoul pointedly.

"We shall see.  And the other one?" inquired Eva.

"She's fixed."

END OF CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 



Chapter Fifteen

"A Shadow on the Wall"

When Sarah and Missy reached the house, there was a strange car in the driveway, and a brilliant blue smoke was pouring out of an open kitchen window.

Sarah called into the house before entering.  "Ganny Pansy?"  

There was no answer, but a strange series of sounds were emanating from within the structure.  Hoots followed by clacks followed by a tortured whine, and a long sputtering cough made Sarah cautious.  But she began to enter the house anyway, with Missy pulling on her arm to keep her out.

"Granny Pansy?" she tried again.  "Abbey?  Mr. Burrbuckle?" she said into the blue smoke.  And then, after a slight pause, she even tried "Dar?  Are you in there?  Anyone?"

A hunched man, with a wild ring of gray hair around a great bald dome of a head came rushing out of the door past the girls.  He was coughing uncontrollably.  Missy squeaked.  He whirled his arms around and turned back to face the house.  He stopped coughing long enough to say "Well, devil take me, if it isn't little Sarah."  And then he was off again, coughing like a rusty water pump.  His face was getting redder by the minute.  Sarah looked at Missy, who shrugged perplexedly.

Out of the smoke behind them, without their noticing, sailed their Granny Pansy, a tall water glass tinkling with ice cubes in her hand.  She paused beside Sarah, handing her the glass when Sarah started and saying, simply.  "Give this to your Great Uncle Charlie."

Sarah handed the glass to the choking man at the bottom of their stoop.  His turtle-rimmed glasses had slipped to the tip of his red nose, having left two deep indentures on either side of the bridge further up.  One would have thought a hawk perched there daily, the marks were so deep.

"I have a Great Uncle Charlie?" Sarah asked, turning back to her Granny Pansy.  Before Granny Pansy could answer, Great Uncle Charlie spit up a tremendous gobstopper of a snotwad onto the cobblestones.  It was as green as a praying mantis, and as shapeless as a squished praying mantis.

"Ick!" said Abbey and Shelly together, emerging from behind Granny Pansy.

"All right now, me fellow, try me kerchief."  Barnabas Burrbuckle strode to Great Uncle Charlie's side and gave him a brave slap on the back between his shoulders.  This started Great Uncle Charlie on another round of unstoppable coughing.

"Oh, Barnabas."  Granny Pansy made her way to her brother Charlemagne Sigmund Farnfeather Twisslestarn, reached into one of the innumerable pockets in her apron, pulled out a pinch of her own herbal snuff, and without further ado, stuck her fingers up her brother's nose.  Great Uncle Charles reared back as though he had been stabbed in the chest.  His eyes virtually exploded in tears, and he drew in a breath big enough for a horse.  The sneeze that followed these gyration was too grand to describe with the alphabet.

"Arrgh-blabber-durst-mc-faygala-fix-em-up!!!!"

Great Uncle Charles' head wound up down between his knees, and his glasses rattled on the stones.  After a moment, he swept up his spectacles, popped them back on his face, stood up straight, or as straight as he got nowadays, and said.  "Thanks, Doris.  I needed that."

At this signal, Granny Pansy commanded everyone back into the kitchen, which was now clear of smoke, and told her brother, "You're more than welcome, you old snickerdoodle."

The kitchen was a maelstrom of witchy paraphernalia.  Granny Pansy was in her tall hat with its wide brim, and as soon as they were getting settled, Great Uncle Charles donned his own tall, conical hat.  His was a brilliant Caribbean blue, with a swirled pattern on the cloth that seemed to still be moving and changing as you looked at it, although the changes came over the surface slowly, as if one were pouring out a sand sculpture and watching its defacement against the glass.  Great Uncle Charles' hat, though, had no brim whatsoever, but was even taller than Granny Pansy's.  Sarah couldn't resist asking her Granny Pansy about the hats, even before she indulged in her own incredible tale of the evening's events.

"Oh, no, m'dear.  There will be answers aplenty when the time comes.  But you are the one to be answering questions now.  First, let me see that you are hail of limb and bright of brain."  Granny Pansy reached into her everything bag and pulled out something that was not quite a stethoscope, and not quite anything else either.  She placed the narrow end of the device of Sarah's forehead, right between her eyes.  Sarah stood there with crossed eyes as the device made a gentle...well, cooing noise.  Granny Pansy listened carefully, and after a moment, put the device away.  Then she clapped her hands loudly behind Sarah's back, which made Sarah flinch, since she couldn't see what her Granny was doing.  Even the feather in Sarah's pocket wiggled, and Sarah smoothed out her skirt to disguise the wiggle.

"Fine as a fiddle.  I imagine you must be the same, Missy, if you two were together the whole time.  Each to each, and each like each."

"Yes, Ma'am," agreed Missy.  The thing was, as Sarah had discovered as she and Missy had walked home alone in the long evening, Missy seemed to remember nothing of their adventure in the basement.  Not the pointing hand, not the singing harp in its glowing purple globe, and especially not being caught by Mr. Plimsoul and Eva.  And, of course, Missy hadn't had dinner in that strange dining room under those austere, half-finished portraits.  

"I'm starving."

"And no wonder, m'dear, with all of your doings," agreed Granny Pansy.  "Abbey, Dar, share your plate of cookies with Missy.  Barnabas, please get Missy a glass of milk while we finish our interview.  There, dear, sit down right here," continued Granny Pansy, righting a chair that had gotten tipped over in the hubbub.

"Now, what exactly happened to all of you?  We heard a little bit from Barnabas, but your Great Uncle Charlie and I were right in the middle of a delicate incantation when Barnabas appeared."

"You mean blundered in!" exclaimed Great Uncle Charles, wiping blue powder off of his face with Barnabas' kerchief.  "I've known steam trains with more grace."

"I'm sure Barnabas was simply concerned for the children's welfare, Charlie," said Granny Pansy.  "Barnabas, please continue."

"Thank you kindly, ma'am," began Burrbuckle.  "Well, as I was saying afore, we was hunched down behind the tall grass, peering like rabbits at a fox in his hole, and it was dark and smoky in there."   Barnabas looked around at the present state of the kitchen.  "Not as smoky as in this kitchen, though, I mun say."  He added this with a look over at Great Uncle Charlie.

"But that smoke smelled horrible!  This smoke smells kind of like a raspberry pop sickle," said Missy, amending Barnabas' report with an olfactory detail.

"We looked in the basement window, like Mr. Burrbuckle said," reported Sarah.

"Ay," concurred Barnabas.  "And thet dwarf fellow opened the window, and the foul smoke come out.  And not long afterward the lights went out, and we could hear the front door opening.  That's when we creeped away, just as we had creeped toward."

"Rolling down the hill was loads quicker, though," noted Shelly, who was nibbling on Missy's cookies.  Missy hadn't liked her gingersnaps.

"And after Barnabas and the other two girls rolled back down the hill, what happened?"  Granny Pansy was looking a Sarah.  Sarah had not yet sat down, despite being tired from the long walk, the large dinner, and being preoccupied with thoughts of her own.  Sarah began a cautious explanation.  One that, curiously enough, while not actually lying, certainly left out much of the truth.  For some reason, Sarah didn't feel like sharing all of her discussion with Eva with her Granny Pansy.  She got the uncomfortable impression that her Granny Pansy would never approve of such talk.  The Draggonnaths didn't sound to Sarah like something of which her Granny would ever really approve.

"Is that what happened?"  Granny Pansy looked sharply at Missy Quicknass.

"I think so," Missy replied, confessing.  "It all seems kinda blurry now.  I'm just glad we're not there anymore."

"Yes.  Well, that's good enough, child.  I don't want to add any extra burden on you now.  I'm certain your folks must be very worried at this point.  No doubt, you should be hurrying along home after we give them a call.  There's some chocolate pudding on the counter with your name on it."

"Chocolate pudding!"  Missy was gone in a heartbeat.

"And use the napkin next to it to wipe your mouth when you're through," Granny Pansy called through the divider.  

Granny Pansy set her eyes carefully upon Sarah.  Sarah was chatting away with her Great Uncle Charlie, who was full of funny stories of all the interesting, silly and outrageous things that Sarah had gotten up to as a toddler.  Then, all at once, Sarah rushed over to the mantelpiece and pulled down an old black and white photo from its place in front of one of Gilman's archery marksmanship trophies.  Sarah's mother had intended to take those "horrendous war trophies," as she called them, down from the mantle over a year ago, but had settle on the expediency of putting up old family photos in front of them instead.  There was simply no room left in the Tones' closets.

"Is this you?" Sarah asked incredulously.  The man she was pointing in the photo to was a handsome youth, with an infectious grin that bordered on a smirk.  He shoulders were thrown back casually, leaning on the same old Rolls Royce roadster that sat sadly in the drive, as though daring the world to do its worst.  He had the careless look of the truly debonair.  Great Uncle Charlie took the photo from Sarah and squinted at it fiercely, as if trying to see a gnat trapped in a laundry basket's worth of spider web.

"I suppose it must be.  That's my automobile."  Great Uncle Charlie shared a wan smile with Sarah.  "That bloke seems to be a bit of a toff, if you ask me."

"Oh, Great Uncle Charlie," protested Sarah.  "How can you possibly say that.  You're as handsome as a prince!  Or, you were."  Sarah blushed, fearing she'd been rude.

"Indeed, lass, I was that to some eyes.  No harm done.  Vanity doesn't age as well as wine, you know."

Sarah decided to change to topic.  "Where the heck are Mom and Dad?"

"Committee business," Granny Pansy informed her, with an air of disdain for the whole thing.  Granny Pansy no doubt thought a parent's place was with their child, especially at a time such as this.  "Won't be back until tomorrow."

"Oh," said Sarah.  "That figures."

Barnabas had been poking around in the scattered apparatuses in the kitchen.  A coil of copper tubing hit the floor with a wicked whang, making everyone turn their heads.  Granny Pansy stepped to his side, and quietly took the coil from his large hands.  Barnabas took a pudding and headed into the living room with the little ones.

"Yes," Great Uncle Charles commenced.  "Where were we, Doris?"

"You mean when we were so rudely interrupted?"  Granny Pansy actually winked at Great Uncle Charles.  This may have been the first actual joke Sarah had ever heard her Grandmother indulge in, as awful as it was.

"Yes, so rudely.  I believe there was something about a shadow conjuration that we were working toward.  The Shadem Graviosis was it?"

"Shadem Graviosis, what's that?" said Sarah.  Sarah wasn't plunging into snacks with the others.  Even Barnabas was putting his long legs out in front of the fireplace and sipping at a pudding while the girls competed at tiddlywinks or snatched at jacks.  Roanie followed each spoonful of pudding with the unwavering attention a zen archer.

"Its the shadow of the future, my dear.  Events that have not yet come to pass, may, if looked for carefully enough, throw their shadows back into the past.  And this shadow may be observed by the Shadem Graviosis if the practitioner is careful.  Since future events are not yet certain, more than one shadow may be thrown, like seeing your shadow on a wall when several lights are on in the same room.  There are several shadows, several possible futures, several future yous."

Granny Pansy stopped herself from continuing with the magic lesson.  She couldn't go on in good conscience.

"Sarah, I feel that I must tell you something before we go any farther.  Normally, I wouldn't even have gone this far with you, but I feel that your life may be in danger, and that you are somehow intimately tied up with the events unfolding in Traeshurstaene.  If your father knew that I was talking to you about these matters, he would not approve.  And if your mother knew, she would have a conniption fit!  They do not approve of magic, and they have their reasons.  Many might see these reasons as sufficient, a few might not.  But there is much that you must learn if you are to stay safe.  The pendant was the first step, but they are many many others."  Granny Pansy paused.  "Do you still have the pendant you took from your brother's closet?" she asked anxiously.  "It would be a grave matter to lose such an item in the house of an enemy."

Sarah felt for the pendant.  It wasn't around her neck!  Had it fallen off while she and Missy were fumbling around the basement in the dark?  Had Eva taken it from her when her hands were around her neck?  Sarah felt an unwelcome knot of anxiety tighten in the pit of her stomach.

"That's a grave thing indeed," echoed Great Uncle Charlie, the pleasure gone from his face and replaced by a solemn concern that radiated out beyond the room.  "Well, never mind for the moment.  Barnabas will have to scour the side of the roadway tomorrow when it is light out.  Nighttime is too rich for mischief to go back out now with the Gods of Autumn awake and a-wandering."

"Sarah, will you learn something of the magic that has been passed down in your family for centuries?"  Granny Pansy also sounded serious.  Sarah didn't know just what to expect, but felt that she had few alternatives, and the more she knew, the better.  "Chance favors the prepared mind," was one of her Father's favorite Blaise Pascal quotations.

"Yes, Granny.  I want to know what is happening.  And I want to be prepared to face whatever may come my way."

"That's the girl," said Great Uncle Charlie.

"I'm sure that Missy would approve," Granny Pansy said.  Great Uncle Charlie continued setting things to rights in the kitchen, preparing the potions and requisite ingredients for the Shadem Graviosis as Granny Pansy began her lecture.  

"First off, these 'tall hats' of ours about which you seem so curious, are the shape they are to help focus the thoughts of the spell caster.  They help to bring your thoughts to a point, as it were, and increase your concentration.  Staying focused helps you to navigate the powerful forces you hope to use in your spell or potion or what have you."

"But doesn't that make you a witch?  And aren't witches evil?"

"I see there's much to undo with you Sarah.  Your parents have let you grow up completely ignorant of your heritage.  They love you very much, but keeping you ignorant, in my opinion, simply was not right."

"So you are a witch, then?"

"Yes, Sarah, I most certainly am what is called a witch.  But witches and spells and cauldrons and magics and potions are neither a good nor a bad thing in and of themselves.  There are expressions of the power in nature that we see all around us.  The strength of a waterfall, the beauty of a patch of forget-me-nots.  A cauldron's neither good nor ill but the hand that stirs it makes it so."

"So, what our enemies might be doing isn't really evil either?  Its just a choice?"

Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie exchanged a quick, apprehensive glance.  This is what they were teaching the students all day long in public school.  How could such children grow up to really make the choices that counted?

"They are different choices, certainly, dear.  But it is the making of such choices that makes all the difference.  Making the right choice is absolutely crucial.  Those who are unwilling or unable to decide get pushed along by those who know where they stand.  Making the proper choice, and there is always a proper choice, my dear, if we but have the wisdom to see it, is vital.  The Shadem Graviosis is a spell to help us decide which choice will be the best choice.  It will show us shades of things to come.  And, with any luck, that will help us to decide which way to point our feet."

"And our pointy hats," added Great Uncle Charlie, whose good humor had been partially restored.  His hat, slightly bent from his expulsion into the yard earlier, sat at a jaunty angle on his head.  He put the last bit of coiled copper tubing back connecting two odd pots settled on the stove and pipping pink and creamy steam from under their lids, and announced that they were ready to try again with the conjuration. 

"It's showtime!"

END OF CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 



Chapter Sixteen

"Shadows Three"

"All right, Sarah, when I signal you, come in strong on the chorus.  You'll have heard the tune and the words once all the way through by then."  

Great Uncle Charlie was nodding in his bent blue wizard's hat while Sarah's Granny Pansy stirred a flowery-smelling stew in her great iron cauldron.

"Why me?" protested Sarah.  "You and Granny Pansy are the ones invoking the Shady Gimmoire."

Granny Pansy answered her directly, stirring the pot steadily as small electrical currents began to run over the surface which kept changing from sky blue to red to brown to another, deeper oceanic blue.

"You must sing because these events involve you.  It is your future that is most at stake here, Sarah, and your voice will add its own urgency to the conjuration."

"Doris went on all afternoon about your voice Sarah, and I've never heard it.  Very beautiful, I understand, from her description."

"And its called the Shadem Graviosis, by the way.  And it is a conjuration, not an invocation.  Invocations are much more dangerous affairs."

Great Uncle Charlie nodded in agreement.

"All right," said Sarah, and made herself ready for--for what exactly she didn't know.

Granny Pansy began to hum, tunelessly almost.  The sound of the house began to fade out into an indistinguishable backdrop--all the noise in the other room became no more than soft wind blowing over a dune.  Granny Pansy's face gradually lost its look of control and wit, and, without slackening exactly or becoming imbecilic, became focused on something not in the room, not on the earth, perhaps.  An otherworldly awareness seemed to permeate her heavily lined countenance, and her white hair was stirred by a wind none of the others felt.  A ditty like a nonsense song from a nursery rhyme began to insinuate itself into her humming, which, without becoming louder, soon became the only thing any of them could hear.

	"Da da da-da dumm

	 Dumm dumm da-da da"

Great Uncle Charles could remember cotillions and waltzes he had attended when his car was new and the hair on his head had flopped over his brow boyishly.  The shadow of the past was entering the room.  Great Uncle Charlie's baritone now came along and hummed as well;  it was almost silly how young his voice was, humming the nonsense along with his sister.  Granny Pansy had her own supply of past events on which to draw, and a stronger feeling attended those.  With two conjurers who possessed so many memories between them, this shadow made itself comfortable on the blank wall behind Sarah, shifting shapes with the memories of the singers.

Now the pace of the tune quickened, and although no words were entertained by the singers, the humming became more of a wordless singing, and the tune lifted into melody.

	"Tah dah-dah dee dah

	 Tah dah-dah dee dah"

Round and round it went, quick as the Mickleswift.  The melody flowed and rippled over them prettily, and a light, almost white shadow began to dance alongside of the heavier shadow of the past.  It was a shadow that somehow brightened the room it entered and lifted the singers' eyes from their own thoughts to quick shared glances, and even smiles.  This was the shadow of the present time, the moment living and rushing before them and around them.  The singers felt themselves brighten into time.

Now the words came, suddenly, for Sarah had expected another round of humming and wordless singing to introduce the shadow of the future.  Instead, it was as if a flock of birds had entered the room all at once, darting and dashing against the windowpanes.  Not one shadow, but a thousand conflicting shades raced like watery reflections around the kitchen.  Granny Pansy's and Great Uncle Charlie's singing took on a rapid, panicked air, as if they were trying to sing without pausing to catch their breaths.  Sarah felt confused by the speed of this change in the tune, in the singing, and she missed the first few words of the song she was supposed to come in on in the second round.  She tried to catch her Granny Pansy's eye to let her know that she had missed the beginning of the song, but Granny Pansy and her Great Uncle Charlie had their eyes shut tight, concentrating on keeping the song going.  

	Shadow, see just what will be

	Shadow past beyond all memory

	Shadow present sharply seen

	Shadow future with shades unseen

This part of the Shadem Graviosis was a strain on them, and it showed in every line of their faces.  The temperature in the room shot up, and Great Uncle Charlie was dripping sweat from under the brim of his wizard's cap.  Sarah shut her eyes and listened tremendously hard.  She was trying to reconstruct the words that had slipped by before it was her turn to join the song.  

	Shadows Three of what will be

	Shadow past beyond all memory

	Shadow present sharply seen

	Shadow future with shades unseen

After Sarah came in the song transformed into a fast roundel, each person beginning again at the beginning and coming in on the next verse of the song.  This made it even harder for Sarah to catch all of the words, let alone try and hear the first words correctly again.  The hundreds of darting shadows began to coalesce on the wall with the other two, sturdier shadows.  They joined each other, and then started to pull apart, not quite disentangling.  Theirs was a watery quality.  The shadow of the past lay against the wall with almost a solidity compared to them, as if it were a portion of the earth itself:  grounded, real as your hand in front of your face.  The shadow of the present continued to flutter brightly, with a clear illuminated outline, but a shifting one, like the lines of a flames.  But this shadow too, for all of its shifting, stayed: a focused reality that was not about to depart however greatly it might change before the viewer.  This was like looking in your lover's eyes and seeing all the shadows of care, concern, love and desire in them: constant in their changefulness.  But the bird-shadows, now tied at their root, were as various as a handful a balloons.

The song went round, and a large shape, fair and dark for a few moments, appeared among the future shades.  It looked to Sarah like the outline of one of the Gods of Autumn;  a powerful, elegant, and swift male figure that held a long club that looked to be made of an uprooted tree.  He approached another shadow, sharp and full of corners, and that was the idle machinery sitting at the docks.  The club swung and smashed the great steel dock equipment like a rock shattering glass.  It was a disturbing vision of violence and destruction, but Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charles held the song steady, and Sarah stayed in time.

The shadows broke and darted as the song came round again.  This time they reformed as a pair of people, long of limb and cruel of face.  Sarah saw instantly that one of them was Eva, but this shadow had bat-wings slowly flapping from its back.  The other had to be Mr. Plimsoul, but here he was shorter than her, while in real life he was the taller of the two tall grown-ups.  Their shadows were whispering conspiratorially, just as they had done in the basement.  Between them the long casket grew from nothing, and then shifted to stand upright.  They threw exotic gestures at the casket rapidly, desperately.  A hole opened in the shadow where the casket stood, as if it were exploding from within, and light were escaping.  The shadows of Mr. Plimsoul and Eva stepped back and faded, and then the shadow play lost is shape and broke into a flutter of greys again.

Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie were beginning to look quite worn out.  The singing, holding the spell close together, was taking a tremendous toll on them.  It was as if the song were gradually getting heavier and harder to hold correctly, as if it were slipping from their grip.  Sarah remembered coming home from a Christmas shopping expedition with a towering armload of packages.  As the top package began to tilt away from her, the one beneath it tilted more than it had, and the one beneath that one, etc., until it was like trying to straighten out the leaning tower of Pisa.  That's how the song was slipping away from them.  

This is all because I came in with the wrong words, thought Sarah.  Sarah made a tremendous effort to tilt the song back on course, singing with all of her might, and with all of the delicate strength her beautiful voice could muster.  Before them, the shadow of the future was coming together for a third time.  Bit by bit the racing shadows pulled together again into a huge darkness, blotting out both the past and the present.  This premonition would be one to remember.

Then the shadow shrank to a single line along the floor.  It crept across the kitchen tiles and laid in a pool around Sarah's feet.  Then it began to elongate from Sarah back to the wall, and up the wall, maintaining contact with her scuffed penny loafers.  On the wall in front of them, Sarah saw, with an undeniable discomfort, herself.  She was standing looking back at her herself.  She was singing, and her shadow was singing with her in perfect sync.

Bits of shadow, birds it seemed, flew around the shadow Sarah, settling momentarily on its shoulders and then flitting away again as it sang.  The shadow Sarah seemed delightfully in tune with its surroundings.  It seemed to have the future, with all of its darting possibilities, well in hand.  But horribly, slowly, and in a way that reminded Sarah of her missing the starting cue of the conjuration, her shadow self began to sing something other than what she and Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie were singing.  Her shadow self began to be attacked by the shadow birds, which were aiming, it seemed, at her throat, fetching gobbets of her flesh while she tried to sing on.  To one side of the scene, a blob drawn from the shadow Sarah's foot began to bulk into the recognizable form of the well, squatting with a menacing solidarity.  The birds came, ripping notes from Sarah's throat, and depositing them in the well.  The singing well grew larger, more dangerous and fatalistic, and the shadow Sarah collapsed to the ground, the birds diving and tearing at her throat.  At last, a crowd of the birds swooped down together and lifted the lifeless Sarah up bodily, and dumped her into the well.  The well sang on, spitting out notes and a visible malice.

Tears were streaming down Sarah's cheeks, but she held to the song.  Her Great Uncle Charlie looked suitably horrified at what he was witnessing.  Only Granny Pansy remained dispassionate and resolute, her eyes squinting close with an iron determination.  If this was a shadow of things to come, her face said, then that is just what it would remain--a shadow.  The tears ran into Sarah's throat, and she coughed, losing the song a bit, trying to work around them.  The shadow play was weakening, but just before it faded out completely, they could all see an armored figure, draped in chain mail, stalk toward the well.  It was a very pale shadow indeed--almost a shadow of a shadow, a spirit shadow, if you will.  Without hesitation, it put a stiff arm on the edge of the well, and, drawing a long sword, leaped into the well like a fish returning to a stream.  Sarah gasped, for the figure reminded her of Gilman.  And then the whole wall went blank, and only their normal, human shadows remained.

END OF CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 



Chapter Seventeen

"A Shadow on the Moon"

Sarah's Great Uncle Charlie and her Granny Pansy began to debate intensely the meanings of the various shadow visions the second they faded from the wall.  The singing that had wound the three of them together in a complex harmony was replaced by torrent of bickering.  Each one had a different point of view on almost every detail of what they had all just seen and conjured.  Quite often, both Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie would disagree with themselves about the meaning of what they had just seen, switching from one interpretation to another as if they were shuffling a deck of cards.

The most intense debate of all occurred over the last shadow play.  They couldn't even agree if it had been Sarah in the vision or not.  Great Uncle Charles and Granny Pansy went round and round.  Their voices were as hard a hockey pucks, and neither one of them gave an inch.  Sarah knew an argument like that could go on for hours.  She'd had plenty of them with her Mother and Bart.

The two oldsters were so busy arguing and debating and disagreeing, that they didn't even look at Sarah to notice the bright tears that still lay on her face.  Sarah walked outside quietly to get a breath of fresh air, letting the kitchen door swing shut behind her, softening their voices.

Sarah's throat was tired.  She felt as if all the words in the world had passed through her that day.  And she was still just as confused as when she had left Eva's dinner table.  

The night air moved over her soothingly. She reached absentmindedly for her pendant, and felt a mild distress that it was absent.  Well, she would simply have to go on without it.  Sarah wondered what, if anything, Granny Pansy and her brother would agree on doing based on the shadows they had conjured.  The Gods of Autumn wrecking the equipment at the docks, wreaking sheer havoc in her hometown with what appeared to be a single-minded malice.  What could possibly be done about the gods?  The strange activities with the Casket of Augersaal and Mr. Plimsoul and Eva.  That one at least appeared simple enough.  They had been trying to pry open the casket when Barnabas and the girls had spied on them earlier in the day.  Obviously, at some point in the future, they were going to succeed.  Sarah didn't even want to remember the third vision--all those birds tearing out her throat, and then her limp body being cast in the well.  The same well she had sung at all of her life, and loved to sit beside and walk around and look down into to see her tiny reflection in the small circle of water so far away in the dark.

Sarah stood looking moodily at the half moon.

"Some!  Moon!"

Sarah snapped around.  Dar was standing close beside her.  His hand, smeared with drying pudding, innocently wrapped in her skirt.  Sarah smiled down at him.  I guess all cousins aren't so bad, she thought.  Sarah squatted down and gave Dar a long hug, smoothing his hair and taking in the warmth of his skin.

"Oh, you're such a bundle of goodness," she said, holding him at arm's length and looking at him.  Dar pointed to the moon.  "Moon!" he said.  "Shadow!"

Sarah looked up to where Dar was pointing.  There was indeed a shadow moving across the moon.  It almost looked like a winged person flying or a wisp of cloud, but moving rapidly.  A chill seized Sarah's chest, and the blood dropped from her cheeks.  Shortly after the figure had moved beyond the circle of the moon and into a greater darkness, it seemed to Sarah that several much larger, but semi-transparent figures were moving through the night sky behind the smaller shadow.  Could it be the Gods of Autumn?  They did seem to be heading in the direction of the Treashurstaene inlet.  Sarah thought Granny Pansy ought to know about something like that.  She rushed back inside the kitchen.

"Hello!" said Dar to something emerging from the bushes at the edge of the yard.

* * * *

"Granny, quick, outside, the Gods of Autumn are riding across the moon!"

Sarah had expected to be interrupting an argument, but instead what she saw was Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charles sharing a steaming pot of well-steeped peppermint tea.  They were smiling and chatting amiably about nothing, leaning back in their chairs as if they had all the time in the world.

"Did you hear me?  The Gods of Autumn!"

Granny Pansy actually smiled!  What was the matter with her?  Did she want to see the town of Treashurstaene destroyed?

"Yes, my dear," she reassured Sarah, "I heard you.  The Gods of Autumn are riding across the moon.  No doubt they are headed to the docks to bust up the town's main source of livelihood more thoroughly than any Nor'easter could manage, and leave nothing but misery and poverty in their wake."

"Exactly!  We have to do something!  We can't just sit here sipping...sipping peppermint tea!"

Great Uncle Charlie began to chuckle.  Sarah shook her head, looking from one to the other.  Her eyes registered a monumental incredulity.  How could he sit there laughing?

"Please, Great Uncle Charlie.  We have to do something.  Get in your car and let's at least go down to the waterfront and try and stop them from wrecking all of the equipment on the wharf.  Maybe we can get the ships' captains to take their hulls out to sea before the gods get down there."

"Please, for the Gods' sake, Doris, tell your Granddaughter what we've done."  Great uncle Charles was as merry as if he were being tickled by midgets.  His tall wizard's hat sat on the floor, partially squished, and leaning against the leg of his chair.  It came up to his knee even so and jiggled when he laughed.

"All right now, Charlemagne," said Granny Pansy, pointedly using Great Uncle Charlie's full first name to remind him of just exactly who was the older sibling.  "Answer me this, Sarah.  Did the Gods look as though they were in a terrible hurry to get somewhere?  Or did it seem as though they were just taking in the moonlight?"

"Oh, in a terrible hurry, I'd say," Sarah reported.

"Good... good," said her Granny Pansy, nodding pleasantly.

"But why is this such good news?  Why is it good news at all?"

"Its all right, dear.  Its all right.  Your Great Uncle Charlie and I have deceived the Gods of Autumn tonight.  They're off on a wild goose chase, and no mistake."

"But...how?  Where are they going?"

"It might be better to ask," butted in Great Uncle Charlie, "where do they think they're going?"

"Where do they think they're going?" repeated Sarah.

"Excellent question," said Granny Pansy. "They think they are going to complete a service they had promised long long ago in the dim past of the world.  And when such service is complete, they will not be just Autumn Gods, but Gods for all the seasons, forever free to roam and make as much mischief as they please--just as it was in the olden days before the more civilized spirits began to have sway in the world.  Back when the hills were full of faerie whispers and the constellations danced in the sky, in the long, long ago of time."

"What was this promise that they made, Granny Pansy?"

"Its a long story, my dear.  But suffice it to say, that the Gods of Autumn are both reckless and honorable.  They may be drawn into foolish adventures for the sheer love of mischief, but once they have laid their bets, they honor their debts.  The Gods of Autumn are chaotic and natural, and just like a rainstorm or mighty oak, they must be respected.  In and of themselves, their impulses are no different than the rolling of the tide--but sharpened and quickened into personality."

Sarah couldn't follow what Granny Pansy was saying, not exactly.  It all sounded so much larger than herself, so ancient and mysterious, like trying to understand why you liked running downhill, or why hot butter on fresh-baked bread was delicious.

"The long and the short of it is we're safe from the Gods of Autumn," said Great Uncle Charlie.

"For a day or two--at most," noted her Granny Pansy, frowning now.  "But that should give us time enough to gather our forces and collect some spells and make some phone calls to those who still respect the old ways.  Those like our good Mr. Barnabas Burrbuckle.  Perhaps he can help to calm the workers down somewhat now that the gods are away.  There's many of them that have kept a respect for the old lore that has been spurned or neglected by clerks and the money men."

"So the first shadow story is still going to happen, then?" asked Sarah.

"In a way, yes," replied Granny Pansy.  The gods will return to the town, to the well, and cause what harm they may.  They may well even be more angry at having been deceived and drawn off on their wild goose chase.  That's what the shadow showed--if nothing intervened.  That will still be their intent, no doubt goaded on by those who wish us ill."

"And who is that, exactly?  And why do they want to do anything bad to us?  If the Gods of Autumn ravage the town, what good can that do anyone?"

"I do not know myself, dear one.  There are those that think they can play fate false, and bring about that which should not be."

"And that must bring us to the second set of shadows that flitted upon the wall, Sarah."  Sarah's Great Uncle Charles stood up from his chair, and clasped his hands behind his back, as though he were reciting a poem for school.  "They are the ones who oppose us.  They hope to achieve something with what appears to be the Casket of Augersaal.  I wasn't sure from your story about spying on this Mr. Plimsoul and this, this woman (although what sort of woman she might be, I'd be hard-pressed to say), but the shadows have removed all doubt.  Beyond the shadow of a doubt, you might say."  Great Uncle Charlie chortled at his own joke, but then continued quickly when he saw the look on Granny Pansy's face.

"As I was saying, the Casket of Augersaal.  This is a powerful object of unfathomable antiquity.  And it hasn't been used by anyone, on any side, in living memory.  And there are still those about who have some recall of a world before America was discovered.  The story is that the casket, once opened, brings about the desires of the opener--the entire desires.  This is a dangerous quest.  Only someone who knows their heart--well, better than anyone I've ever known or even heard of--can use the Casket of Augersaal safely.  It will grant even the desires you do not know you have--your unconscious desires.  And in the long ago time, many a wily magician who opened the Casket did so only to disappear in a puff of smoke because he harbored a secret desire for the peace of oblivion."

"The knowledge of how to open the Casket of Augersaal has long been lost, my dear,"  Granny pansy interjected.  "When you told your story before of their failure to open it, I took comfort in the fact, and thought that they would never open it.  But now the shadow shows that, clearly, the Casket will be opened, and its power will be released again upon the world.  What this means, I sincerely doubt even Mr. Plimsoul or his female cohort has more than an inkling.  We have no plan for them, but they must be stopped before they bring ruination upon us all."

"Perhaps some of the others will know what to do, Doris.  The Grand Vizier, surely..."

"The Grand Vizier has not been roused from his cave in over a hundred years.  He may not even be able to be roused.  No, Charles, we cannot put a merry face on this challenge."

Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie started talking softly together about who was available, and what skills might be needed, both to meet the challenge of the Gods of Autumn, and to stop Mr. Plimsoul and Eva.

"But what about me?"  asked Sarah.  They both turned toward her, saying nothing.  "What about what happened to to my shadow?"  

Sarah straightened her shoulders and unconsciously touched her neck, thinking about those birds circling and diving until her entire throat had been torn to tiny bits.

"These are only shadows, my dear.  We cannot let them rule us.  A shadow is not real.  Remember that, Sarah."  Granny Pansy looked directly at Sarah, as if she could give the girl courage enough just by loving her.  When Abbey entered the room, Granny Pansy looked over to her almost with relief.

"Hey," said Abbey, yawning and rubbing her eyes as she came in from the living room, where an unconscious Burrbuckle snored like a lion, with Shelly and Missy curled snugly between his two great paws.  "Has anybody seen Dar?"

END OF CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 



Chapter Eighteen

"We Have Your Children"

The search immediately around the house had proved fruitless.  Dar was not sleeping in any bushes, nor splashing in the stream, nor sitting playing with the moonlight, as he had liked to do at home.  That was the bad news.  The good news was that he wasn't lying in a ditch, having tripped over some outcropping of roots in the dark.  And he wasn't floating face up in the water.  No cars had gone by the house in the last few minutes, so he hadn't been whisked away in some twisted stranger's backseat.  After circling as wide as they reasonably could in a short time, everyone gathered back outside the kitchen door.  It was midnight, no one was speaking, and all they could hear was the whisper of the Mickleswift as it began its increasingly fast descent toward the well.

"Well, we canna let this go til daylight.  We mun phone the police, I'm thinkin'," said Burrbuckle, expressing what everyone had been thinking.  

"Yes.  That would seen to be the only thing," agreed Granny Pansy.  "They have men and dogs that can conduct a proper search.  The only thing is that they'll begin to conduct an investigation of what has been going on inside the house as well."

"And that'll reveal that we're a couple of witches with an ungodly number of bizarre objects and purple walls and a kitchen that looks more like Dunkirk after the Nazis got through with it than the cozy home it appears to be from the outside," concluded Great Uncle Charlie.  

"Our goose is cooked," said Burrbuckle, who had no excess of love for the police after the recent run-ins between them and the dockworkers.  The latest clash had resulted in the death of one worker, a Tilly Lingersall.  Barnabas had known him, and had planned to go to the wake the next day, less than sixteen hours from now.

"Cooked, poached, fried, diced, and sliced," confirmed Great Uncle Charlie.  "None of the friends Doris and I have contacted will be here before tomorrow evening at the soonest.  They're all traveling good distances to get here."

"Blessed be," mused Granny Pansy.  "Who can we turn to?"

"I don't know.  I don't know," said Great Uncle Charlie, shaking his shaggy head.  "Our one stroke of luck seems to be that at least its gotten a bit warmer outside, and Dar was wearing insulated feety pajamas."

There was silence, the stream running quickly on.  Abbey stood beside Barnabas, crying quietly in the moonlight.  Barnabas looked down at her.  He hoped that Great Uncle Charlie's words made her feel a little bit better, but Barnabas knew what a sudden warmth in the night air really meant.  Storms would be coming that would destroy all evidence of small feet passing, and wash away any scent a dog might follow.  Barnabas looked over at Granny Pansy.  She seemed to share his knowledge.  Abbey put her arm around the big man's leg and held on.  Barnabas touched the top of her head with the callused tips of his fingers.  She was so small, his hand covered her entire head easily.  

He felt Abbey begin to sob.  Barnabas Burrbuckle couldn't stand it.

"I've an idea, ma'am," he began.  "If its all right."

"Yes, Barnabas," said Granny Pansy.  "Its all right.  Its more than all right.  Please tell us your idea.  We've run clean out."

"Well, there's a lot of dockworkers sitting up the night vigil with Tilly's body.  Thet's just a few houses down the street that way.  And I imagine that any o' the fellas would just jump to pitch in.  And they can keep a secret right enough--especially from the coppers.  In a few hours the whole hillside here could be rowdy with dockmates who've no ship work to go to."

"Barnabas, that's brilliant!" buzzed Great Uncle Charles.  "What do you say, Doris?"

"Hmm.  The dockmen have been acting erratically lately.  But, with the gods away, perhaps they'll be more in their right senses.  and we certainly could use their eyes and ears in these woods."

"Let's get to it," Great Uncle Charlie said, with a briskness that belied his age.  "Which way did you say this dead fellow Tilly's house was?"  

* * * *

Sarah had her bag packed, and was leaving the house through the front door when she heard Barnabas and her Great Uncle Charlie talking as they strode around the side of the house, headed for Tilly's place.  Sarah backed into an evergreen bush, the leaves spearing her mercilessly, but also allowing her to go unnoticed as she watched Barnabas and her Great Uncle go by.  She wasn't sure where they were headed, but she knew just where she was headed.  

All of this turmoil was because of her.  Her Granny Pansy's silence on the topic of the shadow-Sarah confirmed it.  She was some kind of target, and everything near her would be obliterated just to get to her.  When Gilman died in that far away desert, the shell that had killed him had killed three of his closest buddies as well.  Sarah wasn't going to let that happen to her family.  She may not always like all of them, but she loved them.  Her distractedness and inattention had already gotten Dar lost, and Missy's memory erased.  Missy had no idea of what had happened in that basement.  Even Bart didn't deserve that rock in eye;  someone, or some thing, Sarah thought queasily, had put him up to the task of stopping her in the woods the other day.  He had picked that fight at some other power's behest.  Who would be the next to suffer because they were too close to Sarah?  

Their heavy steps crunched down the roadway.

"We mun hurry," came Burrbuckle's worried rumbling voice from the far side of the hedge.

"Yes, man, we must.  I'm moving my bones as fast as I may," came Great Uncle Charlie's response, and his lighter footsteps picked up their pace after the long firm strides of Burrbuckle.  "How many men do you think we can get to join the search for Dar?"

"There's a dozen at the wake, I've little doubt.  They're not the hell-raisers that've been rambling about.  Sturdy men all, by my reckonin'."

"Good, good," acknowledged Great Uncle Charlie, who seemed to be doing some obscure calculation in his head as he walked, or rather, almost ran after Burrbuckle.  "The witch's contingent will be here early tomorrow.  If we are able to gather enough men tonight, then they'll be free to cast some wide-eye spells and spotlight projections to help narrow the target area.  I do hope the Gods of Autumn find plenty of distraction in the North Country.  Tell me, is there a phone booth on our route?  I may need to make a few phone calls."

In another moment, their voices and their footsteps had faded out.  Sarah couldn't make much of Burrbuckle's reply other than its bass rumble.  Now Sarah must avoid the search party of dockworkers that was being gathered.  How could she run faster than a dozen full-grown men?  She had an idea.  There's one place none of them'll go, she thought.

Sarah listened for another minute in the bushes, and heard the back door slam shut as Granny Pansy and the others re-entered the house.  She slipped out from behind the bushes by the front door, a white glimmer in the moon clutching a small suitcase, her head wrapped in one of Granny Pansy's headscarves to keep the hair out of her eyes.  Sarah looked an odd traveler, a young girl alone at night, hunched over as she left her hiding place, her dirty skirt still on, her patent leather school shoes, and the cardboard hand-me-down suitcase that had some of Gilman's Army stickers on it.  The last time she had used it was for band camp, and that was two summers ago.  Her face was neither worried nor sleepy, but thoughtful and determined.  She knew just what she had to do.

* * * *

"So, tell me about this Tilly Lingersall, Burrbuckle."

Great Uncle Charlie was enjoying the moonlight stroll.  It had been years since he'd spent a night out-of-doors, and some of the devil-may-care feeling of his youth was coming back to him, despite the direness of the occasion.  Burrbuckle glanced down behind him without breaking his stride, and a sorrowful look came over his face which Great Uncle Charlie, because he was trailing behind, could not see.

"Well, if its to be the story of a man, it must be a long story," began Barnabas.  "There's no quick way to know ourselves, is the true saying.  And knowin' others is more tricky then that."  Barnabas flipped up the collar of his jacket against the coolness of the evening, which was really rather warm for the season, and pulled his cap down over his eyes before going on.  The shiver that ran through his great frame briefly seemed to come more from some inner dread than from the weather.

"Tilly Lingersall was a good enough man, as 'tis reckoned," he said.  "He grew up in Traeshurstaene the same as all o' us.  There was nary a time I recall his cheatin' at the games we played, although he weren't no persnickety feller either.  When the day came to sign up for work, he did so without regrets or illusions.  Many a one of us had both.  Some thought they'd get to be a big man on the docks, bossin' and shoutin' out orders as the ships hoved in to unload, or maneuvered round the rocky point.  Most of us hated to leave our summer games, or even the work we did around our families' houses and farms--for that work was like work and playin' both.  But signin' up for the job was work indeed and no mistake.  There's a deal of danger in the singing lines that cast off from a freighter.  And not a year passes by but some sturdy Joe or Thomas gets cracked between twa hulls as the sea settles the ships.  Ye crawl like an ant on the water, and like an ant ye can drown.  Our days of childish enjoyment were shut like the paybook gets shut at the end of payday."  Barnabas paused thoughtfully, as though a vision of his own life, past and future shone clearly before him--complete in its simplicity.  All the rest of my days will be the same, he thought to himself silently.

"But this Lingersall was different, you say," prompted Great Uncle Charlie.  He sounded as curious as a horticulturalist who discovers a new species of orchid growing from the end of his nose.

"Ay," acknowledged Burrbuckle.  "Ye see, Tilly was in love wi' a surpassin' lass.  That's what we all joked and called her--the surpassin' lass.  She'll be at yon house too, and ye'll know as quick as lightnin' why she's so called.  Tilly got his growin' up in before the rest of us.  There was nothin' in his head but Pellagwin.  Pellagwin this and Pellagwin that.  It got to be so common that we started to refer to Tilly as the Pallagwin Pelican.  He was always greedy for news of her doings.  He wanted to marry he as soon as he saw her, and never had a switch in his thoughts about her.  He laid down his heart the day he met her, as the sayin' does it.  But thar was no way her father would let ony man marry her but thet he had a decent job and a good bit put by to boot.  Pellagwin's father was not a man anxious to "scatter his treasure," as he put it.  And there was mony a fine man that courted Pellagwin, and she was often about town with this one and that one.  And each time she was about, it was a torture to Tilly.  We didna want to tell him such tales, but he wrung them from us.  For to hear of her was to live, as he said many and many a time.  We didna unnerstand him rightly, but all o' us could read his honest face like tellin' how much storm or shine a cloud was carryin'."

"I see, I see" Great Uncle Charlie commented, more softly this time, as though thrown into thoughts of his own past.  "Do go on."

"Tilly worked for a year and a day.  He et like a mouse, drank like a nun, and lived like monk for that whole time.  We all certainly missed him, and tried our best to get him to come out wi' us and howl the moon down.  At least, now and then.  For there was no laughter like the laughter of Tilly Lingersall's.  Pure as a waterfall it'd come over his face and out from his lips, as if the world itself were pleased at its mischief.  But there was no dissuading him from his chosen course.  He was as set on his way as an old soldier.  And when the year and a day were up, and he thought he'd done well enough, he dressed in his finest gear, lookin' as though he'd hopped from a wedding cake, to ask Pellagwin's father if he might escort his daughter on a walk that very evening.  Pellagwin's father said 'nay' out of hand, as ye might dismiss a beggar tuggin' at yer sleeve.  Tilly doffed his cap to the father and turned on his heel, thanking him politely for his time.  But oh Tilly was in a fearsome state for the next month!  There he was, richer than the lot o' us scraped together and put in a sack, and he was mooing about like a sick cow.  His eyes had the look of dashed glass, and he trembled a bit whenever he spoke, as though he were a talkin' and swallowin' water at the same time.  But little did he know, and the less did we, that Pellagwin had been at her bedroom winder when Tilly Lingersall came a-callin' thet afternoon.  And the same lightnin' that had struck Lingersall had fallen into Pellagwin's heart as well...."

"Oh, just a moment," interrupted Great Uncle Charlie, with no decent sense of when to interrupt so tender a story.  "Let me duck in here a moment.  I have an urgent call to make."  And, without waiting for Burrbuckle to say yea or nay, or even nod, for that matter, Great Uncle Charlie nipped into a red telephone booth standing on the corner of the lane.  The little light went on inside, and Burrbuckle could see Great Uncle Charlie patting his pockets for coins futilely.  

Burrbuckle heaved a long sigh, putting the love story of Tilly Lingersall out of his mind with a brusque shove, and tapped on one of the many small rectangles of glass right by Great Uncle Charlie's ear with a coin.  Great Uncle Charlie started as though he'd been shot in the back, saw the coin flashing through the pane in front of his face, opened the panel door briefly, and plucked the coin from Barnabas' fingers without so much as a "Bob's your uncle."  He dialed furiously and began to speak in low tones as though his conversation might be overheard by some devious third party.

* * * *

At the same time that Great Uncle Charlie was dialing in the phone booth a block from the grieving Lingersall residence, Granny Pansy was also making a phone call.  To Mr Plimsoul's house.

"Do you know what time it is?" Mr. Plimsoul's groggy voice demanded.

"I know exactly what time it is, Mr. Plimsoul," said Granny Pansy in a level tone of voice. There was an edge of venom in her tone that instantly made Mr. Plimsoul wake up.  He recognized his interrogator's voice as Sarah's Grandmother.  His first thought was to remember that she had moved away several years ago.

"Why, Grandmother Tone," said Mr. Plimsoul smoothly, as if midnight phone calls from angry grannies were his stock and trade.  "Didn't you retire to another vicinity some years ago?  What a pleasant and, if I may say so, unexpected surprise to have you back in Traeshurstaene."

"I'm back," said Granny Pansy curtly.  "And I want know something from you right now about the Tone children."

"My goodness," said Mr. Plimsoul, feigning alarm at Granny Pansy's impolitic directness.  "Why, certainly, Grandmother Tone.  I'll answer any inquiry you may have if it is within my humble power to do so."  Mr. Plimsoul had been hoodwinking parents for years into thinking he cared about their children.  It was second nature to him, a survival skill he had long ago acquired at cutthroat board of Ed. meetings where budget decisions and teacher layoffs were determined.

"Have you seen Sarah Tone or her little cousin Dar today?"

Mr. Plimsoul tried to read into this question.  He wanted desperately to know why Grandmother Tone was asking him about her own Granddaughter.  Had Missy Quicknass' forget-me-fast amnesia spell worm off somehow?  Had Sarah gone running home to her Grandmother and revealed all that had been said and done to them in the basement earlier that evening?  He would answer a question with a question.

"Are Sarah's parents available?  They're the guardians of record with the school.  Could I speak with Sarah?"

"No, their parents aren't available.  They're out with this ridiculous Political Committee business trying to rouse the townspeople against the dockworkers.  Going door-to-door and holding crazy rallies and plastering every telephone pole with provocative signs."  Granny Pansy was getting a bit flustered.  The spell, and now the fact that Sarah was missing in addition to Dar was really starting to wear down her defenses.  "But don't change the subject, have you seen them?  If any harm should come to those children...."

"A threat, Grandmother Tone?  Now, now, that's quite unlike the domineering Doris I knew once-upon-a-time.  She knew how to get results without resorting to threats.  And, if the safety of the children is your paramount concern, it certainly would be foolish to provoke anyone who might have them in their power.  Don't you agree, Doris?"  There was a soft chuckle on the other end of the line.

Granny Pansy was flabbergasted.  Mr. Plimsoul had her over a barrel good and proper.  She was damned if she did, and she was damned if she didn't.  Mr. Plimsoul was calling all of the shots.  And, as far as Granny Pansy was concerned, that stunk.

"Well, officially, these children are lost in the woods.  I'm afraid Sarah may have run away.  If I had any other options....  Sarah said she was down over there earlier today.  If you spoke with her, if you saw her or see her again, you absolutely must let me know immediately.  She's very dangerous just now--both to herself and to others.  And that includes you, Simon."

Why had she even called?  Granny Pansy thought she must be losing her mind.  Mr. Plimsoul and his consort would never stoop to offer the Tones' help of any kind.  She should have known that better than anyone.

"If the children were here, hypothetically," Mr. Plimsoul continued.  "They would be safe.  They might be beyond your reach forevermore, but they would be safe.  I'm sure that they would be able to be returned shortly to Sarah's parents.  And perhaps, if there were a certain kind of cooperation, this Dar individual might be sent along home before that."

Granny Pansy felt impaled by her own rash actions.  Why hadn't she kept a closer eye on the children?  There she was hoping to put the Gods of Autumn back in their bottle, and she couldn't even maintain a minimal control over her own Grandchildren--one of whom was barely big enough to walk.  Granny Pansy felt utterly defeated.

"Name your terms, Plimsoul."

END OF CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 



Chapter Nineteen

"A Dare, A Bet, A Debt"

The North Country, as it was known in Traeshurstaene, had an entirely different character than either the bustling town with its busy harbor or the sleepy approaches to it, with the whispering Mickleswift and the farms full of lazy livestock.  This was austere territory cutting into the sides of hills and then the razorlike backs of the cliffs and small mountains that cut the shore community off from the rest of the country.  This helped to explain the reclusive, or distinctive as the natives liked to say, nature of the people who lived there.  Things changed slowly there--if at all--because it was a difficult place either to get into, or to leave.  And the Thornback Hills were the reason that this was so.  

The moonlight that painted soft blobs of non-color on the easy reaches on the pebble beaches back in the town, here dropped precipitous shadows that made judging distances difficult.  The sides of the hills were cut all up and down with a myriad limestone caves.  The whiteness of the earth here contributed to a ghostly effect.  And it was more than once that summertime moonlight picnickers had erroneously reported seeing the Ancient One of the Hills moving whitely among the massive outcroppings.  This was a landscape ripe for ghosts.

The distorted, swift figures of the Gods of Autumn turned from the the sky at the entrance to an abandoned quarry that had long been worked here.  The Romans had first put men into the earth here to dig out valuable minerals, and every generation of inhabitants had followed suit.  Adasagona whirled in on her light feet, disturbing not even a clover leaf of the valley.  She was stung with opalescent pearls, and curiously carved shells hung heavily from her ears.  Her feet were encased in woven sandals of a unique style.  In her hair, ribbon dance with ribbon to create a finery of netting unlike anything else seen on the world.  Her eyes, if you could stand to look so strange a creature in the eye, swirled with a rush of banners unfurling in some hidden wind.  It was like staring into the depths of beautiful marbles in the afternoon light.  No matter how long you stared, there was more to see within her glance.

Following Adasagona was Aerfen, as mixed in her fashion as the eyes of Adasagona herself.  Aerfen flowed as she followed, wistful as a waterbug twirling on the wave.  There was a quickness and swiftness about her that let her push by Adasagona's nets, and she followed the spell-weaver by running circles around her as they progressed.  Anyone who has seen a puppy and its mother on the grass knows what this is like, but Aerfen was more graceful, and more playful, than any pup, just as Adasagona was more decorous and wise than any mother.

Following these were gods of a more august and dangerous character.  Aeron, with eyes shining to see slaughter, came to the Thornback Hills as naked and deadly as a scimitar.  Agrona right behind came whipping a knotted cord over her head to incapacitate the death cries of her enemies.  Her step was stealthy, and she was like a shadow of Aeron, watching all around her for vulnerabilities, any open throat that might be begging to be strangled.  These took up positions on either side of the deep quarry's entryway and stood like an assassin's guard to greet the final God of Autumn.  Their stillness was not that of some ceremonial guard, stiff at attention, but much more like a pair of great cats that wait to pounce, their tails switching dangerously.

All the Gods of Autumn began then a most horrible--song, you might call it.  But it was more sort of a roaring hallooing in the wilderness.  Aeron first took up the cry, leaning back and tilting his head up toward the sky.  A long weary sigh came out, a sigh weary with waiting, full of the pain of patience that has found no reward for too many eons.  Then Agrona, spitting unhesitating vile like a kicked cat, put a charge into the roar of viciousness unabated by the ravages of time.  Tonight was as the first night her eyes looked with contempt upon the mortal world, long ago in the chaos of creation.  Then Adasagona wailed, mixing in a pattern, pulling the wild notes of the others together into statement, weaving a song.  Aerfen followed, as a piccolo does a bassoon, trippingly repeating the phrases Adadsagona fashioned.  Now the whole quarry reverberated to the rising tune, providing its own basso profundo to the proceedings until every wall of the stone place boomed:  BAAA-tum, BAAA-tum.

All eyes turned to the quarry entryway.  Night owls shivered in their pine trees, squirrels were shaken from their slumber, the voracious vole dropped its nibbled nut, and every mouse turned stiff as stone with fear on the frosted moss.  Only the bats, blind and oblivious, flapped as they ever had in the dark, a large one settling unnoticed upon a half-hidden perch at the upper rim of the quarry, its head nodding down as if to sniff out the proceedings below.  Now a shadow passed over the moon, entirely obscuring its pale light.  When the cloud had moved on, a gigantic figure was passing into the quarry.  With a shield blacker than the memory of sleep slung across his mighty back, and a sword that dragged the earth like a plowshare, overturning a loose rabble of rocks, came a figure of silence, a moving void, one whose shoulders held only contempt for restriction and purpose.  This was an energy unslung from cause, and indifferent to its effect.  This was Afagddu, Master of the Utter Darkness.

Every voice was stilled, and the roaring wind was dismissed to a whisper in the quelled quarry.  The walls were little more than stony shadows with a roof of stars.

"We come to claim our right of the Ancient One!"  Afagddu's voice was as a passing train.  The trees in the abandoned square shook, and an old owl tumbled from his perch, dead from fright.

Nothing replied to Afagddu.  No sound, no noise beyond the soft fall of the old owl.  The Gods of Autumn waited as if this night were to last for years, and not hours.  A few of summer's last fireflies flitted in the crevices, one eaten now and again by a bat.

And then, the fireflies all started to move to the far end of the quarry as if being pulled down a drain.  This was the opposite side from where Afagddu stood in his timeless indifference.  They swirled into a face like a slow tornado, the outline of a bearded man's head.  The great whiskers drifted off into frayed darkness, and there was a slightly blurry halo to the lines at the edges where the fireflies were being attacked by the bats.  But the brow, deeply lined, with two bushy eyebrows, was clear and solid as a billboard.  At at the eyes, two whirling masses of fireflies glowed as if giving the final measure of their illumination.  These eyes were old beyond telling, and seemed to see both the past and the future as plainly as they could pick out every creature in the quarry.

Up above this scene, pinned against a crag on the rocks, hunched Eva, her Draggonnath's magical wings folded around her like a velvet cloak.  So, this is the Ancient One, Eva thought.  If he grants the Gods of Autumn their boon, they will be with us always, free to wreak their havoc every autumn, and not simply by prompting mischief in the dreams of men.  The calling out of the Gods of Autumn in this one year by Sarah will become a reign of terror repeated every year, every autumn.  That is how the Gods of Autumn roamed in the old days.  That is more of Chaos than I or Plimsoul have bargained for, she thought desperately.  Eva had not thought that the Gods of Autumn would gather themselves together to come to this old place.  She had bet that they would be content to roam more freely for a season than they had in a hundred years, and then return to their world under the well.  Obviously, she had miscalculated.  

Afagddu had not spent his years pent away from the mortal world idly.  He remembered his old grievance against the Ancient One and was determined, now his who troop was in corporeal form all together for the first time since the old curse, to take his chance.  It was Afagddu who had made all the Gods of Autumn come to the quarry--the very place of their humiliation.  But even Afagddu did not realize that this prompting came from the speaking spell of Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie, bit of whom counted on the Ancient One ignoring the whatever summons the Gods of Autumn could manage.  Obviously, they, too, unbeknownst to either Afagddu or Eva, had miscalculated.

"Have you come to dice your fate with me again, Afagddu?" asked the Ancient One, his voice as firm and sharp as steel.  "You have nothing left to lose."

"We come to claim our right!" repeated Afagddu.  "We have come all together, as you see. Adsagsona, Aerfen, Aeron, Agrona, and I, Afagddu."

The Ancient One knew well who petitioned him.  The fiery eyes moved from face to face of the Gods of Autumn, and not a few of them thought twice about being convinced by Afagddu to come to this cursed place.

"Who has loosened your bonds?" asked the Ancient One, his curiosity roused by the sight of those condemned to eternal half-lives standing before him again, as in the old days when the world was young.

"A female child," said Afagddu.

"Her voice has wakened the well."  The Ancient One sounded mildly curious about such a child.

"It is as it is," agreed Afagddu.  "We come to claim our right of redress."

	"When all have come to the Ancient One

	 What had been done, must be undone."

The Ancient One's voice gave the words to the air, but kept their meaning for himself.  Afagddu completed the rhyme.

	"The Gods of Autumn, kept under for a reason,

	 Each turning year may return for their season."

"You have come and made your claim.  Do all here so claim?"

The other Gods of Autumn replied each with an "Ay."

"What is rightly claimed, must be rightly granted.  Even the Ancient One must obey this law."

Eva shivered in her soft wings.  Something must be done to stop this.  If the Gods of Autumn return to their old freedom each year...  She had to do something.  This moment was as desperate as when she was exiled from the old country, carrying only her household goods in the dead of night, her loyal dwarf, and the painting of her and the clever princeling who had turned the tables on her.  But that is a story for another day.  Eva shivered again, this time with determination.  With a fell swoop, she unfurled her wings and plunged down into the center of the quarry before any of the gods could stop her.  

"Hail, Ancient One!" Eva began.  She kept her back to Afagddu, a gesture of disrespect that would have had her lying disemboweled on the ground before her final prayer at any other time.  "It was I who caused the child to wake the well, and summon the Gods of Autumn.  If their right is granted, I may claim a boon."

The Ancient One showed no surprise.  He had seen her perching above, and thought nothing of it.  The Gods of Autumn shuffled when the Ancient One began to address the mortal.  Their business had nothing to do with those who die.

"You may claim a boon of those you freed, and not of myself," the Ancient One said.  

"I will not grant her boon, whatever it may be."  Afagddu had already gotten the Ancient One's agreement, in principle, that they could return in corporeal form each year as they had done for ages past, what more was necessary?

"What is rightly claimed, must be rightly granted."

"But she is mortal," protested Afagddu.

"But the law is not," noted the Ancient One.

Eva watched the argument go back a forth for a while.  This was incredible!  She didn't even know what boon she would ask, but it looked like the Ancient One wasn't about to make the Gods of Autumn do anything they didn't want to do directly.  They were going into an almost esoteric discussion of bond rights and mortal limitations, faith and fealty and concepts so old and unmodern as to sound downright strange to any who live today.  And half of their argument was conducted in poetry--snatches of prophecy or unrhymed snippets in some antique tongue.

"Fair Gods of Autumn," Eva interrupted, turning to face Afagddu.  She looked down at his feet, not daring to meet his burning eyes.  "Ancient One.  The boon I would ask is not one to bind the Gods of Autumn, but merely to allow a bet to be placed on a contest.  If I lose, then all that I am may go to the Gods."

"And if you win?" said the Ancient One.  Afagddu still could not bring himself to speak with a mortal on equal terms.

"If I win," said Eva, "then the Gods of Autumn withdraw their claim on the Ancient One."  To withdraw their claim would condemn them back beneath the well, living only in the dreams of men when the leaves begin to fall and the world begins to think long thoughts of winter.

Afagddu didn't like it, but was intrigued by the idea of a wager.  And, of course, a wager gained its interest from the amount of its bet.  Despite he inclinations, Afagddu found himself responding to the impudent mortal.  

"Your side of the wager is not enough.  What more have you to bet?"

Eva turned around again, surprised.  She had not expected Afagddu to address her at all.  This time, however, she looked upon his convenance directly.  This almost turned out to be a deadly mistake, however.  For, by looking up, she fell in awe of the august god, and came perilously close to simply throwing her soul over to him and confessing all she knew.  Only her years of wily dissimulation saved her.  She found her brain scrabbling madly to come up with something else to lay on the table.  But what did she have to sweeten the pot that Afagddu and the others would care a whit about?  These were gods, after all.  What had she been thinking when she had followed the Gods of Autumn through the night sky?  Was she moon-mad?  Draggonnath had fallen victim to moon-madness in the past, but it was very rare.  Eva almost began to doubt her sanity.

"The Casket of Augersaal is mine to command," she said.  Now, this was not strictly true, since she and Mr. Plimsoul had been unable to open the casket when they had given it their all earlier in the evening.  Eva was daring all on a most hazardous course.

"The Magathesthene," gasped lithe Aerfen.  That was the ancient name for what had been enclosed in the Casket of Augersaal.  

The other Gods of Autumn found themselves smiling slyly.  A bet with a mortal was almost a sure thing.  The liveliness that had returned to them with their stirring from beneath the well was giving them a daring they had lost, or rather, that had slept, as they lay beneath the well, with only the dreams of men to manage.

"The terms of the wager, then," said Afagddu, almost impatiently.  The greedy lust of betting had begun to seize him.  "Or shall we bet blind, agreeing to the costs, and then revealing the actual wager only after it is accepted?"  This idea had a strange fascination for Afagddu and the other Gods of Autumn.  Here was a real risk perhaps, thrown in to spice the wager with the hapless Draggonnath.

"Ay, ay, ay, ay," came the affirmations of the other gods around the quarry.  Their eyes were shining with anticipation.  This was just the sort of excitement that they had missed for the last century.

Eva couldn't believe her ears!  What daring creatures these were.  How they lived!  She did not think that her own daring had lead her thus far herself.  From an outcast born on the straw to counselor to a king, to regent and ruler in all but name.  And now, so close to achieving all of her plans laid so carefully since her expulsion from the old country.  She had flown after her fate, and now she was about to put it all down on a bet.  Perhaps she had more in common with the gods that she had thought at first.  Perhaps the Draggonnath might one day have the immortality they craved, and have a place before the court of the Ancient One.  A star in the sky that shone just for them.  She gathered her wits, and spoke as carefully as she ever had her next few sentences.

END OF CHAPTER NINETEEN

 



Chapter Twenty

"The Well Becomes a Window"

Sarah raced through the bracken, anxious to elude discovery by the bands of searchers Barnabas and Granny Pansy were resolutely gathering.  The black trees whipped past, invisible except for their stinging twigs.  Sarah was headed toward the well, which would offer at least an evening's refuge before the dockworkers or anyone else would think that little Dar had made it so far.  

As fast as she was running, Sarah's mind raced on ahead even faster.  The challenges before her were numerous, and she had no idea what to do about any of them.  She was leaving her family and her Granny Pansy to shield them from danger.  The Gods of Autumn were on the loose because she had wakened the well and the energy of that had allowed the gods to walk the earth once again.  She must find some way to quiet them down, or make them go away, or something.  One man had already been killed, that protesting dockworker shot by the police.  Others like that man, crazed and agitated, had been gathered around the well the last time Sarah was here.  And Sarah had jumped into the well too, Barnabas reported.  She certainly didn't want to do that ever again.  And she wanted even less to have her throat torn out by birds and then get tossed in the well as had happened to the shadow-Sarah in the future-telling Shadem Graviosis conjuration back in the kitchen.

Her parents were out with the Political Committee, trying to get Berny Cottswold put back in charge of the town under some kind of emergency regulation.  That would take a lot of petition signatures, but they were well on their way with 40,000 already collected and counting.  That was the news Sarah had heard on the radio as she had packed her cardboard suitcase.  That would just be more trouble, Sarah thought.  Berny Cottswold wanted the police and even the Home Guard to crack down on the dockworkers even more harshly than they already were.  If that happened, there would be war in the streets.  Nobody would stand for their buddies getting trounced by some squad of out-of-town coppers.  And the cops sure wouldn't take any guff.

Up ahead, Sarah could see a dim blue glow coming through the fingers of the trees.  That must be the well, she thought.  Its still singing away.  Sarah wondered what other creatures of the old magic the well was inspiring to come back to life like the Gods of Autumn.  For all she knew, when she entered the ash tree clearing the well would be surrounded by ogres and hippogryphs and flying monkeys.  Sarah stopped cautiously at the edge and peered through a still-leafy branch to see what was happening before entering the immediate vicinity of the well.

There were no flying monkeys, and it seemed that the dockworkers had dispersed.  The Gods of Autumn also hadn't returned from wherever they were going when they had crossed the moon.  There was no old crone stirring the well like a gigantic cauldron, and the well itself wasn't evening singing.  The little glade was as quiet as a field of new snow.

The steady glow still emanated from the well, however, as if someone has tossed an over-sized plasma TV set into the well while still plugged in.  Sarah went over to the well, carefully, and leaned over to look into the quiet hole.  This was the first time she was gazing into the well without being deranged by singing since she had first spotted herself in its depths with those hands around her neck.  That was an eerie reflection that Sarah would rather forget. 

Sarah thought again of her brother Gilman's pendant.  That rune-written silver stone had helped her out against Bart during their confrontation, she was now sure.  And if she had gone alone into the house Mr. Plimsoul and Eva used, she might well have escaped detection entirely.  Perhaps the pendant could help her stay hidden from the searchers looking for Dar as well.  Sarah patted herself down thoroughly.  The pendant definitely wasn't around her neck, nor in her left skirt pocket.  Patting down her right skirt pocket, Sarah felt something small and soft wriggle around under her fingers.  Had a mouse hopped in her pocket?  Sarah didn't thrust her hand in her pocket, but rather cautiously opened the pocket to peek into it by the glowing light of the well.  Down at the bottom of her pocket, next to a spare button, a true-love knot she had tied for Gilman out of heather, and the receipt for the last movie she had seen in town with her best friend Missy about a pair of dueling Illusionists, a small black feather danced and wiggled.  Oh, that's right, Sarah remembered, that's the feather Eva plucked from her gorgeous boa.  Sarah took the feather from her pocket and watched it dance upright on the palm of her hand.  Now, what was that song the Eva had taught her?  Something or other about "feather lithesome, feather bright...."  Sarah began to sing, almost under her breath.

	"Feather lithesome, feather bright

	 Feather dancing day or night

	 When my lonely heart has fears

	 Dance my saving graces near."

The feather's wriggling turned to a sort of dancing in time to Sarah's singing.  A little bit like when you pet a cat and its back arches up to meet your palm.  Sarah smiled despite herself to see the tiny thing react with such pleasure to her singing.  And then she remembered that singing the song would put her in touch with Eva, that Eva would see her "just as if you were before me."  She'd be found out by the grown-ups before she had even really started to run away.  Still, a calm presence began to come over Sarah, making her feel that things would work out all right anyway.

Just then, the glow of the well began to change.  It was darkening.  Sarah leaned in to see what was happening.  Down in the glow of the well, which had always been sort of like a mist welling up from some unknown depth, a patch was starting to clear.  The normal glow of the well was being blown aside, or flattening as if it were rising against a pane of glass.  Through the window, Sarah could see a scene begin to unfold.  

It was a rocky place, full of ghostly cliffs.  At one end of the cliffs, a fiery face was moving its lips like an animated drawing.  Closer at hand was a tall dark man with an unhappy face and a huge shied strapped to his back.  Was Eva in this place?  Is this what the feather was showing her?  The feather had lain back down in Sarah's palm contentedly, as though its work were done.  It was not wriggling any more.  Sarah leaned more deeply into the well, taking one foot off of the grass to do so.  She thought she could hear some of the figures in the picture speaking, but the words were coming through at a very low volume.

Was that Eva's voice?  It sounded like her.  That honeyed tone, explaining just how everything had to be so reasonably, so thoroughly, so doggedly.  It was like a parent explaining to a very small child why they must never ever touch a hot stove.  If that was Eva's voice, where was she in the picture before her?  Sarah then noticed a very small figure facing the fiery face at the far end of the cliffs.  It was black in the shadows of the place.  And it was slowly flapping a pair of large wings, like a bat.  It was talking, and the voice was Eva's!  What could that mean?

"Thank you, Ancient One," Eva said softly, but with clarity now that Sarah was paying such close attention.  The fiery face seemed to nod.

"Do you accept the judgment, Afagddu?" the fiery face was saying.  It was like the voice was inside Sarah's head, it seemed so irrefutable.

The tall dark figure in the foreground pawed the earth with a sandaled foot.  It was like watching a bull before it charged.  His shoulders were hunched in desperate anger--wanting to strike out, but withheld.  Sarah expected the creature to murder Eva in front of her eyes.  Sarah felt a gasp of concern leap from her heart.  Eva had been kind to her.  She at least had understood how terribly hard things could be when others are jealous of your talent.  And she had said that Sarah was special.  What the creature said next surprised Sarah.

"Ay, Ancient One."  

Sarah saw several other large figures stir then.  They were arrayed around the rocky place, and Sarah had mistaken them for statues carved into the cliffs they had been so still.  But once they had started to move, Sarah recognized them from the night at the well when their shapes had appeared in the trees.  These were the Gods of Autumn.  And Eva had won something from them, or been given something of theirs by this Ancient One.  But what was Eva doing with bat wings?  It was bizarre and unsettling.  The wings hung from Eva's shoulders as elegantly as a tailored cloak, and suited her that way.  Maybe this is why Eva could understand so well about being different.  Maybe, Eva wasn't just the great-granddaughter of a Draggonnath, maybe she was one herself.

The wager was over, and, incredibly, the gods had lost.  Perhaps the fact that the Ancient One had been called on to judge had swayed the outcome.  Had he desired to have less competition awake in the world?  Or did he, with his prophetic sight, see some weave in the world that this judgment would come to serve--other than the hopes that Eva harbored, of course.  The Ancient One had been since the world began, and while few knew his ways, none knew his reasons.  His face looked like it was made of fireflies swirling and darting, thought Sarah.

"This season you may reign as you have done since the world was young.  When the season ends, so does your reign.  Once again, you will live only in the dreams of men.  Until another comes to wake you.  Another child, another voice.  Or until the foundations of the Earth are broken up, and thrown into the eternal fire to be remade again."

As simply as a blink, the fireflies went out.  The fiery face was gone. 

And with that, this militant Afagddu, and several other gigantic figures filed out of the window Sarah saw them in.  They seemed to be going somewhere very quickly.  And they were angry.

Eva was alone among the enormous cliffs.  She flapped her velvet wings meditatively, and then looked up as if she had just heard someone call her name.  She flapped her wings and flew to where Afagddu had stood, at the very edge of the window in the well.  She was peering toward Sarah's face.  Her eyes were like daggers coming out of a bowl of milk.  Eva seemed as imperious then as a church fresco.  Eva's face now took up the entire well, and yet she was still squinting.  Suddenly, her face regained a more alluring composure.

"Sarah, darling," Eva said.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY

 



Chapter Twenty-One

"Battling the Wind"

"Political Committee!  Open up!"

Sarah's father Daffiyd knocked on the door more loudly.

"Political Committee!  This is an emergency measure.  It requires that all who live in Traeshurstaene be informed and sign off on it one way or another."   

Daffiyd stood there, exhausted and angry.  Behind him, his wife Gwynnith held a stack of signed petition sheets.  They were going from door-to-door to get Berny Cottswold back in charge of the district.  They knew he'd restore order plenty quick.  He'd be able to call in help, not just from the Home Guard and the police, but from some of the powerful friends he and his family had made over their many years in office.

"Cyndy?  Arthur?  Do you see these badges we've been given?  If you don't come to the door we are authorized to mark you down as recalcitrant.  And that won't stand you in very good stead when Berny Cottswold is running things again."

For another moment nothing happened.  The pansies by the front door blew coolly in morning air.  It was surprising that their blossoms had held out so long.  Most of the other flowers had been bitten by the frost and lay withered against their stems.  Then, with a long agonizing creak that spoke of untended rust in the hinges, the door opened to the width of its chain lock, and Arthur's face appear squinched in the crack.

"What're ye disturbin' the peaceful citizenry for, Daffiyd?  G'mornin' Gwynnith."

"Mornin', Arthur," Gwynnith replied.

"You've got to sign this petition, Arthur.  It's only what's good for the town.  And good for you too, if you know what that is."

"I daresay I might have a notion," replied Arthur cautiously.  "Now, what's all this about badges?"

"They're our badges of office," answered Gwynnith for her husband. "They give us the necessary authority."

"Are they makin' you two little tinpot coppers now?"

"No, Arthur," said Daffiyd, a bit closer to pleading with an old friend than to ordering anyone around.  "But, well, the thing is..."

"The thing is, I don't like badges.  Some of the fellas are gettin' roughed up down at the docks."

"Well, that is just the problem, Arthur," said Gwynnith.  "These hard men are turning into wild beasts.  Have you heard how they are behaving?"

"Ay.  Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren't.  There's a lot of bad feelin' round here, with Tilly Lingersall not yet in his grave."

Mrs. Tone was about to rebut this point, when Daffiyd grabbed her hand and said simply:

"Look, Arthur, the fact is, we're exhausted, and my feet are killing me.  Can we come in for a sit-down and a good cup of tea?"

Arthur was even more taken aback by Daffiyd's inviting himself in than he was annoyed by the badges.

"Cyndy," Arthur shouted over his shoulder.  "We've company.  Put the kettle on."

* * * *

"All right, now.  Cast the eiderdown eye, Charlie!"

Granny Pansy had cleared a spot on the floor of the wood, having drawn concentric circles in the dirt with the sharp end of a stick.  Her brother, Great Uncle Charlie, was winding up like a baseball pitcher.  In his hand was a large fluffy ball of feathers and old chicken bones.  He reared back on one foot, squinted one eye shut, and then threw the fluffy ball at the target Granny Pansy had drawn.  With a sound like crashing glass, the ball exploded as it hit the dirt.  There were chicken feathers everywhere.

"What's it say?" asked Great Uncle Charlie spitting out a few feathers and trying to clean his glasses of a few more feathers that had stuck to them. Even Great Uncle Charlie's eyebrows had a few indiscriminate feathers stuck to them.  

"Just a minute, just a minute," said Granny Pansy.  "They have to settle, you know."

Granny Pansy bent low to the ground, watching every feather float down into place.  Slowly, an arrow was forming on the target she had drawn.  

"This way," she said, pointing with her arm in the direction of the feather arrow.  "Have all the searchers head in the direction of Crossamum Falls."

Barnabas Burrbuckle and the other dockmen who had come from the vigil for Tilly Lingersall began to head toward Crossamum Falls.  They had been doused with spell-water back at the Tones' home by Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie.  This spell-water had the effect of letting the men sense the direction the eiderdown eye pointed.  It also left them feeling lively and alert, even though they'd been up all night, and some of Tilly's good friends had a distracted air about them.  They only drawback to the spell-water was that all the men now smelled slightly of chicken broth--and that kept their stomachs grumbling.

Each of the men on the search had been given a talisman by Great Uncle Charlie.  These talismans would have the effect of shutting out the siren call of the Gods of Autumn.  These men would not be swayed to rash action by the unexpected feelings aroused with the season.  They would be like a section of sober judges sitting in the middle of a football rally.  They crunched through the fallen leaves with great determination, every eye sharp for any sign of Dar or the runaway Sarah.  

"This way," said Barnabas Burrbuckle.  The Tones' dog, Roanie, bounced after him.

"So I gathered," replied Tommy Lingersall.  It was his brother who was dead, but he had been the first to volunteer to help in the search back at the vigil.

The two men turned toward the Crossamum Falls, and the whole line of thirty-four men turned with them.

After half an hour, and several more casts of the eiderdown eye, Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie came over to where Barnabas lead the searchers and asked him a question.

"Barnabas," began Granny Pansy.  "Do you think you and your men can take over from here on?"

"Yes," said Great Uncle Charlie, still spitting chicken feathers out his mouth from the last casting, "the eiderdown eye has been pointing steadily toward the Crossamum Falls, and we've got a lot to do to prepare for the return of the Gods of Autumn."

"Well," drawled Barnabas, without slacking his pace.  "I don't unnerstand what ye must do, but I unnerstand ye mun do it."

"There's whole posse of wizards rounding up at the Tones' house to help us do battle with the Gods of Autumn.  If we can't lick them, we'll know in a day or two.  But, I'd rather not think about that."

"We will search as thoroughly as any men may," Barnabas pledged simply.  As far as he was concerned, there was no more to be said.

"I know you and your men can handle it," Granny Pansy said.

"Ay, but I don't like the looks o' thet sky above us."  Barnabas squinted through the spotty canopy of the October trees.  Indeed, the storm he had feared in the warm evening before was rapidly materializing above them.

"Come on, Charlie," said Granny Pansy, and off they went to meet the wizards.

* * * *

By the time Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie arrived back at the house, there were about a dozen cars parked outside the Tones' home.  A litter of tents had been pitched in the back yard.   Some were made of silk and had a pattern of dazzling stars on a blue field, some were dingy, tough and travel-worn, and some were as bright and fanciful as clown makeup.  In and out of the tents, an intense beehive of activity was going on.  Almost all the wizards and witches of Granny Pansy's and Great Uncle Charlie's acquaintance had shown up to help do battle with the Gods of Autumn.  They could tell from their own forecastings that the Gods of Autumn were now fully materialized, and one of the number, a Sarge Heiserach, even had intimations that the Ancient One had been involved in this business of the Gods of Autumn in some as yet obscure way.

"Pansy!  Charlemagne!"

A chorus of greetings went up when Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie arrived.  The rapidly-developing storm cast them all in shadow despite it being early morning.  They were both immensely worried about baby Dar, but had to get on with defending the township from the Gods of Autumn before they returned from their interview in the North Country.  The various wizards and witches assembled knew all of this, and had their best tricks and spells that they thought could aid in the cause against the gods on display.  Granny Pansy reviewed their marvels most carefully.  But there was the air of a fair day anyway, despite the seriousness of their cause, and despite the gloomy clouds overhead, and despite their not knowing the whereabouts of either Sarah or Dar.  These were magicians about to perform their best feats of legerdemain.  They were proud of their abilities.  And those abilities, and their pride, were on full display.

A crowd of anxious demonstrators surrounded Granny Pansy.  Granny Pansy did her best to try and get them to line up in a row, but there were far too many unabashed individualists in this group to do anything but be themselves.

"Me first," demanded Hemily Higglay.  Her cloak was of finest ermine, and jewels traced the cuffs.  Her glasses, made by the same optometrist that served the Queen, were secured by a string of sapphires.  Hemily was a duchess in East Anglia, and was used to being first in line, every line.  Granny Pansy resigned herself to the inevitable.

"What have you prepared against the Gods of Autumn, Hemily?" she asked.

"Oh, you'll like it, Pansy.  You'll like it," Hemily gushed.  She was quite happy to be first, and warmed up to anyone who gave her what she considered to be her due deference.

"Everyone, stand back," Granny Pansy recommended as Hemily Higglay ducked into her golden tent, the flaps of which were being held open by a pair of comparatively graceful female dwarves.  There were some shuffling noises that came from within the tent, and a crash that sounded like the candelabra had hit the portable parquet flooring, followed by Hemily's reemergence.  She was carrying an ornate object that was heavy enough to almost overbalance her.  Her dwarves rushed to help her.

"No!" commanded Hemily.  "No hands but those of a supreme witch must touch the Craggensprakk Guldensool."

The crowd immediately broke into a thousand discussions speculating on exactly what a Craggensprakk Guldensool could possibly be.  Some suggested it would rush the Gods of Autumn into another dimension.  Others thought it must be to temporarily dazzle and blind them, it was so overwrought with gems itself.  Hemily Higglay put the object in the middle of the backyard awkwardly, and then proceeded to back away from it, without taking her eyes off of it.  Her small, well-manicured hands protruded from the fancy sleeves of her cloak, and had begun gesturing with a ladylike finesse.

"Soluum bekkadoon tresfuylsk sigimumum," Hemily Higglay began her spell.

As she continued, the Craggensprakk Guldensool began to respond.  It unfolded itself like an over-sized orchid, and the petals dug into the ground, revealing an interior made entirely of diamond teeth.  The Craggensprakk Guldensool began to walk around the backyard as if looking for something to eat.  In a few moments, it had devoured the Tones' pair tree, Sarah's old bicycle that had been left to rust, and a humble, rather dingy, tent whose owner just had time to dive out of before seeing all of his wizardly apparatuses disappear into the beast's glittering maw.

"Hemily, enough, stop this monstrosity," said Granny Pansy.

"Yes, Pansy," agreed Hemily, but she looked rather unsure about how to actually stop the Craggensprakk Guldensool.  Her expensive glasses slipped off her nose, and she had to feel around to find them and return them to the perch atop her pointed nose.

"Cease and desist!" Hemily commanded in her firmest tones.  Several wizards who had been chatting and pointing behind her back stopped at once.  But the Craggensprakk Guldensool was less obedient.  It stalked on to eat part of the retaining wall between the Tones' yard at the street, spilling a ton of dirt and gravel on the roadway in the process, before several spell-casters working together got it to grind to a halt.  It had been stopped just three feet from Hemily, who was cowering before it in a most unregal posture.  It looked like somebody had spilled the contents of a gigantic jewelry box.

Hemily Higglay decided that she needed to retire to her tent for "a little lay-me-down."

For the next hour there was parade of wonders and horrors that unfolded before Granny Pansy.  She duly noted the qualities and strengths of each, hoping to throw together some sort of strategy that could use them all in such a way that the whole would be greater than the sum of their parts.  Granny Pansy had to admit that, frankly, she had no idea how to stop one God of Autumn, let alone the whole crew.  Granny Pansy had a shrewd idea that the weapons and methods being trotted before her on the lawn might serve mostly as distractions to the marauding Gods of Autumn.  Whether any of these devices and spells could be counted on to gain them anything but a little time she seriously doubted.

Mr. Tone's hunting hound, Roanie, began to bark furiously and snap at the sky.  He was looking up into the air.  Wizards and witches close at hand looked at the hound dubiously.  And then they looked in the direction that Roanie was looking.

"Look, away to the north!" said Wizard Simmons, gesturing northward with a ruby laser beam that emanated from the end of his wand.

As all eyes turned to follow the ruby beam of light, a sound like rolling thunder came down upon them.  The skies opened up in a tremendous barrage of hailstones and hard rain.  A blinding bolt of lightning that seemed aimed right at the witches' coven gathered in the Tones' backyard was diverted only at the last split second by the new lightning rod the Tones' had had installed the previous hurricane season.  By the time their eyes had readjusted after the bolt had passed, the Gods of Autumn were upon them.

Afagddu was first, bearing his shield before him, and holding his sword aloft for a killing strike.  Adsagsona followed, her arms and hands busy with complex gestures of illusion and destruction.  At her heels was Aerfen, her ardent playmate, gathering the rainwater into stinging streams and needles as they fell.  Aeron and Agrona came last, but not least, for they were the indiscriminate spirits of slaughter and mayhem, living embodiments of the forces that cull the wheat and bring the rich harvest to its conclusion.  The same gods that can fatten a silo with grain, can cut down the farmer who cuts down the grain.  What is harvested, be it seed or marrow, was a matter on of degree and not of kind to an incensed god.

Making this sudden appearance of the Gods of Autumn in their most ferocious aspect all the more fearsome was the fact that they were all singing.  All together they sang a song in the eldest tongue which only witches and wizards knew even a little of.  It was a song of destruction and devastation, and they sang it through grim, smiling faces.  Great Uncle Charlie, who was a scholar of such languages, in later years eventually pieced the words of the song together into a translation.  He had no trouble remembering the words as they sang them, for there was nothing about that afternoon that Charlemagne Sigmund Farnfeather Twisslestarn would ever, ever forget.  It stayed before him like a waking nightmare for years.

	"Death's the mortal measure,

	And Death's the God's high meed!

	Gods, come kill for pleasure

	And not from lowly need!

	

"Kill the mortal men we find,

	Doomed by birth and by time--

	Double-damned, so why be kind?

	Kill the mortals, kill the time!"

Down came Afagddu's sword into the Tones' backyard, splitting two tents in half and gouging a great rent in the earth.  Wizard Simmons, who was still pointing to the North with his wand, had his arm completely severed at the shoulder.  Fortunately, Rganpith was able to staunch the wound with an instant freeze-dried blood spell.  Cauldrons floated away while witches still held onto their ladles as Aerfen guided the flows of water hither and thither at will.  Adsagona toyed with a dozen souls, watching wizards and witches chase phantom images of herself here and there with a powerful weave of illusion spells.  Agrona and Aeron were more direct, more brutal.  But their directness, while quite deadly, was actually a bit easier for necromancers to dodge.  The skills of all were engaged in running away as fast as possible, throwing up haphazard shield and web spells behind them as they ran.  Unfortunately, this often meant that those who were running behind them would get trapped in the webs or rebuffed by the shields.  Those so caught or stopped were easy pickings for the Gods of Autumn.

Only a few, including Hemily Higglay, Great Uncle Charlie, who had been using the bathroom inside, and, by sheer luck, Granny Pansy, were far enough away from the initial onslaught to be able to offer some kind of counter-attack.

Granny Pansy, clutching the rain gutter against a sudden flow of water coming around the corner of the house, cast a spell of misidentification against Agrona and Aeron.  The two gods, who had been coming on shoulder-to-shoulder, turned to confront each other.  Each thought the other was the thing they hated most.  Agrona grabbed Aeron by the throat, who in turn clawed at Agrona's belly with his razor-spurred sandals.  It was like watching two cats fight to the death, their backs bristling, their claws flashing without mercy.

At the same time as Granny Pansy was casting her spell, Great Uncle Charlie hurled a charm that caused instant deafness and muteness into Afagddu's left ear.  He could no long hear the war song he was singing, and the orders he was shouting carried no more meaning than static on the radio.  Afagddu grew angry at his insolent subordinates who neither acknowledged nor carried out his commands.  After a few minutes of utter frustration, he gathered up Agrona and Aeron bodily, scooping them up in his shield like a pair of tots on a toboggan, and began to march off to the south.

Adsagona and Aerfen, who'd been having a bit more success, were put on the defense by Hemily Higglay's elaborate mechanism.  The Craggensprakk Guldensool was pulling apart Adsagona's fine gown faster than she could mend it.  Her vanity, the vanity of a beautiful goddess, would not allow her to be seen in dishabille, and she escaped toward the South after Afagddu, the Craggensprakk Guldensool snapping at her hem like a golden dog.  Aerfen, when she realized that she was alone on the field of battle, turned into a spout of water and slapped all the assembled crowd in the face as she flowed in an angry torrent into the skinny Mickleswift.

The wizards and witches looked around at the soggy devastation, the ruined tents, the delicate equipment bent and broken, the precious supplies of magic herbs blown to smithereens, the half-drowned rats and toads and snakes and newts that had been so carefully packed to prepare their potions, and, almost as one, heaved such a sigh of despair it would have made hardest-hearted executioner cry to hear it.

"I have an idea," said Granny Pansy.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

 



Chapter Twenty-Two

"A Glimmer in the Stream"

Dar played in the shallow pool, happy as an otter.

He would splash the water over his head, or squish it playfully between his fingers.  He liked the way the moon ran away when he splashed its image in the pool, or would reassemble itself as flawlessly as before in a few moments.  He liked his new friend who he had followed away from the house where everyone seemed either sad or angry, or, worse, worried.  You could never play any fun games with everyone worrying.

Dar glanced over at his new friend, who was busily diving and leaping in the pool as agilely as a fish.  In fact, when Dar had followed his new friend's voice to the edge of the Mickleswift behind the Tones' house earlier in the evening, the first thing he had said when he actually saw his new friend was "Fish!"

His friend, whose scaly hide could be seen flashing in far end of the reed-edged pool, had corrected Dar.

"I am not a fish," he had said.  "I, good master, am Gwllal."  Gwllal had made a funny sort of glottal stop when he said his name, and that had made Dar laugh.  

"Would you like to ride the stream with me to my home?" Gwllal had asked.  In answer, Dar, who had been wanting to play in the stream all day, hopped in up to his knees.

"Fine," Gwllal said.  He had one large eye on each side of his head, which was as broad as his shoulders where it connected to his torso.  And his mouth was at the top of his head, and was a fish's mouth.  It moved stiffly when he talked, and all Gwllal's words sounded as if he spoke them while gargling water.  He had two pale legs, as skinny as a twelve-year-old's, and two pale arms as bulky as a dockworker's, but short as a dwarf's.  In fact, with his webbed fingers and toes, his arms and hands resembled fins more than anything else.  Come to think of it, if you were to say that a large silver fish's head had sprouted two arms and two legs, you would have been very close to describing just what Gwllal looked like.  

Dar loved his goldfish, "Fishie!", at home in the city, and he liked Gwllal right away too. 

The Crossamum Falls could be heard behind the pair, breaking far above the pond.  Without the noise and furious action of the falls, there would be no peaceful, reedy pond.  The two spent the night in childish games.  Peek-a-boo and got-your-nose and some that Gwllal knew.  Gwllal blew a bubble large enough for Dar's head from his slimy mouth, and brought Dar under the water with him to see the marvels that darted in the reeds.  They ate crayfish raw, and Gwllal informed Dar that he was related to the rubicund herring.  Dar giggled to hear such a silly word, like when his sister Abbey told their Mom that her soup was "simply scrumptious!"

"Aerfen is away, and I may do as I may," said Gwllal, but Dar didn't understand him.  What Dar did understand was being tickled by bubbles, and getting swatted when he poked Gwllal in his huge eye with a curious finger.  It felt like jello, Dar thought.  Rubbing his face where Gwllal had slapped him, Dar thought it was worth it to find out, and so stopped crying.

While they were still playing on the bank, the middle of the pool began to swirl and bubble.  A whiteness, like a boiling, was rising up in the center of the calmness Gwllal and Dar had been swimming in just minutes before.  Dar clapped his hands together and said "Bubbles!"  

Gwllal had a different reaction.  Gwllal's mouth opened and closed rapidly, like a fish out of water trying to catch its breath.  But the boiling and bubbles only grew greater, and they began to rise from the pond in a water spout.  Gwllal's knees trembled, and he hopped out of the shallow water he had been standing in, leaving only a single bare foot in the water.  Higher and higher the waterspout rose, until it was almost half the height of the Crossamum Falls.  It towered over Gwllal and Dar, cutting out the moonlight from the place by the pond.  All the moonlight seemed to be gathered into the waterspout itself, glowing brighter than anything else in the quiet dell.  Then a shape began to form in the waterspout, or of it, making the waterspout look almost as if it were carved of ice.  Gwllal recognized the glassy figure in the waterspout all too well.

"Aerfen, mistress," Gwllal said wetly, curtsying at the knees in a way that made him look rather froggish.

"Gwllal!" Aerfen said, and then continued in some foreign tongue that made no sense to Dar, but which, if translated, would have been something like: "Do you dare the curse of the Autumn Gods with this disobedience?"

Gwllal was speechless.  He shook his head negatively.  This was difficult to do, since he had no shoulders, and, strictly speaking, no neck.  Gwllal looked like he was shivering with fright.

"Blasphamy!  Impudence!  Cursed be thy progeny!"  Aerfen was working herself up into a proper tizzy.  She had just come from the humiliation of the Gods of Autumn at the Tones' home, and was still stinging from it.  Aerfen thought, in way that gods often do, that she might find some comfort in the obedience of her minions.  All the waterways of Treashurstaene, and their sprites, were hers to command.  And now her most trusted servant, the once golden Gwllal, was here in this moony pond, sharing all the joys of the waterways with, with....a mortal!  Where was the mischief in this?  Where was the game played upon unsuspecting innocents that was the proper provenance of a sprite?

Aerfen prepared to destroy the boy and Gwllal both, one by drowning and one by skewering.  But just then, Gwllal, Dar, and even Aerfen, as mad as she was, heard a troop of men cracking the underbrush and tromping through the wood, calling out their savage war cries: "Dar! Dar!  Whar' are ye, Dar!"

Aerfen had no appetite to confront another coven of wizards and witches on the hunt.  She spun herself around with an increasing speed, like a topless top, or a tornado being pulled from the pond.  She reached such a tremendous speed, that everything that was touching the Mickleswift for a mile in either direction was sucked into her vortex.  Unfortunately for Gwllal, this included him.  He was sucked in by his remaining foot, a look of surprise and terror on his fishy face.  He didn't even manage a goodbye as he spun around the core of Aerfen's waterspout as helplessly as a leaf before a leaf blower.

Dar watched his friend spin around and around.  "Up!  Up!" he said, pointing skyward as the waterspout flew north toward the Crossamum Falls.  Dar was still pointing and still saying "Up!  Up!" when Barnabas Burrbukle and a dozen men broke there way into the quiet dell, Roanie at their heels yelping happily.

"Why th' Meremirror Pond's naught but a mucky hollow!" exclaimed Tommy Lingersall.

"Ay," concurred Eirdritch.  "An' do yer hear the Crossamum Falls, who's roar we were a-followin'?"

"Nay, not a whisper o' it, let alone a roar," said Tommy wonderingly.

"It's gone dry as a desert cliff is why," said Eirdrtich, pointing up and away to where the Crossamum Falls were as suddenly silent as if a faucet had been shut off.

"Weel," said Tommy with quiet awe.  "Thar's a wonder."

"A wonder is a wonder," concurred Eirdritch.  "An' so it mun be."

While Tommy and Eirdritch were wondering what the devil had happened to the Crossamum Falls, Barnabas Burrbuckle spotted Dar by the reedy bank of the emptied pond, and scooped him up onto his broad high shoulders with a single hand.  Dar shouted in delight, still crying, "up!"

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

 



Chapter Twenty-Three

"Sarah, Darling"

"Plimsoul!  Hecatomb!  Boroshkovic!  Walpurgisnacht is upon us!"

Eva, singing an ecstatic song of destruction and vile victory, had returned from the North Country in giddy triumph.  Her long black velvet wings unfurled like banners at a half-time show.  Eva swooped and circled the isolated house that contained the Casket of Augersaal.  Eva shouted the names of her co-conspirators, urging them to wake from their slumbers.

"Plimsoul!  Hecatomb!  Boroshkovic!  Walpurgisnacht!"

Eva swung by the windows of the house's bedroom, peppering them with pebbles, and shouting to wake the dead.  One by one, the bedroom lights went on, until the entire upper floor of the house was lit up.  Sleepy faces appeared at the windows, yawning like walruses on their rocks, and throwing up the sashes to see what was the matter.

"Plimsoul!  Hecatomb!  Boroshkovic!  Walpurgisnacht!"

Mr. Plimsoul was the first to his window, and when he saw Eva's winged form, and heard her wicked song, a smile like a long crooked string bean came over his thin face.  The dwarf, Gar Boroshkovic, was the next to wake in his attic keep, the light of his bedside candle showing his nightcap in the lowest part of the window, and his wary eyes looking out at his mistress, who was doing backflips at that point over the barbecue pit in the backyard.  Gar was too short to reach the light switch in his room.  Mr. Hecatomb blinked many times, donning his glasses crookedly in the harsh light of his room, and gazed blankly out into the darkness with a dopey indifference available only to the truly near-sighted.

"Plimsoul!  Hecatomb!  Boroshkovic!  Walpurgisnacht!"

Once Eva had seen that they all were roused, she flapped up to the tippy-top of the chimney.  Eva put out a buckled boot, and landed flawlessly atop the bricks.  She perched there, her elaborate wings folded around her like a happy bat, waiting for the others to assemble in the back yard.  Dawn was just coming to the countryside, and a murder of ravens had started to caw from their places in the cypress trees that grew along one side if the yard.

"Walpurgisnacht's more'n a week away, isn't it?" asked a sleepy Mr. Hecatomb.

"But now there will be something to celebrate!" crowed Eva.  "The night of our destinies is almost upon us!"

"Eva," said Mr. Plimsoul, stepping out onto the back patio, turning round, and leaning far back to look up at her.  "What's the meaning of this?  Where were you?  What has happened?"

Gar stood beside him, his candle's flame very close to catching the sleeve of Mr. Plimsoul's fancy red robe on fire.  Mr. Plimsoul batted the candle out of its holder without even looking, spritzing Gar in the face with hot beeswax.

"Oh, Plimsoul!" Eva nearly sang.  "Loyal Hecatomb!  And dear Garvin Alexandrevich Ivanovski Boroshkovic from my own country!  The Gods of Autumn are upon us!  Or, more precisely, upon them!"  Eva threw her head back, and laughed a long and throaty laugh.  The dawn was coming up behind her, and she seemed like one of those carvings of mermaids on the prows of the old wooden ships-of-the-line.  Her wings, swept back behind her as she laughed, formed an angle that suggested the sides of a sea-going vessel, and the dawn wind brought them all the taste of salt from the Traeshurstaene inlet.

"Sounds good," commented Mr. Hecatomb, feeling a bit out of his depth.  "But what's it all mean?"

Eva looked down, her brows knitting together as though she were examining a beetle crawling in the dust before her.

"What it means, Eugenius," Eva said to Mr. Hecatomb, "is that the Gods of Autumn, who had been fully waked by the well and by Sarah Tone had the wit to bargain for their permanent freedom from their old debt to the Ancient One.  A freedom which the Ancient One, will-he, nill-he, would had no alternative but to grant.

Mr. Plimsoul's eyes grew large.  So that's where Eva had rushed off to!  When they saw the Gods of Autumn float past the moon, she must have figured out the danger at once and flown after them to stave off disaster.  And she had succeeded, but how?

"I see you understand well the danger, Simon," said Eva, turning her attention to Mr. Plimsoul.

"But how in the world did you manage it Eva?  You are telling us that the Gods of Autumn will not return in their full manifestations next year, aren't you?"

"I am indeed.  I am also telling you, that, as the other agent in their new wager--which they have lost--I and all my brood are safe from retribution.  But, oh, the anger of Afagddu!  The sinister frustration of ever-weaving Adsagsona!  The death-like looks of Aeron and Agrona!  Even that wishy-washy river goddess Aerfen had her currents in a twist!"

"You didn't enter into a bet against the gods?"  Mr. Plimsoul was more astonished than he had ever been in his life.  Someone who would bet against the gods--and win!  She must be more dangerous, more treacherous than a hundred witches, a thousand dizzy wizards.  Mr. Plimsoul began to feel... trapped.

"Oh, yes I did, Simon Plimsoul.  And, what's more, I have won!  By the way, Boroshkovic, we must prepare to entertain a guest.  Please get the spare room ready.  Sarah Tone will be returning to us."

"There has been news on the homefront as well, Eva," said Mr. Plimsoul, hoping to salvage some of his leverage with the Draggonnath.  "Excellent news, I think you'll find."

"And what might that news be, my darling Simon?"  

"I have extracted certain concessions from the enemy," Mr. Plimsoul stated boldly.

Eva's face registered surprise.  "From Doris Pansy Tone?"

"Oh, yes," gloated Mr. Plimsoul.  "The old woman cracked like a roasted cashew."

* * * *

Sarah and Eva went everywhere together.

Eva took Sarah shopping and set her up with a sophisticated new look that made the other girls in school totally jealous.  At least, that's what Sarah told herself when Missy Quicknass told her in the hallway at school one day that she "looked like a fishing lure."  In fact, school was a whole new experience for Sarah.  Even though she was invited back onto the choir by a newly repentant Mr. Hecatomb, she refused to join.  Such a little choir didn't deserve a voice as big as hers, she said.  Eva was taking her to the city to try out for the city choir.

Eva showed Sarah some other interesting things that she could do with her voice.  Eva gave Sarah some persuasion spells to learn, and Sarah tried them out on Bart and Basher.  Instead of picking on her, now they were trailing around behind her everywhere, carrying her books, and asking what else they could do to help her.  Other boys took an interest in her new look as well.  Sarah no longer felt too-tall and awkward.  Instead, she felt like a "presence," as Eva called it.  

"You must project yourself into the room.  Others' eyes will come to you.  It is only natural, Sarah darling.  You are different from them.  You and they have very little in common.  They know this already, but you are only starting to learn it.  One day, you will exult in it."

Even Mr. Plimsoul, disappointed that he still couldn't convince Eva to use Sarah to help them open the Casket of Augersaal, had show Sarah many things about the magical world.  Scrolls of power, and dusty bits of trivia that let Sarah see the world around her in a new way.  Things and people were put on our path to help us achieve what we wanted, not to become onerous obligations.  Still, Sarah didn't tell either Mr. Plimsoul or Eva about the "warrior crown," or how fretful she felt at times about having lost Gilman's pendant.

Walpurgisnacht was still a week away, on Mischief Night, the night before Halloween, so that all of the parents in the Political Committee with little kids could attend and still take their children out trick-or-treating on Halloween.  While witches were chasing after the Gods of Autumn, putting out "prairie fires" as Great Uncle Charlie said, Mr. Plimsoul and the others were preparing for the Walpurgisnacht celebrations, and signatures were piling up on the petitions that would re-instate Berny Cottswold to office.  Sarah's parents agreed to let Sarah stay at the Plimsoul house for awhile since they were so busy circulating the petition door-to-door.  Granny Pansy's protests fell on deaf ears.

Sarah had shown up on Mr. Plimsoul's doorstep wet and bedraggled.  Talking with Eva at the well seemed to sort everything out for Sarah in a way that being grilled by Granny Pansy just hadn't.  Sarah had to look out for herself, Eva explained, and that way she would be a burden to no one, and beholden to no one.  

"Be independent and make your own decisions," Eva had encouraged her.  "If you don't look out for yourself, no one will."

Arriving at school on the day of the Walpurgisnacht celebrations, Sarah looked down at her shiny new shoes and clicked her heels together.  Being independent had never seemed like so much fun.

* * * *

It was odd being around Eva so much, Sarah noticed.  Eva was often away at night, all night, showing up at the quiet breakfast table looking neither worn nor tired, but perhaps unusually thoughtful.  She never lost her elegance, not even when she was very angry.  She and Mr. Plimsoul seemed to share a close, but antagonistic relationship.  And she always remained solicitous of Sarah, which Sarah rather liked.

"Good morning, Sarah," said Eva.  

"Good morning, Eva," said Sarah, straightening her posture.

They were eating alone.  Mr. Plimsoul had already left for Ridgefield High.  Gar Boroshkovic entered and left by the side door noiselessly, just the same as when Eva and Sarah had had that strange dinner together just a week and a half ago.  The breakfast table was laid with dark grape juice, Baltic seaweed crisped in an oven, a loaf of black bread, slices of fine sirloin, caviar, and the ubiquitous bowl of black olives.  The black candles stood unlit in the slanting morning light.

"What are your studies today Sarah?" asked Eva, pulling a bloody slice of sirloin onto her black plate.

"Just a mish-mosh of everything," said Sarah.  "It's kind of boring."

"I understand, Sarah, darling," replied Eva.  Unlike most adults, Eva understood how dumb people could be.  "We train our hearts to fly, and the world says: slow down, walk!  They pretend they are helping you, but really what they are saying, my extraordinary Sarah, is 'Don't leave us behind!'"

Sarah could feel the truth in Eva's words.  She recognized envy in the eyes of her classmates, now that she was, as Eva said, "valuing herself."  Sarah pulled at her black bread, swatting it into a puddle of poured olive oil.  She nodded at Eva, noting how deep and lustrous her eyes were.  The portrait of Eva's great-grandmother seemed to have grown more alluring as well, and younger.  Later, when Sarah turned toward the door, she noticed that the princeling looked older than he had.  Although still not a grown man at all, his face appeared worried by something happening far away in the distance.

"Can you do my hair before the bus comes, like it was Sunday?" asked Sarah.  She grabbed for an olive.

"Most assuredly."  Eva bit into her steak and smiled.

After breakfast, Sarah and Eva stood before the floor-length mirror in the front hallway.  Eva's flexible fingers massaged Sarah's scalp, and pulled through Sarah's fine blond hair blindly.  Sarah held a variety of hair pins and fasteners in her hand in front of her while Eva worked.  Eva proceeded with her work wordlessly, rapidly pulling and setting Sarah's hair.  Sarah could feel Eva behind her, and closed her eyes.  Sarah could feel the soft caress of Eva's boa against her cheeks.  The boa had lifted over Sarah's shoulders and ran down her velvet dress just as if Sarah herself were wearing it.  She drew her free hand along the length of her new velvet dress.  Nothing had ever felt so wonderful.  Eva combed hard at a knot in Sarah's hair, causing Sarah to cry out into the feathers of the boa, which was fluttering at her face.  Eva held up three golden hairs from Sarah's head where the knot had come loose, and wound them tightly against her index finger.  Later, thought Eva.  Finally, Eva's manipulations came to halt, and she thrust Sarah away from her by the shoulders and told her:

"Tonight, you will have a magic lesson with me, Sarah darling."  

"Really?" said Sarah, pleased to think it might be so.  So far, all she'd done is sing spells with Mr. Plimsoul, trying to crack that dumb casket open.  Sarah was sick of it.  She didn't learn anything, because Mr. Plimsoul never even explained any of the words of the different spells.

"Yes, Sarah darling.  You are ready."

Sarah looked up into Eva's face in the mirror, and saw that Eva had done their hair the exact same.

* * * *

Sarah strolled into Ridgefield High as if she were the principal's daughter.  Her long nose looked down at everyone else, and her hair had been swept into a grown-up style.  Because Sarah was as tall as she was, she was able to pull it off, and the new teacher, a Miss Dabbledwight, even asked her collegially where the teacher's lounge was before she noticed the stack of school books in Sarah's arms.  Sarah smiled and pointed Miss Dabbledwight on her way.

"God, Sarah," said Missy Quicknass from behind.  "Why're you acting so big all of a sudden?"

Sarah looked down her long nose at her best friend, and dismissed her as you would dismiss a gnat.  

"You wouldn't understand," she said, and turned away.

Missy wouldn't let the tears appear in her eyes, but they showed in her voice.

"I wouldn't want to understand being such a rotten snob."

Sarah continued to walk down the hall, collecting ogling looks from the boys, and envious stares from the girls as though she were the homecoming hero of a confetti parade.  Her pride was like the prow of a great sea-going vessel, and parted the crowd before her.

When Sarah saw Bart Hecatomb in history class, she sang the "Remember Pain" spell that Eva had taught her under her breath, and watched with satisfaction as Bart's hand flew up to where Sarah had smacked him with that rock beside the Mickleswift.  

At the cafeteria, Mr. Plimsoul held Sarah's chair out for her and exchanged cordialities with her in front of the other students.  While Sarah was finishing her second pudding, Shelly slipped into the empty seat next to her and began a conversation.

"Sarah, why don't you go back home and visit your cousins Abbey and Dar.  I know they miss you terribly."

"That's funny, they were always so appallingly annoying.  Not a very effective way to get someone to like you."

"Well, they do.  Especially Abbey.  She feels really sorry about the things she said about your brother's room."

"A million apologies won't mend a single fence," said Sarah.  That was a new saying, from Eva's Great-Grandmother.  "Tell her I don't care.  When her parents get divorced, she's leaving anyway."

Shelly looked up at Sarah critically.  "What's gotten into you?  You used to be kind of aloof, but now you're just plain mean."

Sarah ignored this comment entirely, and licked the little wooden pudding-spoon clean.  A little kid like her would never understand a woman with a destiny, Sarah reasoned.  When she got up, she plopped her tray on top of Shelly's and strode away.

Sarah spent the afternoon tying other kids' shoe laces together by gesturing with her fingertips at their feet, and laughing in their faces when the got up to go the their next class and tripped.

* * * *

The fireball left Sarah's hand as if impelled by a rocket-booster.

Sarah's eyes danced as it incinerated a cypress at the edge of the sloping field behind the Mr. Plimsoul's house.  This was real magic, not a bunch of scary shadows on a wall.

"Come, Sarah, you must sing yourself feather-light if I am to carry you where we are to go next."  Eva plucked another feather from her protesting boa, and blew on it.  It stood at wistful attention as Eva whispered the words of the song into Sarah's ear.  Sarah took the feather into her hand, and began to sing.

	"Feather, feather, in the night

	Let me linger on earth so light

	Yhat all I am, all my weight

	Can flit and fly, not hesitate."

Sarah felt her heels dancing up off of the grass.  Only her toes were touching the earth, and if she had to walk, it would had to have been the way you use the tips of your toes in the deep end of a swimming pool, each toe just touching bottom and pushing with a slight forward effect.

Eva swept into the air above them, her wings throwing shadows from the porch light, and making a flapping sound like a kite caught in the wind.

"Quickly," Eva commanded.  "Grab my boots."  Sarah did so without thinking.  They were off!  A moment later Eva called down to Sarah.  "Do not let go!"  The warning was utterly unnecessary.  Sarah had to lift her legs to pass over the top of the chimney.  She had no idea where they were headed, and the night wind was as cold as a doctor's stethoscope, or a dog's nose that nuzzles your ear when you're asleep.

The night landscape rolled away under their feet, warm houses with snugly lit windows passed by below Sarah's feet.  The town square, with its grassy mall, and the Traeshurestane Savings and Loan with its luminous clock rolled by soundlessly.  The dockworks stood idle as they had for weeks now.  There was a quiet that was deeper than just the darkness.  Eva and Sarah were flying after the curfew that had been imposed, and there was no unauthorized traffic on the streets.  Traeshurestane looked as peaceful as it ever had.

Eva took them out over the docks, which looked like the dark jumble of an abandoned erector set in the almost absent moonlight.  The sea was a scimitar of grey at the edge of her attention, and as Eva turned again, Sarah knew with a dread certainty that they were headed to the ash grove, the clearing, and the waiting well.  Sarah's velvet dress clung tightly to her as they flew through the night.

By the time they touched down by the glowing portent of the well, still a steady blue-grey, with a collection of semi-zombified dockworkers milling around as the well hummed them in tune with the Gods of Autumn's will, Sarah's fancy hair-do had come utterly undone.  Sarah stumbled over to the well on one shoe, the other having come off somewhere by the docks, and looked over into the well to set her hair back into order.  Eva observed her for a moment, watching Sarah's underlit expression in the upwelling glow.  Eva wrapped the three golden hairs she had surreptitiously plucked from Sarah's head that morning around her index finger and addressed Sarah formally.

"Acolyte, arise," intoned Eva, her voice half-singing the words.  The well amplified and echoed the words behind Sarah as she straightened up to face Eva.  Sarah looked at Eva with a proud smile.  One day, thought Sarah, admiring Eva's dauntless poise, I will be as beautiful, as accomplished, as feared.  "Would you be as you are destined to be, Sarah Tone?"

Sarah felt the words, ambiguous and yet powerful, roll over her.  When the echo of Eva's voice in the well had stopped, Sarah answered.  

"I would."

"Come kneel before the Draggonnath, child.  You will arise a sorceress in your own right."

Sarah did her best to step gracefully to where Eva stood, holding her one shoe in her hand by its flimsy strap.  Sarah bowed her head before Eva, and then knelt down on her left knee.  Eva chanted, her voice as good as it ever was, the words of the Acolyte's Pledge.

	"I pledge to the edge:

	All I live, to give

	To this mistress mine

	Come shade, come shine---

	That I may never grieve, but live

	In my human form divine."

Sarah knew, like choir practice, that she was required to repeat the words.  But Sarah, perversely, repeated them backwards, in her best singing voice, altering the meaning of the lyric considerably.  The well took in her words and forcefully repeated them until the ground shook, and both women stood looking appalled and disheveled.  The men around the well appeared unaffected, waiting morosely on the whim of the Gods of Autumn to scatter them across Traeshurstaene to perform some further mischief.

	"In my human form divine,

	That I may never grieve, but live

	Come shade, come shine---

	Oh mistress mine,

	All I live, I give

	To my pledge to the edge."

The golden hairs around Eva's index finger burned as if an electric current were passing through them.  This was not the routine response to the binding of Acolyte and Mistress in the old country, but Eva had no doubt that she and Sarah now shared a connection that only death could alter or break.  The night winds shifted their hair into their faces, and when Sarah stood, they leaned against each other, exhausted.  They shared this unexpected hug for a long moment, Eva feeling surprisingly touched by the gesture, a daughter's gesture toward her from Sarah.  Sarah simply bathed in Eva's acceptance of her until Eva gestured for them to sit down on the grass with their backs against the well.

Sarah and Eva had a long discussion then.  Not about power or good and evil or Traeshurstaene or Sarah's Granny Pansy and what she might do next, or even about magic.  They talked about being women in the world, and how it felt, how they each felt so alone in their extra-ordinariness.  Both knew, or thought they knew, just how far they could trust the other one.  They never spoke of it afterward, but that boundary got pushed back farther that night.

It was only when the first competing light of dawn was beginning to turn the far side of the world grey, long after the waning sliver of moon had set, that the topic of conversation turned to magic.

"Eva," asked Sarah seriously, as she would ask a friend.  "Why am I so drawn to the well?  Every time I get confused, or run away from something, or toward something, I wind up by the old well."

"The well was here before the town was here, is what the old people of this place say," Eva began.  "And that may be all there is to say about it."

Sarah looked annoyed by this response, but Eva persisted in protesting her ignorance about the matter.

"The well is very ancient magic, Sarah.  The waters beneath it connect all the different parts of the town to itself, and then the town to the sea.  The Mickleswift and the Crossamum Falls connect to it via an underground river.  They say King Arthur himself, and all his knights, once prepared for battle by blessing themselves in its waters.  Not that the blessing helped them in that case;  it was before their final battle.  The waters of the well are treacherous.  Just ask the Gods of Autumn.  They are tied to the well through some mysterious agency, and even if they had managed to retain their freedom from the Ancient One, still they would have wound up back here at the old well."

As they flew back toward Mr. Plimsoul's narrow, tall house at dawn, Sarah thought she saw a glint of gold on the sea, just to the left of the rising sun.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 



Chapter Twenty-Four

"The Neighbors' Walpurgisnacht"

Eva clapped her hands together, as if warming them before an open fire.

In fact, there was an enormous bonfire going in the backyard of the house.  The house that held the Casket of Augersaal.  In the driveway, cars from all over town had pulled up.  Tonight was the Walpurgisnacht Rally held annually by the Political Committee for its loyal membership.  The petition goal had been reached, and in the morning Berny Cottswold would be installed as Temporary Mayor Extraordinaire.  His parents, long major players in the community, were relieved that their son was getting back on track.  The elder Cottswolds pulled up in a silver limousine, an Archer Limited, and stepped out onto the lawn dressed as if they were attending a black-tie formal.

The whole sloping backyard, down which Barnabas and the girls had rolled commando-style to the stone wall at the roadway, had been transformed into a ballroom, where bright papers were draped from cypress to cypress, although one cypress in the solemn line had been incinerated to a stick and stood gaudily wrapped with the crepe.  No less than three tremendous bonfires raged on the field.  Into them went bales of complicated paperwork hauled surreptitiously from the town's officers' desks.  "A new broom sweeps clean," banner hung from the eves of the house, with a picture of Berny Cottswold astride the broom, holding his mayor's top hat over his head as if he were a character in a musical.

"Fine, fine," beamed Berny, his glorious voice sounding particularly well-tuned that evening.  He rubbed his hands together before him as if crushing all opposition between them.  The Gods of Autumn had been wreaking havoc all day, and the people were on the brink of allowing their new mayor to impose a rather limitless form of marshal law on them.  This time, no petition would be needed, just the firm agreement of the highest judge for the district--one Aglet Agitprop nee Cottswold.

A crowd of several hundred were attending, despite the troubles in town, to celebrate this victory.  Daffiyd and Gwynnith Tone were there, as well as their old friends Arthur and Cyndy.  Apple cider was heating up in large cauldrons, and the sound of hands slapping backs could be heard for half a mile, like a convocation beavers of whapping the surfaces of their ponds with their flat leathery tails. 

"Ah, Daffiyd," said Gwynnith.  "I've a sigh of relief to sigh now, and no mistake."

"Sure, and things'll be settled one way or another certain enough," Daffiyd agreed, somewhat cryptically.  

"Without you two, we'd never have come round to anything that Plimsoul fella was for," Arthur said empathically.

"Too true," agreed his wife Cyndy, tipping back a hot cup of cider.  "He's got a fishy feel to 'im."

"Just think of those new-fangled methods he introduced at the high school!"  Arthur shook his head remembering the fact.

"They've got to quantify the children's achievement some way or t'other," said Gwynnith.

"Yes, against the old standard," disagreed Daffiyd.  "That's what the standard's there for, to measure yourself against it, like a ruler, or the white height of a sturdy steeple."

"How else can you get where ye're goin', if ye can't measure where y'are," agreed Arthur.

"I don't think the old standards, as you call them, brought all of us to where we might want to be."  Gwynnith got the hard, far-off look she always got when she was thinking about Gilman.  Daffiyd steered the conversation to another topic.  A child standing by them threw a fistful of chestnuts into the fire, causing a series of artillery-like pops to explode.  Gwynnith shivered and hunkered in close to Daffiyd's clasp.

Daffiyd still wasn't fully reconciled to the Political Committee's doings, or the fact that his own mother, Granny Pansy, was so incontrovertibly opposed everything about it.  Still, she'd been watching the children for the last week and a half with no complaints, and if it weren't for Granny Pansy's agreeing to do that, enough petitions might well not have been signed.  Daffiyd and Gwynnith Tone were powerful convincers to most folks.  The men knew that Daffiyd was slow to embrace anything, on principle, and Gwynnith was sharp-tongued and vibrantly certain enough to make all the Political Committee's points quite clearly.

Sarah walked out of the house and over to where her parents were standing.

"Ah, Sarah m'dear," said Daffiyd, smiling.

"Honey," chimed in Gwynnith.

"Mom and Dad," Sarah began.  "I want to come home."

"But I thought you hated Abbey and Dar and the whole situation at home," said Sarah's Mother.

"I do.  But I think I can live with that, as long as Granny Pansy doesn't get on my case about it."  Sarah knew that her Ganny Pansy wouldn't let her have any special privileges.

"Yes, well, Sarah," began Sarah's Father, Daffiyd.  "Our work for the Political Committee's done."  He looked over at Gwynnith, who was quiet.  "At least for now.  Your Mother and I have agreed to that.  And we've already asked Granny Pansy and her friends to leave the day after tomorrow."

"Oh, really, Dad?"  Sarah had conflicted feelings about her Granny Pansy leaving, but she knew that she didn't want to hear what she would say about the new Sarah.  Sarah had a feeling that Granny Pansy and Missy would have similar views on the subject of the new Sarah.

"And your cousins will most likely be out by the Christmas Holidays.  They'll be going back to the city and staying there."

Sarah hugged her Father and grinned.  She must tell Eva!  Sarah raced back into Mr. Plimsoul's house to find her, but, on heading toward the kitchen, heard Eva and Mr. Plimsoul arguing.  Sarah stayed just on the other side of the doorway and listened.

"I still don't think that the risk is worth it," Mr. Plimsoul was saying.  "At least, not without the Casket of Augersaal."

"Simon, you simpleton," snipped Eva.  "It is the Casket of Augersall that represents the risk, not Sarah.  No one has invoked the casket in nearly a millennium.  The lore handed down about it is partial and contradictory.  And your attempts with the girl so far have failed."

"They all agree that the Casket of Augersaal is the most powerful magical object in existence!  There would be no need to hedge our bets.  Our power would be absolute.  We have the words now that Granny Pansy's finally ponied up to her promise.  I feel that there's simply some magical object missing.  A magical musical object."

"Sarah will serve, without the casket," countered Eva.  "You see how easy she is to manipulate.  Her parents abandoned her emotionally when we had Gilman killed."

"Yes.  I suppose that Sarah's spinelessness was an unexpected consequence of removing the 'warrior crown' from our path.  But how does that help us now?"

"Keeping Sarah on our side, even marginally, denies her Granny Pansy her most powerful tool.  Sarah's voice is unique."

"And so far all you've had her do with it is bewitch her classmates at school!  These are parlor tricks and conjurations, no more!"

"If Sarah knew how powerful her voice truly is, it would not be safe.  Not even for us, Simon.  And until she is firmly committed to our cause, I would not have her fiddling with the Casket of Augersall.  The Casket may do her bidding, but first we must make certain that she will do ours."

"I suppose," said Mr. Plimsoul, unconvinced.  Mr. Plimsoul wanted the Casket of Augersaal for his own.  Then Eva would see who could order who around.

Sarah felt an elbow in her back.

"Ooops, pardon me Miss," said Berny Cottswold in his politest party voice, turning round and waving goodbye to a sleepy supporter.  The arguing stopped instantly.  He swung the kitchen door open with his foot.

"My team-members are departing the premises precipitously, Eva.  We'd better start with the speeches!"

Eva and Mr. Plimsoul came out into the hallway, wondering who Berny had said "pardon me" to, but there was nobody there.

The night went on with speeches by Berny Cottswold and Mr. Plimsoul, and all the higher ups in the organization.  There were yawns all round at that.  By ten o'clock, only those who had some magical connection to Mr. Plimsoul and Eva were left standing in the flicking flare of the bonfires.  Now the true Walpurgisnacht celebration could begin, culminating in a midnight ceremony which would install Eva as their Crannoch-in-Chief.  

Berny Cottswold and his parents were the last non-magical guests to leave, pulling away in his parents' silver limousine, which purred as softly as a sleeping lion.  Before the dust had even settled back on the drive, Eva called the meeting to order, throwing a double fistful of illuminosii powder into then nearest bonfire.  The flames, leaping fifty feet into the crackling night air, turned a molten amber hue, like the baleful bloodshot eye that appeared above the fire.

"Attendees!" Mr. Plimsoul shouted, for there were more warlocks and helper creatures in the edges of the firelight, just moving in for the midnight ceremonies, than were strictly visible in the immediate circle of light.  "Attendees!  Tonight we honor our new Crannoch-in-Chief!  This coven has been without a Crannoch for five long, outcast centuries.  But now, by the wit of Eva, we shall once again be whole."

"And powerful as never before!"  Eva lifted off the earth on her extended wings, a dark angel that all eyes followed.

The little stone altar was dragged from the basement, and a large turtle was placed on top of the altar upside-down.  There was a large red eye painted on the turtle's belly.  The Casket of Augersaal, as potent as it was, lay forgotten and gathering dust in the crowded basement behind them.  Gar hopped up on a step-ladder, loosening a small hatchet that hung at his side from a leather belt.  The hatchet had the same eye stamped into the side of its grey blade.  Only the edge of the hatchet was shiny.  It had been sharpened that very afternoon.

A booming tuneful drum began to sound, followed by more and more drums until the entire yard was throbbing like a giant heart beat.

"Sing!" Eva commanded as Gar brought the little hatchet down.  "Sing the gathering divine!  The Gods of Autumn themselves cannot oppose our will!  Make this Walpurgisnacht burn brightly in our memories, for tomorrow our enemies will lie utterly defeated!  None shall oppose us.  The old world of our ways will no longer lie hidden in the dark, but shall grasp the very levers of power.  We shall be a beacon to all who would obey.  Sing!"

Eva pointed to Mr. Hecatomb.  "Eugenius, the wild chant, if you please."

Mr. Hecatomb took up his sharp baton and, waving it before the fire which leaped onto its tip and danced, sang with the others.  

    "Walpurgisnacht, come knock the heart!

    Sorcerers and sorceresses,

    Light the candles and break the dishes!

    The blood is black that knock my heart!

    

    

    "Walpurgisnacht, come knock the heart!

    Our breaths were held that now take part

    No more we wait in the weary dark!

    Now we come to eat their hearts!"

The light of the fires was in every eye.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 



Chapter Twenty-Five

"A Feast of the Gods"

Granny Pansy was a windmill of activity.  She had used the four-arms spell before, but rarely, as it made her shoulders ache for weeks where the extra arms grew from the sockets.  Granny Pansy, each of her four arms moving with blurry rapidity at a different task, also managed to call out about a dozen instructions per minute.  Granny Pansy didn't need a spell to do that.  Being a mother, and then a Grandmother was training enough for that.

Wizards and witches were busy all over the Tones' house, all following an elaborate plan that Granny Pansy had cooked up after the Gods of Autumn had attacked.  The house had a smell of ambrosia.  Appetites were made keen for a mile around.  Whatever Granny Pansy was working on this time, certainly didn't smell like boiling laundry.  Some of the best chefs of the tribe were engaged in the work, but they had had to send a lot of hands out over the countryside to combat the Gods of Autumn's misdeeds and the gullible humans that they were beguiling and batting about the way a cat bats a mouse.

"The news everywhere is bad, bad, bad" worried Great Uncle Charlie, just back from a balloon survey of the greater Treashurstaene area.  His face resembled the timeless crevasses of Everest, and his hair was as puffed out as a dandelion.

"There's been another clash between the dockworkers and the police at Tilly Lingersall's funeral.  Some politicos jumped up on the casket and made a rousing oration, which inspired the hearers to pull down the gates at the docks.  Twenty men were arrested, and three are in the hospital.  Berny Cottswold, with his new police powers, is deputizing all members of his Political Committee as armed militia to, quote: 'restore the safety and dignity of Traeshurstaene.'  There's double the number of car accidents;  people keep swearing that they see another car coming down the road in their lane, and that they don't see the tree or wall they they wind up hitting.  The funny thing is, the car they all describe as coming at them sounds more like a chariot than an automobile.  So, I'd bet that's Adsagsona at work, weaving her illusions.  And there's more arguments and fistfights than ever--family against family, and families divided against themselves.  Like this one, although this one hasn't yet come to blows."

"Nor will it," averred Granny Pansy.  "I've had to promise Gwynnith that we'd all be out of here by sundown tomorrow, though.  Sarah's coming back to the house.  I'll count that as good news, even though it puts us in a pickle.  If we don't beat the Gods of Autumn now, moving the witches' campsite will be the least of our worries."

"Worst of all, Sarah seems to've switched sides.  She's in Plimsoul's house, and has been spotted all over town with that Eva."  Great Uncle Charlie couldn't think about it without a shiver at the very idea.  "And besides all the rest, the Mickleswift's still dry from Aerfen's tantrum the other night, and the town's supply of water's running low. The only ray of sunshine is the return of Dar, which in the larger scheme of things is rather insignificant.  And before we got him back, you had already promised you-know-what to you-know-whom."

Granny Pansy stopped stirring the cauldron before her, dicing the herbs behind her, turning a page in the spell book beside her, and finishing the last knot on a spell-shawl she'd need to wear if her idea was going to ever even happen, let alone succeed.  All of her shoulders slumped, and Granny Pansy looked a bit like a disappointed spider.

"You needn't remind me, Charlie.  My only hope now is that they don't have the talent required to put that spell to effective use."

"Sorry, Doris.  But on top of everything else, a golden barge has appeared on the horizon, with great bellying sails of striped silver and copper.  There's some sort of complicated emblem on the sails;  looks like a black rat rampant on a shield in the middle of it all.  And no wind to blow the sails full, but still they strain and the ship moves forward."

"Perhaps a contingent of soceresses from Eva's old country," mused Granny Pansy pensively.

"There's gossip everywhere that she's been made the Crannock-in-Chief."

"That's ridiculous," objected Granny Pansy peevishly.  "There hasn't been a Crannoch here in five hundred years."

"I know.  And with unknown friends sailing in from her native soil, we could have a lot more on our hands than just taming the Gods of Autumn."

"One task at a time knits the wisest rhyme, as our Granny Filomena always instructed."

"Right you are, Doris," Great Uncle Charlie said supportively.  "What's next?"

But in his heart, Great Uncle Charlie was more worried than ever.  When Granny Pansy quoted Granny Filomena, it usually meant that she didn't know what she was doing.

* * * *

A cold noon came over the town square.  Normally, every lunchtime, the square was dotted with office and dock workers mingling, unpacking their home-made sandwiches and lemony ice teas and treats or after lunch pastries.  Fellows from The Dublin House and Cwilliam's Pub brought their beer out onto the lawn, and their steaming plates too.  The pub owners didn't mind, for neither of them had ever lost a plate or a customer from the practice. But today the square lay deserted.  Crumpled lunch papers from festive mealtimes only a few weeks ago lay in soggy corners of the square.

Into the empty square, a rag-tag parade of cars began to enter quietly.  The first cars laid out big rectangles of picnic blankets of all manner and variety.  Some with leaping deer, some with a paisley pattern, some plain brown or green.  Eventually, the blankets, laid end to end, covered the entire square.  Those who had brought the blankets and laid them down, didn't sit to enjoy their lunches then, but rather got back in their cars and drove away.  

After a minute, with some folks starting to gather by their office windows suspiciously (for these hadn't been the best of days lately), a second parade of cars rolled in.  These cars, and a few pick-up trucks, changed the atmosphere of the square considerably.  As they unpacked huge crates of oranges, biscuits the size of whole frying pans, buckets of jellies and jams and a wheel barrow slopping over with marmalade, a smell of ambrosia began to permeate the area.  

In three of the pick-up trucks, huge cauldrons of piping hot ambrosia were taken down very carefully, by forklift, and wheeled into the middle of the town green, which was now a patchwork of picnic blankets.  Next to the cauldrons, a giant ladle was brought out and laid to rest, the size of a mop bucket with a broom handle attached to it.  From a beat-up old Rolls Royce that had just arrived late to the party, five silver drinking vessels emerged, each as large a punch bowl.  The first was carried by Granny Pansy, with two of her four arms tucked safely under a cloak, and away from prying eyes.  Great Uncle Charlie carried a second one, the steam from the heated ambrosia fogging up his glasses.  Barnabas carried two by himself, wearing one on his head.  And Abbey and Shelly brought the last one out of the trunk, swinging it low between them because of its weight.

The five bowls were put in the center of the blanketed square, forming an implied pentagram.  This was as per Granny Pansy's instructions.  

Others were still unpacking yet more foods and goods, linked sausages as long as a coiled garden hose, and five times as thick.  One woman, with a pink bonnet tied tight under her chin, wheeled over a jug of cream and an egg beater.  She put the beater into the cream, and, singing under her breath, and beating the cream, quickly churned out several gallons of clotted cream.  This was a fine thing indeed, for her fellow witch pulled about a dozen slices of toast from the breast pocket of his suit and, tossing them in the air and saying "Inflatus!" in a serious way, watched as they landed perfectly on a decorated plate a third witch had rolled out onto the square edgewise and the let fall flat.  Clotted cream and toast is served, if you please.

A truck from the local orchard backed up to one side of the square and dumped a load of fresh apples into an inflated kiddie pool.  Workmen and wizards together heave-hoed many bushels of grapes, both seedless and seeded into the mix.  Loaves of cinnamon bread had been baked specially for the occasion, the size of lion seals, and twisted into the shapes of various deities.  Looking closely, anyone in the town could by now, after the days of troubles and inventive attacks by the Gods of Autumn, have picked out Afagddu with his shield of black bread and his sword of carved licorice.  Also there, together as twins because they had been baked too close to each other in the improvised oven of the Tone's spare garage, were Agrona and Aeron, their mighty arms puffed up all the more muscularly by a too generous helping of yeast in the dough.  Their eyes glared out from under huge brows as deep as caves.  The eyes were delicious black olives fixed in their places by cocktail stirrers.  Asdagona had a string of delicious pearl onions over her bodice, which flowed into her running legs.  Aerfen's face was clear and clean and lively-eyed in a twirled circle of sweet and sour bread, like a medallion to be worn on the forehead of an elephant.

The last item of the feast were the flowers.  All the girls of Ridgefield High had been recruited to ferry in all the flowers one armful at a time.  About a hundred girls came traipsing by, throwing their flowers as they danced around the edge of the square.  Granny Pansy and all the witches and wizards stood by, their hands politely folded, and sang the enchanting spell as the girls whirled around in a ring, tossing fistfuls of bluebells, and handfuls of daisies and periwinkles, and all manner of wildflowers which the Gods of Autumn prized above all else.  For this feast was a trap, and the Gods of Autumn were to be its victims.

Once the girls were done, and the spell carefully chanted, all of the wizards and all of the witches got back in their cars and left the square, only Great Uncle Charlie loitering to send a pentagram flare high into the sky just before hopping into his Rolls Royce and motoring away as the final signal that the trap was set.  The Gods of Autumn had become wary of the presence of the pestiferous wizards and witches over the last few days, and were none too anxious for a renewal of direct hostilities.  After the flare went off in the cold sky of late October, Great Uncle Charlie and the others drove quietly away.  Now the only thing left to do was wait.

The pale faces at the office windows, surprised as they were by the recent activities that had taken place in the square, and wary enough not to venture outside as soon as Great Uncle Charles' Rolls Royce had pulled away, did not have long to wait.  Window by window, the faces framed by the panes went from surprised to astonished to stunned as a series of house-high shadows began to fall across the square, obscuring the bright light of noon.

"Ahhh...." began Afagddu with satisfaction.  "A propitiation."

The other gods relished the idea that the mortals of Traeshurestaene had come to their senses enough to offer the fruits of the earth to the harvest-minded Gods of Autumn.  It had been many centuries indeed since they had been so honored.  Immortality is too long a day without the proper recognition to go with it.  The sweetness of such acknowledgment lent a savor to the fruits that they were about to devour, the ambrosia they were about to drink, the breads they were about to tear and eat.

The Gods of Autumn came with their usual grace and, after a look around the immediate vicinity for pestiferous witches, sat down gladly to this meal so obviously arranged in their honor in the center of the town.  Each god began with their favorite foods, Afagddu tearing at the black bread and bitter lemons.  Aerfen drank clear gallons of crystal water flavored with citrus. Aeron and Agrona gnashed the sausage links from either end, and then cuffed each other over who would consume the last link caught in the middle.  Oranges went into maws like popped candy.  Each god tore into their breads with satisfaction at the end of the meal, large even for them.  This bread they washed down with the silver ewers of ambrosia.  They were all surprised at this, for they had been convinced that the making of ambrosia had been lost since the days when the world was young and fresh.  But it tasted as well as it ever had, deep and refreshing, and the gods were filled with a rare hilarity, and began to dance around the square with lithesome step.

The dancing of the Gods of Autumn is a rare thing by human reckoning, and it should be both gravely and gladly noted that those who were blessed enough to witness their dance from the windows surrounding the square, all rushed outside to join the gods in their grave hilarity.  Man and woman danced in tune with the eternal Gods of Autumn, smiling gladsome in their hearts, and light in the heels and happy in their eyes to be so blessed.  Spontaneously, many of the women dancing began to sing, and Aerfen, as quick and graceful as ever, took up the tune with a silvery voice that fell among them like spring rain.  Even Afagddu added his basso profundo, and at the signal, the men of the town chanted along as best they could, mingling a bass thump into the increasingly rowdy dance.  For now the dance and the song became like a fast-stepping square dance, and the dancers whirled and lifted each other up and did not grow tired.  

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 



Chapter Twenty-Six

"A Giant Surprise"

The dancing seemed to go on for a good long while.  

The the few leaves left on the trees, and the many fallen leaves on the ground, whirled and skittered to the dancing as well.  This was pure Autumn magic.  The air grew crisp and invigorating, and the light was as clear as in a water glass held up to the sun.  On and on the dancing went until the humans got weary, and sat down around the edge of the square to nap.  The horror and apprehension they had felt about the Gods of Autumn seemed to have completely dissipated in the dancing, which was as much like a Spanish kermess as a dance could be, and yet not be a kermess.  The Gods of Autumn, so cavalier with the mortals earlier in the week, now were careful not to trounce them down as they continued their dancing arm-in-arm, their silver punch bowls held delicately to the lips for sipping as they twirled away.  But, finally, when all the bowls of ambrosia were drained, and lay littering the square along with half-eaten loaves of bread large enough to sit on, and plops of jam you'd need waders to get through, the gods themselves began to half-lower their large eyelids.

One by one, the Gods of Autumn sat back down on the ground, backs against the trees of the square the way you or I would lean against the back of a lawn chaise lounge.  Or they lay right down on the picnic blankets.  Adsagsona even wrapped one large one of a particularly elaborate pattern around her shoulders like a shawl.  Now their eyes were shutting, and the music they had sung was still in the air, but only because, somehow, the wind and the trees were still singing.  Humans lay around the outside of the square, smiles on their weary faces, an honor guard around the resting gods.

Barnabas stuck his head around the corner of the Traeshurstaene Savings and Loan, carefully looking over the scene.  A foot lower, Great Uncle Charlie's head of wild hair radiating around a big bald dome appeared, his eyes sharp and inquisitive behind his turtle-rimmed glasses.  Great Uncle Charlie looked up, and Barnabas Burrbuckle looked down.  They both nodded once, and then stepped out from around the building and into the square.  Afagddu lay nearest to them, his curly head and frowning brow dreaming of war-making and the joy of the spaces between the stars even now.  His great shield leaned casually against the Post Office entryway, a story-high awning of basalt hue.  

From the other side of the square, Granny Pansy and Hemily Higglay made their way over the sleeping bodies of office workers.  Granny Pansy had her stethoscope-like instrument out, and was touching random foreheads here and there.  Granny Pansy had devised this plan to lay the Gods of Autumn out cold, but wasn't sure exactly how it would turn out.  In fact, she still wasn't very sure even now.  When Granny Pansy got to Aerfen's resting form, she reached up as high as she could to touch the end of the stethoscope to Aerfen's forehead.  The coo came quick and strong.  That was good, the spells in the ambrosia seemed to have worked perfectly.  Hemily Higglay lay a wreath of holly leaves on Aerfen's head, four more wreathes looped around her arm.  Granny Pansy and Hemily checked each of the gods as they went, Hemily laying the wreaths on their heads.  They met up with Barnabas and Great Uncle Charlie in the middle of the square.

"What's them wreaths for?" asked Barnabas morosely, in a low voice.

"To get you in the Christmas spirit," joked Great Uncle Charlie.  He was delighted at seeing all the gods laid out on their backs.  "I think old Aeron is even snoring!"

"Hush, Charlie!" admonished Granny Pansy in a harsh whisper.  "The wreaths are to keep them slumbering until Christmas Day, Barnabas.  When their Autumn is over, they will slide back out of their corporeal forms, and return only next Autumn to disturb the dreams of men, and liven the falling of the leaves."

"Ah," said Barnabas, not sure if he followed the answer.  "Tha's summat."

Granny Pansy and Hemily Higglay continued on their way around the square, this time with Barnabas Burrbuckle and Great Uncle Charlie following them.  Barnabas helped to place a wreath on Adsagsona's brow, for she'd gotten so wrapped up in the picnic blanket that some unwrapping was required.  While he and Hemily did that, Granny Pansy and her brother moved on to the last god, Afagddu.  Just as Barnabas was settling the wreath on Adsagsona firmly, he and Hemily heard a bad sound behind them.

"Help!" cried Granny Pansy in a sharp but small voice.  Adsagsona stirred, rolling over in her blanket, and several of the office workers woke up and began to yawn.  "Hurry!"

Barnabas Burrbuckle hurried over to Afagddu.  Granny Pansy was stuck halfway in his mouth like a white grape.  She looked ready to burst.  All four of her arms were waving madly, and her cloak had settled over Afagddu's nose.  By some great stroke of luck, it looked as if Afagddu was still not awake.  He had popped Granny Pansy into his mouth out of a sort of feasting reflex, a kind of over-eater's sneeze.  Barnabas reached up with his great long arms toward Granny Pansy.  She wrapped two of her arms around each one of his and, waiting for Afagddu to exhale, said "Pull!"  Granny Pansy came out of Afagddu's mouth with a pop, but before she'd let Barnabas put her down, Granny Pansy checked to see if Afagddu was in good condition.  Her stethoscope registered a good loud coo when placed on the god's brow.  "All right," she said, and Barnabas put her down on her feet.  Her boots squished from the god's saliva as if she'd just emerged from the dunking booth at a country fair.

Hemily placed the wreath on Afagddu's brow, and heaved a great sigh of relief.  Immediately, Great Uncle Charlie stuck two fingers in his mouth and blew an ear-splitting whistle.  

"Wha' th' devil, man!" objected Barnabas.

"It's all right now, they're out cold until Christmas--you heard Doris," said Great uncle Charlie, who was thoroughly ignoring Barnabas' worried looks.  Great Uncle Charlie waved his arms in the air as his observation balloon began to hove into view.  All the people around the square, except for a few over-worked postal employees, had been instantly roused by Great Uncle Charlie's whistle.  A hum of conversation was starting.

"All clear!" shouted Great Uncle Charlie up to the balloon.  A wizard in the basket nodded affirmatively, and then began to putter away from the square.

A minute later, the hubbub in the square, which included people poking the gods in the belly, and lifting up their eyelids to peer into the great unconscious orbs, was almost as loud as a train station.  Then, the sounds of idle conversation and curiosity turned to the scampering of many feet as the first giant peered over the Traeshurestaene Savings and Loan.

"So, Charlemagne, we meet again!"  

Great Uncle Charlie turned around as fast as you might crack a whip.  The giant laughed a booming deep laugh at the look on Great Uncle Charlie's face.

"Hartlebragginthronsii!  What a delight to see you!"  Great Uncle Charlie smiled up at the huge ugly face of the giant.  "I didn't know which of you might respond to the aereophone signal."

"Ho ho ho," laughed Hartlebragginthronsii heartily, his teeth shining gigantically in his hairy face.  Several shop signs began swinging as though caught in a hurricane, and Granny Pansy put a hand to her head to keep her headscarf on.  "I wouldn't miss a chance to catch up with you, my wise friend.  And besides," Hartlebragginthronsii added, putting his mighty arms under Afagddu's somnolent form and lifting him from the square like a napping child, "how often does a giant get to carry a god?  Happy birthday!"

Hartlebragginthronsii straightened up and began to stomp back out of the square.  In the meanwhile, four other giants had come into the square, which, along with the gods, left the large public space feeling rather crowded.  Each giant picked up one of the gods in their arms and started back out of the square, but not without bowing low and wishing happy birthday to Great Uncle Charlie.  By this time, Abbey and her friend Shelly were back at the square, and after the giants and gods were no more than a distant earthquake, they turned to him.

"Are all of these giants friends of yours, Great Uncle Charlie?"

"Oh they're just some acquaintances I picked up while touring the Himalayas in the long ago days of my youth."

"Why do they know your birthday?"

"Giants are very fond of birthday parties, Abbey.  I thought everyone knew that.  If the Himalayas could talk!  No doubt Hartlebragginthronsii will try and pull some practical joke on me before the day is out.  That's probably half the reason they even showed up."  Great Uncle Charlie put his chin in his hand and looked thoughtful.  "As a general rule, giants don't like to stick their big ugly noses in witches' business.  All in all, not an unwise policy.  We've been very lucky today.  This may be my best birthday ever."

"How old are you, Mr. Twisslestarn?" inquired Shelly politely.  She was having a difficult time imagining Great Uncle Charlie's "days of youth."

"Oh," said Great uncle Charlie, suddenly shy.  "Let's just say that the sunflower hasn't bloomed that has enough seeds to count the years since my birth."

Once the square was thoroughly clear of giants and gods, and the cars had returned to mop up the leftover jams and jellies, Great Uncle Charlie turned to Barnabas.

"Well, Barnabas Burrbuckle, it seems as if you've made a habit of rescuing members of this family.  First Sarah, and then Dar.  And now, my sister Doris.  I guess I'm next in line."  

Great Uncle Charlie chuckled at his own joke.  The Gods of Autumn may have been slumberized by Granny Pansy's feast-and-sleep strategy, but Barnabas didn't think that the time for humorous observations had arrived quite yet.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

 



Chapter Twenty-Seven

"A Turn for the Worse"

"The Gods of Autumn are where?  Doing what?"

The purple of Eva's face was not a very complimentary hue, despite her penchant for an all-black wardrobe.

"They are in the Doogeran Caves, away in the North Country.  And they are sleeping."  Mr. Plimsoul repeated.

"Afagddu is reported to be snoring as well," reported Mr. Hecatomb unhelpfully.

Eva began to pace around the room, flapping bits of her wings at her elbows now and again.

"If only we hadn't been caught napping ourselves," she snapped.

"We were all darn tired after the Walpurgisnacht," Mr. Hecatomb said.

"Installing a new Crannoch-in-Chief," Mr. Plimsoul reminded her.

"You needn't remind me of my culpability in this affair, Simon," Eva pleaded.  She was not the imposing presence she had been in the light of the bonfires the night before, her great black wings spread out, and the eye burning above her head.  Eva remembered the great eye above the fire direly warning the assembled crowd on Walpurgisnacht: "Do not open the Casket of Augersaal!  Do not open it!"  At the time, they did not think that they would need to resort to the casket.  But now that time had come.

"The witches have gathered at the dockyard, arrayed for battle.  There's also a report from Berny Cottswold's men that a golden barge has appeared at the inlet.  Do you know what that may be, Crannoch?"  Mr. Plimsoul inquired.

"A golden barge?  More of their wizardly well-wishers, no doubt."  Eva dismissed the report.  "What we need to do is open the Casket of Augersall as soon as possible."

"Back to Plan A, then, Crannoch?" Mr. Plimsoul inquired, keeping his tone strictly respectful.

"Yes," hissed Eva, her boa writhing as if it had been struck with a stick.  "Back to Plan A."

* * * *

Granny Pansy and the others wanted to take maximum advantage of whatever dis-organization and poor spirits might result from the unexpected removal of the Gods of Autumn from picture.  The dock workers, many of whom had been doing the bidding of Crannoch-in-Chief Eva and her crew through the nefarious influence of the Gods of Autumn, now would snap back to their natural allegiances.  And friends like Barnabas Burrbuckle had a lot more pull with them than self-serving authority figures like Berny Cottswold and his two-bit coppers.  Many of the police themselves had only a doubtful allegiance to Berny Cottswold and his notions of imposing a strict marshal law.  When the witches, giants and gods had taken over the town square for a picnic lunch, the police had stood idly by, despite Berny's threats of retribution.  They were for law and order, and drunken gods dancing in the square, or being peacefully carried out of town by friendly giants didn't seem like much of a threat to that order.  If Eva or any of her magical crew had been able to make it to town in time, the story might have been quite different.

Eva sent Gar the dwarf on ahead to stiffen the police to their task.  The coppers would be out in force, and active against the dockworkers and the witches this time.  Eva's Persuuadom spell would make certain of that.  Berny would be more helpful clamping down after their magical victory.

The dockyard was an interesting choice for a battle.  The many large cranes and piles of cargo containers left few clear lines of sight.  Whoever dug in first would have an advantage.  Those coming to join the battle would have to pry them out from behind their hiding spots.  This was witch urban guerrilla warfare.  And Granny Pansy had every intention of winning, Casket of Augersaal or no.

Dockworkers were very helpful in getting the witches and wizards into all manner of safe places.  From birdlike perches at the tops of heavy cranes for wand snipers, to secreting a magic bomb inside a cargo container that lay between the witches' perches and the most obvious attack route.  They would try to ambush their enemies as they came in.  In the weeks since the strike, the idle docks had become overrun with large black ship rats.  There was no one at the docks to help keep them away, and their presence added an air of desperation to the dockworkers' activities.

Eva was determined not to give Granny Pansy and the witches any time to enjoy their tactical victory removing the Gods of Autumn.  All the warlocks and spell-casters that they had would march in behind the police and engage the enemy.  Mr. Plimsoul, herself, and Mr. Hecatomb would bring the purple globe and the Casket of Augersaal to just outside the gates, safe from direct attack, but close enough that the Casket would have maximum impact.  They loaded up the limousine that they had commandeered from Berny and set off.  By the time they arrived, the scene at the docks was already a maelstrom.

A line of blue-coated police knocked at the door of a cargo container with a battering ram.  Witches circling on broomsticks called down hail on them, which pattered harmlessly off of their riot gear.  A group of dockworkers had penned in about a dozen coppers by maneuvering another container into a corner of two walls, with the coppers in the triangle of space between.  Enemy warlocks were trying to savage the rear line of the defenders by calling alligators and crocodiles from the sea at their backs.  Some witches on ski jets tried to slow down the spell casters by lobbing exploding sea urchins at them.  

Granny Pansy was pointing four ways at once and directing the defenses single-handedly, so to speak.  She was swinging from a basket at the end of a crane line so that she had an excellent overall view of the battle space.  

"Cravenaugh, ho! Behind you!" she called to a tall wizard in red robes.  Cravenaugh turned around just in time to duck a flaming raven aimed at his head.  Granny Pansy lobbed an incinerator-spelled ball at the spell caster who'd sent the ravens flying, putting a serious dint in his capacity to launch any more ravens.  Black feathers were everywhere.

The defenders were holding their own, and maybe a little bit more than holding their own, when Eva's silver Archer Limited limousine pulled up outside the gates.  Mr. Hecatomb hopped out of the backseat first, pulling one end of the Casket of Augersaal.  The ill will it had radiated in the basement with Sarah and Missy had doubled in the intervening days.  The Casket of Augersaal was absorbing a lot of energy from the ambient magic being cast all around it.  Mr. Plimsoul emerged with the far end of casket, pushing Mr. Hecatomb toward the great iron gates of the docks.  Inside, the docks looked like a fight in a bird cage.  Furious darting witches in all manner of get-ups and color were chasing each other around while trailing or throwing sparks of fire and jets of smoke.

"Look!"  shouted Mr. Hecatomb, rapidly putting down his end of the casket to point through the gates with his sharp baton.  "There's Grandmother Tone!"

Unfortunately for Mr. Hecatomb, his voice carried particularly well that day, and Granny Pansy, with a flick of her wrist, broke Mr. Hecatomb's spell-casting arm, right at the elbow.  Mr Hecatomb went down with a yelp.  Eva, seeing this through the limousine's tinted glass, flew out of the car and hurled a discus of pure bladed energy at the wire above Granny Pansy's head.  Granny Pansy descended in her bucket like a lump of lead.  If it hadn't been for her self-inflating skirt, she might well have been seriously injured.

Granny Pansy's fall, although not fatal, gave Eva just enough time to invoke the purple ball while the uninjured Mr. Plimsoul set the casket up against the front grill of the car.  Part of the spell of invoking that they had gotten from Granny Pansy when she thought she was negotiating for Dar's safety, had hinted that some magical musical object was required.  Mr. Plimsoul's further research unearthed the fact that the purple globe would play the tune to be used in the song that would unlock the Casket of Augersaal.  Eva and Mr. Plimsoul stood on opposite sides of casket, Mr. Plimsoul held the lyrics at an angle so that both of them could view it.  Mr. Hecatomb howled ignored by the iron gates, clutching his broken arm to his quaking belly.  Eva began to sing, softly, and the harp appeared in the purple globe, and the tiny hand began strumming out the tune.  

Mr. Plimsoul joined in with his thin voice, stringy as he himself was.  It was an emaciated singing voice that had none of the authority of the teacher-voice he used at the high school.  

They sang the words together, faithful to the tune and to the lyric sheet provided by Granny Pansy.  This time, the Casket of Augersaal didn't just hop and bump as it had on the sawhorses in the basement.  This time it rose in mid-air, and the lime green light appeared around the edge of the closed lid.  But the lid did not open.  Instead, a purple smoke so thick it was like a sandstorm rained down on Eva and Mr. Plimsoul, and the Casket of Augersaal dropped so precipitously that neither of them had time to jump back out of the way, and it landed squarely on their feet.

"Claw of the Kraken!" cursed Mr. Plimsoul.  Eva let out a string of expletives in her native tongue, whatever that was.  It certainly sounded vile enough, as though your ears would need at least a week to recover.  

"You're off-key," commented Mr. Hecatomb between pained breaths.  "There's a high tone neither of you can reach in the tune."

Evan and Mr. Plimsoul both looked at the injured Choirmaster with evil in their eyes.

"Then how can we sing this blasted spell?" yelled Mr. Plimsoul.

"Yes, darling Eugenius, how can we do it?" purred Eva, trying her vampiest voice.

"You can't."  There was deep pain in his eyes, and a blurred sort of recognition.  "You haven't the lovliness."

Neither of them had the talent to sing the song well-enough to open the Casket of Augersaal.  Sarah, with her beautiful, and as Mr. Hecatomb had often said, special voice, was indeed destined to play a part in the events unfolding at the docks.

"We have to get in touch with Sarah at once!"  Mr. Plimsoul was frantic.

"The feather of misdirection does not work that way.  The caller must want to get in touch with you."

"Why would she do that?" Mr. Plimsoul said, exasperated.  "She ran away!  She must hate us!  Oh, all your schemes have come to nothing!  You should never have been chosen Crannoch-in-Chief!  Now we'll spend the next hundred years just where we've spent the last hundred--outcast an unmanned.  I guess a Draggonnath should be used to that!"  Mr. Plimsoul no longer cared if or how much Eva might despise him.  All of his plans lay in ruins around him.  Just then, Eva broke into a wide, mild smile, her eyes full of disgust for the spineless Simon Plimsoul losing his cool in front of her very eyes.

"How can you smile at a time like this?" Mr. Plimsoul demanded, his eyes wide with disbelief.  "You must be mad!"

Granny Pansy was dusting herself off rapidly with her four hands, and climbing out of the dropped bucket.  Out of the corner of her eye, Eva could see the golden barge pulling alongside an empty pier.  The sails of the barge were furled as it was being secured to the dock by the hands aboard her.

Eva pluck a feather off of her boa and held it between herself and Mr. Plimsoul.

It was dancing, and a tiny, thin version of Sarah's voice was singing:

	Feather lithesome, feather bright

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

 



Chapter Twenty-Eight

"Voices and Choices"

Sarah hadn't had a good time of it the last two days.  Sarah ran out of Mr. Plimsoul's house as fast as she could, flying past her parents, past everyone, with no tears in her eyes, but a fierce light that made them feel as hot as any tears.  How could they have had Gilman killed?  Sarah hadn't slept since then.  She'd roamed from place to place with her cardboard suitcase.  Eating ketchup soup at diners, or scrubbing dishes for a dinner.  Sarah definitely wished she'd saved more of her Christmas gift money, or her bits of birthday cash now.  He who has less, has more distress, as her Granny Pansy had pointed out on many occasions.  Now Sarah knew just how right she was.  She had eluded the searchers herself by living on the edges of town and not talking to anyone more than absolutely necessary.  But she was still in the dark about Dar, and she didn't even know if her family was still looking for her.  She didn't even know how much she really cared about finding out.  Sarah didn't want to hurt anyone, and she didn't want to help anyone.  

Everyone was still obsessed with the Gods of Autumn and their mischief-making, the last she'd heard.  Sarah had thought about that, and about their towering, graceful forms.  Sarah had first seen them at the well, and now she had finally wound up back there.  The well still glowed steadily, although it was silent.  When Sarah was close enough to look down into it, she noticed that the well was no longer a monotone dim blue.  Now the fog in the well was a lollipop swirl of psychedelic colors.  Ribbons of rose chased lines of cadmium yellow which subsumed streaks of azure and emerald.  Chrisom white fogs wreathed around lavender blotches, and the whole thing was one mass of colors like a half-healed bruise.

Sarah was as lonely as she had ever been.  She patted down the pockets in her dress for the lost pendant one more time.  Not that it had shown up in the last few days or any of the other times she'd checked for it.  She was patting down her right hand skirt pocket when she felt the feather twitch against her hand.  Sarah brought the feather out and stared at it.  It writhed against her hand, standing on its spine when she breathed out, as if hoping she would sing to it.  Sarah didn't really care one way or another.  The feather was like her, useless flotsam.  She saw it grow large before her, the sail on a sailboat, and then down to half its size, or nothing, the period at the end of a sentence.  When was the last time Sarah had had a decent meal?  Her mind raced back to that huge weekend breakfast Granny Pansy had made, and then to the exquisite, unbelievable foods that furnished the table at Eva's house, with that queer dwarf bringing course after course of untried delicacies, each one better than the last.  That's where she'd gotten the feather, after all.  What could it do for her now?  Probably nothing.  But it responded to Sarah's voice.  The feather wanted her to sing.

	"Feather lithesome, feather bright

	 Feather dancing day or night

	 When my lonely heart has fears

	 Dance my saving graces near."

The well instantly took notice of the song and cleared everything away as before when it had given Sarah a window into the quarry of the Ancient One.  And there was one other thing too.  Now the well was changing color.  As Sarah sang, the well was turning a minty green.  Mr. Plimsoul and elegant Eva were frowning and snarling at each other.  They seemed like they'd be content to watch each other's murder, or to murder each other themselves if they didn't need each other so desperately to survive.  The Casket of Augersaal lay at their feet between them, and behind them was a beautiful silver limousine, an Archer Limited if Sarah wasn't mistaken.

"Why're you all purple?" was Sarah's first question.  Eva and Mr. Plimsoul had been covered in the purple substance the Casket of Augersaal had spit out when they couldn't sing the invocation properly, but they weren't about to tell Sarah that.  Although, really, did she even care?

"Nevermind," Sarah said, indifferent.  "Why'd I want you, anyway?" Sarah wondered out loud.  Eva could see that Sarah was close to a kind of walking delirium, unsure of what she wanted, or even what she was thinking.

"Oh, Sarah darling, we know how special you are.  You are the fated one.  And the preordained hour has arrived.  This is what you have been waiting for all of your life."

How Sarah wished that was true!  Maybe it was true.  Then Mr Plimsoul's voice intruded on her thoughts.  He was giving her an assignment like she was being held in detention.  That's when Sarah remembered why she had run away from them in the first place.

"Do you see this hand-writing Sarah?  This is your Grandmother Tone's own hand.  She is the one who wanted us to have this song.  Your own Grandmother.  What objection could you possibly have?  You must sing this song."  Mr. Plimsoul's voice was pushing hard for Sarah to agree so that they could just get on with it.

"But Gilman!" Sarah objected.  "How could you have killed him!  He was my brother!"

Eva's face never lost its composure.  Too much was at stake for any misstep now.  Eva had held her own against the Gods of Autumn.  One skinny girl was not going to be a problem.  But just to make sure, Eva touched the ring around her finger that contained the three golden hairs from Sarah's head that she had used to bind the girl to her during their ceremony at the well.  The Night Ride had bound Mistress and Acolyte for many long centuries in the old country, and would do its work here in Traeshurstaene as well.  

"Yes, Sarah, darling," began Eva smoothly.  "How could we have killed Gilman?  He was far away fighting a war in a desert, and we were here in Traeshurstaene, worrying about your future."

"But I heard you say..."  Sarah's gaze grew glossy and unfixed as Eva spoke.  So convincingly, so compellingly, so confusingly.

"Yes, Sarah, even then, when your brother Gilman was away, we were worried about you.  We knew about you, and had Mr. Hecatomb try and teach you all he could about singing.  It is your voice that sings what the well performs, and not otherwise.  You, Sarah, can draw the deep magic from the waters of the well, and no one else."

"So you didn't...?"

"No, Sarah, darling, of course not," soothed Eva.  

"Sarah," broke in Mr. Plimsoul, "there's a song that you must sing--and you must sing it right now."  Sarah stared at him, not balefully, but with a baleful indifference.  Sarah really didn't care what Mr. Plimsoul, or any grown-up for that matter, wanted.  But Mr. Plimsoul was insistent.  He was bossy and used to getting his own way.

The words were written in the belly of the well, in a strong legible woman's hand.  In fact, Sarah recognized it as her Granny Pansy's handwriting.  The letters were black and distinct against the softly rolling green fog that now lived in the well. Sarah also thought that it reminded her of something, some other song.  Could it be the same one that the little hand and little harp had had her and Missy sing in Mr. Plimsoul's basement among all those creepy oddities?

"Please, Sarah, darling," intervened Eva.  "I want you to live your own life.  You know that I do.  But you must help me help you.  We need just this one thing from you, and then we can help you to be whatever you want, go wherever you want.  You do not look like you have enjoyed your life the last few days.  Why have these awful people made you a fugitive?  It is not right!  Please, Sarah darling, sing with us.  Share your exquisite voice with those who want to hear you."

Sarah stared into the pleasant nothingness of the foggy well.  Why not?  Eva's voice was pleasant, better than Missy's or that stuck-up Betsy's.  And if both Eva and her Granny Pansy wanted her to do it, Sarah didn't know how she could refuse.  It was too lonely by herself.  She had to give Eva and Granny Pansy what they wanted.  That was Sarah's thought, or half-thought, or feeling about things as she replied.

"How's the tune go again?" Sarah asked.  For, although she recognized the words and tune vaguely, she had no really very exact recollection of them.  It was the harp that had lead her that time in the basement.  If Mr. Plimsoul and Eva hadn't been so hard-pressed, they might have asked themselves where Sarah had heard the song before, if she was asking how it went again.  The green of the well grew strong as they sang.

Mr. Plimsoul and Eva exchanged a greedy look which Sarah could not see.  Granny Pansy was advancing on them directly, letting the other witches fend for themselves.  She was going to handle Eva and Mr. Plimsoul personally, whatever it took.  Granny Pansy was rolling up all four of her sleeves, and picking prime pinches of herbs and spell powders that she was rolling between her leathery fingers.

Eva pulled the purple globe up, and held it in her other hand beside the feather.  The harp was there, plucking softly.  Sarah could hear it rolling up out of the well, and began to respond. 

    "Soul and all of Augersaal,

    Come and take my soul in thrall!

    Begin now what no god began,

    Let me live as more than man!"

In a matter of moments, the thin thread of song turned into a torrent, roaring from the well, and from Sarah's throat like a tidal wave.  Note after note poured from her being.  Sarah's voice, as pure as a bell and as sad as a violin, was being torn away into the well.    

    "Soul and all of Augersaal,

    Come and take my soul in thrall!

    Finish now what we began,

    And let me live as more than man!"

Eva twined into the song with Sarah, and the Casket of Augersaal lifted up again, and the edge of the lid limned itself in a minty Christmas green light.  Granny Pansy threw a pinched arrow of one of her spells at Mr. Plimsoul and Eva, but the Casket of Augersaal responded before either of the singers could.

It blasted Granny Pansy flat to the dock with a minty green death-ray.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT



Chapter Twenty-Nine

"The Rats Help Out"

Sarah hit the bottom of the well harder than she had ever hit anything.  In fact, if she hadn't already been unconscious from the Casket of Augersaal, she might well have died.  But her body was deeply relaxed when she slammed into the muddy bank at the bottom of the well.  Because of this, she only broke two ribs and had a concussion that kept her head bandaged until Christmas Day.  Also, she would have drowned, because the well was normally fuller than it was at the moment.  And the only reason the water level was so low was because Aerfen had reversed the Crossamum Falls to send Gwllil flying four and one half miles into the roiling, stormy sea.  

Anyone who just looked at her would have thought that Sarah was dead for sure.  She was as white as the flash of a camera bulb, but as cold as an ice cube.  Her breath was so cold, and so shallow, no mirror would have registered its pulse.  Her hands were just as clammy as a slab of liver fresh from the butcher's.  She lay at the side of the river, the Mickleswift's underground channel, which whispered and sighed as slowly as if it had stopped.

Sarah was a beautiful young woman.  Even when lying soaked and almost out of life, her brow had a lofty pride, and her tender eyelids seemed to be the merest coverings for a vision that could see far indeed.  Her lips, longer and thinner than she would have liked, still held their natural cast of determination.  Even in this state, Sarah wouldn't change her mind for anyone other than herself.  Her cheeks, drained of their usual ruddy flush, had gained some aspect of how they would look when she was older, and they were as fresh as lilies along either side of her nose.  The tip of Sarah's nose was crimped in the middle like her brother Gilman's had been, a single indented line running from the tip of her nose to the top of her lips.  Her ears, however, unlike Gilman's, took after her mother and were lobeless and small as a pair of seashells.

A rat stirred in her hair.  Her hair, dark now as wetted flax, was bunched to one side of her head.  There, slowly, a pool of black blood was gathering.  The rat put its nose up against Sarah's skull and squeaked.  It was a sleek black rat, with one missing front tooth.  Another rat, crossing over Sarah's unconscious ankle with its nimble feet, answered.

"Hssst.  Hizzlesnit, is this her?" the rat by Sarah's foot asked.

"Yes.  This is the very one."  The first rat replied.

"I'll fetch the others."

The rat perched on Sarah's foot leaped off into the slow water and began to paddle toward the middle of the river.  You see, these were ship rats, and a special kind of ship rat at that.  These rats had jumped from a sinking ship and lived to squeak the tale.  The rat in the river soon came upon a flotilla of its mates.  It squeaked out some directions, and the rats, aboard all manner of flotsam, began to paddle in toward the shore.

The dark under the well was broken only my the unearthly glow sinking down the well-hole.  It was as cadaverous, dank, and unpleasant as being in a morgue at midnight.  And, as was mentioned above, this very nearly was the morgue of Sarah Tone.

The rats paddled haphazardly, for although they were all ship rats, none of them had actually piloted any ships.  Their thin, long claws and fleshless paws scratched at the water more than they paddled it.  Some came on an old inner tube, like teenagers at a waterhole, some struggled through on iffy driftwood, some on abandoned bits of home furnishings.  A plump quadrangle of flammable sofa stuffing made for a particularly comfortable ride.  But however they were coming, they came.

The rats scrambled to shore like an invasion force composed of refugees.  For, all else being equal, rats have a disreputable favor.  Experts think its something about the eyes that is to blame.  But, in this case, it may have been the bedraggled coats of the ship rats.  Black and lank, and occasionally burnt off by some boating mishap, or torn naked in a fight for a rotten apple in the pit of the galley, their patchy, itchy fur was a sight to make stomachs uneasy.  A few waddled over to Sarah and gave her a cursory sniff.  But the bulk of the pack marched straight past Sarah to an old hollow opening in the limestone.

This opening wasn't just a ragged rip in the side of the underground river's cavern.  This opening was scrolled around with runes, like those at the edge of the well.  Only these runes seemed more modern, if one could say such a thing about runes, more regular and orderly, as if they had been carved my a professional artisan, and not just chipped in the rock by whoever was at hand.  The rats heaped into this hole, full of chatter as if attending a grisly feast.  There was a clink and disturbance within the hole, as if they were choosing cutlery.

"I say, Farnum, that's sharp, have a look-out."

"Watch yourself, Snagfang.  It wouldn't be bloody much use if it weren't sharp."

Years of scuttling around the holds of ships, dodging daggers and scurrying as fast as may be away from approaching peg legs, had left the rats with a piratey way of talking.

The first rat in was also the first rat out, and he trailed behind him a small knife, with an agate set in its hilt.  Next there came a little squad of rats, holding between them a plain steel helmet--the kind that might have been worn in the Crusades.  After that, some lady rats lifted, entirely out of the muck, a fine belt of excellent workmanship.  These objects were all headed toward Sarah's unconscious form.  Last, but by no means least, the rest of the rats were somehow managing to drag something quite glittery from the depths behind the ornate entrance.  The sound it made was that of a coin purse absolutely bursting with doubloons.  Slowly, as they came into the glow from the well-hole, it could be seen that what they had, dragging it with their teeth through various links, was a long coat of chain mail.

Now Hizzlesnit, the largest, strongest, and--if one may be perfectly frank--the fattest rat of the lot, began to direct the work.

"Over here with the helmet," he said.  He was standing atop Sarah's head and had lifted up one paw to gesture to the others.

"All right, all you lot, heave!"

Hizzlesnit was having the rats dress Sarah in the armor that had come out of the side cave.  They heaved and hoed for some time pulling the chain mail on.  But, finally, it was on and cinched tight by the elaborate belt.  The helmet had been tapped onto Sarah's head the way a pencil eraser is slipped over the end of a pencil.  A little bit crooked for all the effort, but serviceable.

"Hssst.  Hizzlesnit," said the first rat who had joined him by Sarah's foot.  "Ain't there somethin' missing?"

Hizzlesnit surveyed their work.  "Ah, yes, of course.  Just a moment."  And with that, Hizzlesnit leaped off of Sarah's helmet and scampered as fast as any much younger rat into the entryway of the delicately carved side-cave.  All the assembled rats heard some hemming and humming coming from inside that cave.  Then, after a longish pause where nothing much seemed to happen at all, they heard a faint, but distinct, "Ah ha!"  And a moment later, saw Hizzlesnit's backside begin to emerge from the cave.  He must have been dragging something quite heavy to be moving with such effort.

"C'mon now," Hizzlesnit shouted, with his one front tooth still firmly gripping the object.  "Lend us a bite."

A few stout rats jumped to obey, feeling a bit thoughtless that they hadn't figured out that Hizzlesnit needed help on their own.  A shining sword followed behind the rats quickly now, its case covered over in the modern runes.  It was a fine long sword, perhaps a bit too much for a girl, but Sarah was tall for her age.  It seemed to have been forged, like the chain mail, and even the helmet, for a princeling.  The sword's only blemish was at its carven hilt: it had a place for a stone like the dagger had.  But the sword's stone had been lost.

Hizzlesnit laid the hilt into Sarah's cold palm personally.  She looked fine enough to be on a tomb.  The mist of the waterway made the armor glisten, even in the dim glow.  Something still puzzled him.  He scratched his head with a black, evilly long claw, and then tapped his one front tooth as if thinking very hard about something--something besides supper.  "Ah ha!" Hizzlesnit said, for the second time that evening.  Maybe he was getting a little long in the tooth--for a rat.  

"Myrtlewithl," Hizzlesnit called out to the assembled rat populace.  He whistled a single sharp note with his one tooth.  "Mrytlewithl!"

"Yes, Hizzy!" came a soft, sibilant response from the edge of the crowd.  Myrtlewithl began moving toward the unconscious Sarah.

"Do you have the sorceress' booty?" asked Hizzlesnit.  

Around Myrtlewithl's sleek white neck, for Myrtlewithl was an escaped lab rat with a very good vocabulary, was Sarah's pendant.  It had been scooped from its nook in Mr. Plimsoul's basement along with several other prize items the night before.  For a nimble rat with a sailor's skill, no part of Traeshurestaene was inaccessible via underground river.

"Indubitably, Hizzy," she answered, and bent low before him so that he might snatch it from her.  This Hizzlesnit did without hesitation.  He held the pendant up, and watched it turn green in the glow for a moment.

"Doesn't seem such a much," he said.  And then he bit into the chain attached to the pendant, severing right through the link that held the pendant and the chain together.  With a steady paw, Hizzlesnit turned the runestone the right way around, and placed it with easy assurance onto the hilt.  It was a perfect fit.

Then, with the abruptness of a drowned man coming back to life, Sarah gasped.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

 



Chapter Thirty

"An Underground River"

Sarah stood up alongside the banks of a muddy, low river at the bottom of the well.

The last thing she remembered before falling in and cracking her crown was that she had agreed to help Mr. Plimsoul and Eva to open the Casket of Augersaal.  She had been singing it open, to the tune the little harp in the smoky globe played.  There had be a light so astonishing when the casket began to open, that Sarah had turned away violently, shutting her eyes and crying out.  That's when she tilted over into the well.

Her head felt as if it'd been done in by a sledgehammer.  She put her hand up to the side of her head, and felt the cold helmet.  It was even colder than she was.  And, it was on crooked.  Sarah straighten the helmet briefly, and notice a tinkling sound.  She felt as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders.  Then she looked down and saw that she had a coat of clean chain mail on, shimmering in the dimness.

Sarah screamed.

All around her feet, and roiling over them busily, was the largest pack of rats Sarah had ever seen.  They were black rats--all of them except one.  And many of they looked lank and hungry, with bits of fur lost in some ancient strife of the wharf where life was rat against rat.  But worse were the big sleek ones.  They looked like the knew how to get what they wanted.  And the biggest, fattest rat of all was sitting right on Sarah's foot and staring up at her like an obedient hound.

The other rats had started to scatter at Sarah's scream, which echoed like a moan around the underground river way.  But not this one.  Hizzlesnit continued to look up at Sarah, and even cocked his head to one side, as if awaiting instructions.

"Sorry I screamed," said Sarah.  "It's just... rats!"

Sarah hardly knew why she was apologizing, but the rat seemed to accept it, and hopped off of Sarah's foot, and with a final look over its sleek shoulder, and what Sarah would have sworn was a one-tooth grin, it slithered fast as a cat (and nearly as large) onto a waiting quadrangle of sofa cushion.  In moments, every other rat was afloat.  The flotilla of rats paddled and cheeped into a darkness that Sarah could not penetrate.

Sarah took a moment to wonder about the underground river, though.  It didn't seem to be flowing at all.  It seemed to be as still as any lake, but what seemed strangest of all to Sarah was the song that floated back from the darkness of the unmoving river.  It sounded like a shifting, hissy version of "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!"  After a second chorus of the rakish song, there was silence.   This silence enveloped her completely as the rats diminished into the distance.

Into this silence, no sound came.  But Sarah thought she saw a bulge in the darkness at one end of the riverbank on her side, just at the farthest edge of the well's downward glow.  Yes, there was something, wasn't there.  The bulge in the darkness flipped into a lighted outline, like flipping a switch.  One outline, and then another.  In seconds, a procession of illuminated outlines was headed toward Sarah.  They were approaching rapidly, gliding more than walking, although their legs were making a walking motion, that didn't seem to be what propelled them.  Sarah tensed, and drew her sword without thinking.  She held the blade between her and her potential adversaries.  She settled her feet apart, and crouched like she was about to take a foul line shot in basketball.

The figures came toward her single file.  The first one, Sarah now saw, was wearing an armor of its own.  A great handlebar mustache hung from his face, and a spear as tall as two rakes leaned on his shoulder.  The knight, for that's what he was, wore a silken panel over the top of his knee-length chain mail.  He was a good deal taller than Sarah, and she could see hard muscle working beneath his mail.  Sarah readied herself for a blow as he got within five feet of her.  He had still retained his outline quality, though, and that was very odd to see up close.  He mostly wasn't there at all.  It was as if Sarah had stepped into a cartoon, but one that was still unfinished, one that hadn't been colored in yet. 

The knight, with his long sad mustache, and his spear still held at attention, passed Sarah without even looking at her.  Sarah followed him with her eyes for a moment, wondering if he would attack her from behind.  But Sarah only had a moment, for hot on his heels had come another knight, dressed similarly, with a large square cross on his silken overshirt.  This knight had a sword belted to his side with a knotted rope as well as a spear.  He too passed by Sarah silently and without incident.

Sarah began to look in the direction the men had come from.  She was amazed.  There was a long line of men who had been proceeding from the bulge in the darkness.  And, while those closest to her were dressed as medieval knights, Sarah could see redcoats and grenadiers and artillerymen of the Great War coming along after not too far behind.  There seemed to be no end to the long grey line of soldiers.  As they passed her, Sarah examined their faces.  They were austere, as if they had seen much, and suffered much.  But there was a calmness to them as well, a calmness that Sarah never saw on the complaining faces of the nothing's-ever-good-enough grown-ups.  They may have had a hard time, the hardest time, but these men knew why they had sacrificed their lives.  For these were dead men, Sarah was certain.  Soldiers killed in all the wars that her nation had fought.

Now the men in the line were dressed in loose-fitting shapeless garments, or the whitened outline of such things, with camouflage patterns traced along them.  These faces too were calm, certain, and austere rather than simply sad.  Officers of every branch of the military walked by with the same strange, sliding gait.  Sarah didn't know what to make of it all, but she stood straighter in her chain mail and heavy helmet.  She sheathed her sword with a harsh shushing sound.  Just then, a soldier, dressed just as Gilman had dressed on his graduation day, stepped out of the line and faced Sarah directly.  He slipped his hand down Sarah's arm abruptly, and Sarah very nearly panicked.

The ghostly soldier gripped Sarah's hand very firmly.  His hand was as cold as an icicle slipped down the back of your parka.  But there was nothing wet or fishy about his grip.  Sarah couldn't even manage a protest, for she knew it would be in vain.  The soldier took her hand and forced it back around the hilt of her sword, and withdrew it from its sheath.  He pulled her arm up so that the sword was before Sarah's face in a formal salute.  It was only then that Sarah, looking past the shimmering blade, saw the soldier's face.

It was Gilman.

END OF CHAPTER THIRTY

 



Chapter Thirty-One

"The River of Time is Stopped"

"Gilman!"

Sarah felt the tears sting her eyes.  How she had missed him!  What a dreadful, long, weary time she had had without Gilman there to protect and support her.  Now he was back.  That would show them, that would show them all.  Sarah felt fiercely vindicated by this sharp, vindictive thought.  Show all who? was her next thought.  Mother and Father?  Granny Pansy and Great Uncle Charlie?  Her cousins, Abbey and Dar, who'd never done even one thing to deliberately hurt her?  Eva and Mr. Plimsoul, who seemed foul as louses in some ways, but who were ready to take Sarah under their wing provided she open their silly Casket of Augersaal?  Bart?  Maybe Bart.  But hadn't Bart already paid for his teasing and insults with a wounded eye?  Did Sarah really want more justice than an eye for an eye?  Maybe Sarah was just unhappy with her luck, with her lot in life, with, as Eva had called it at the strangely compelling dinner interview, her "high and lonely destiny."

Well, with Gilman back, none of that would matter.  Sarah had always had Gilman on her side, and she could always trust him to be sympathetic to her cause, even when she didn't know exactly what that cause was.  Gilman was the best best friend and best big brother all wrapped up into one.  With a pinch in her breath from her broken ribs, Sarah looked up at him.

It was weirder than words could tell to see your own brother standing before you like a living cartoon.  Gilman had died and, and gone to this place?  It didn't make any sense to Sarah.  She needed some answers, and she needed them now.  "Gilman," she managed.  "What...?  Wh-why?"

The only answer Gilman made was to put his ghostly hand on Sarah's shoulder.  Had he sacrificed himself to be there with her?  Sarah wondered.  Or was he just comforting her because he couldn't speak?  For some reason Sarah couldn't quite name, the question she actually asked Gilman was: "Is it too late?"

The hand on Sarah's shoulder pressed down more firmly.  Sarah wanted to put the down the sword blade that shone between them, but she couldn't.  Gilman's ghostly eyes pierced her mercilessly.  It was as if he were asking her a question.  But what would that question be?  Did Gilman know who had killed him, and why?  Was it just an accident of war, the shelling of his position, or had there been some magical connection because of the Tone family's "warrior crown"?

"Gilman," Sarah asked, tilting her head to one side of the blade, and almost whispering.  "Do you know who had you killed?"

Gilman still did not speak.  He did not shake his head or nod.  Reasons were for the living, it seemed.  

"Do you know why you were killed?"  Sarah insisted.  If Gilman didn't know what to do or why, how could Sarah ever know?

At this question, something extraordinarily strange occurred.  Gilman, very carefully and very deliberately removed his officer's cap.  He was as careful as if he had a glass of water balanced on his head under his cap and didn't want to spill it.  There, around his thickly drawn head of hair, was a thin silver circlet.  Just over Gilman's forehead, it had a small diamond-shaped crest which was divided at the middle by the circlet.  It seemed to Sarah as if a star had landed on Gilman's brow.  As Gilman very seriously removed the crown, Sarah could see a rune scribed on the diamond.  Gilman held the circlet over the lifted blade and then over Sarah's helmet.  Gilman settled the circlet onto the helmet firmly, clicking it into a slight ridge that seemed to exist for that specific purpose.

Sarah, helmeted, armed, and crowned now stood stock still.  All that the world would ever give her was now hers, but she still didn't know just what to do.  Sarah looked ardently at Gilman, wishing intensely that he would speak, say something, anything, to help her decide what she must do.  Sarah couldn't bring herself to ask her mute brother another question, but felt that the silence was overwhelming.

Gilman settled his officer's cap back firmly on his head, hiding the loose bundle of his hair.  It looked like he was about to turn back and follow the receding line of ghostly figures when Sarah reached out and put her hand on his arm.  Gilman stopped, and gestured silently to the unmoving underground river.  Then he tapped the watch on his wrist.  He held the watch up to Sarah.  The second hand wasn't moving.  Sarah wasn't sure what that meant.  Then Gilman, as solemnly as a statue, pointed down at the ground, to Sarah's left.  

For a long moment, it seemed to Sarah that neither she nor Gilman, nor Gilman's watch, would ever move again.  A dread filled her, like gasoline going into a can, as she followed Gilman's gesture toward the ground.  His finger stopped only a few feet above a lanky prone body wearing chain mail and a steel cap, with a sword laid into its pale unmoving hand.  This was not one of the cartoon outline figures of the soldiers;  this was a real, living person lying motionless in the muck.  There was a small pool by the figure's head, darkening its blond hair with blood.

It was Sarah.

Sarah felt an odd dissonance overtake her soul.  This was like watching the throat of the shadow Sarah getting ripped out by shadow birds, or like watching her reflection being strangled in the well by the old crone.  Sarah felt as though her bones had been turned inside out.  The horror that came over her, seeing what she was, and where she had wound up, left her without words in a place that was without time.  Sarah joined the stillness of the unmoving waters, and felt nothing.

And then Gilman turned and began to walk away, without so much as a backward glance at Sarah.

Sarah looked at the blade in her hand as Gilman walked away, joining the long grey line of soldiers from time immemorial.  The watery cavern echoed with their booted steps until the darkness swallowed them all again.  As long as the line seemed to have been, it was not infinite.  There was an end to the defenders, and Gilman was now gone away with them into an irrecoverable past.

The blade shone with all the reflected colors of the well-light, but at its very edge, it lost all color.  The edge has no room for indecision: either cut or do not cut.  Death or life.  Win or lose.  To use this tool, you needed to pick sides, you needed to know what you were fighting for.  In the hilt was the pendant Granny Pansy had given Gilman, and that Sarah had filtched from his uniform pocket in the closet in recent days past that seemed eons ago.  Sarah rubbed her thumb back and forth over the runic inscription.  She felt that she was back in the dark of that closet again, stumbling into nothingness.  Again, her eyes shone back at her from the flat of the blade.  But this time, Sarah didn't turn away from herself.

She had decided.

* * * *

Back at the docks, the scene remained frozen just as it was when the Casket of Augersaal had been invoked by Eva and Sarah.  Everything was as stiff and still as a postcard.  The glinting light on the water, the golden barge with its furled sails, and a figure on the prow squinting at the frozen chaos of the dockworks.  All of the bustling sorcerers Eva and Mr. Plimsoul had at their disposal were stiffened into cardboard cut-outs.  Even Great Uncle Charlie's friend, the hirsute giant, Hartlebragginthronsii, who had returned to help in the battle out of friendship, was stuck in mid-stride, batting away a flaming ball with the torn-off arm of a freight crane.  

Virtually at Sarah's feet, Mr. Hectatomb clutched his broken arm, a grimace of pain painted on his round, red face.  Sarah saw with a gasp that Granny Pansy had been knocked flat to the ground, just a dozen yards on the other side of the blasted-open iron gates.  With that gasp, time returned to the hectic scene.

The Casket of Augersaal had opened wide, its ebon lid dangling from a single hinge.  Within the casket, but leaping out, was Sarah.  She leaped with her sword flashing, and yelling in a tongue she did not understand.  It was the words inscribed around the side-cave that had held the sacred armor until the new warrior came to collect them.  Mr. Plimsoul had been knocked over by the lid of the casket, but Eva stood coolly, the purple globe in her hand, the tiny hand still plucking a now unsung melody that haunted the air of the battle.  Sarah did not hesitate, but struck mercilessly, and Eva's cool head thonked to the paving, eyes widened in surprise.

END OF CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

 



Chapter Thirty-Two

"Finally!"

With his good arm, Choirmaster Hecatomb tapped the music stand with his sharp baton to commence the Christmas concert.  His other arm in its plaster cast hung in a Ridgefield red sling over his red Ridgefield vest.  His vest hung rather loosely around his still ample belly.  These had been some hard days for Mr. Hecatomb.  He'd needed to do a good deal of special pleading to keep his job with the high school.  His son Bart spoke up for him with an especial eloquence.  And when Sarah Tone put in a good word, the Board of Education just had to give him a second chance.  Sarah knew keenly that sometimes second chances are the best chances of all.

A few stragglers sidled into their seats.  Some had to take whatever was available toward the front, and some, like Great Uncle Charlie, had to be signaled into the seats that had been saved for them by watchful relatives.  Granny Pansy, back down to only two arms, waved him into a safe landing, and patted his leg as he got settled.  The first song was "Winter Wonderland," for the whole town of Treashurstaene had been converted, as if by some elfish magic, into a snowy and rosy winter hideaway overnight.  Eves piled with fresh snow had glistened as the morning for the winter concert arrived.  And many a husband and son sank into a happy doze as the concert ran on from song to song, tuckered out from an afternoon filled with shoveling our cars or sledding down the many slopes near the Welkin Wood.

The set list ran through all the Christmas time favorites, and each one was sung with typical small-town gusto.  Although, some who were there remembered that concert in later years as especially joyous, and smiled involuntarily when asked by their grandchildren to describe what it was like to have been there.  For this concert was the first one after the saving of the town, and people were generally more in tune with the feeling and meaning of redemption behind the Christmas holiday than they had been in other years.  "Good King Wenceslas" even brought a sigh from Mayor Tommy Lingersall, who had gotten in on a tidal wave of write-in votes in the special election.  "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" got Barnabas into a good appetite, which he sated by munching from his pocketful of Granny Pansy's special peppermint balls.  "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" came in with an extra sharpness, especially the line "To save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray."  But generally the crowd was as merry as anyone could recall, and the intermission was filled with a loud cloud of happy chatter, and the generous quaffing of some rather strong cranberry punch.  A stranger in the town, who had disembarked from the golden barge that had pulled up during the battle, had stayed to enjoy the concert.  A young man with dark eyes and a sensitive brow that told of a troubled past, very reminiscent of the princeling in Eva's portraits, beamed up at Sarah with a look of generous expectation.  Even Hizzlesnit was there, sitting plumply under the pies table, catching delicious flakes of blueberry pie, and washing it down with a carafe made of a discarded cream dispenser.

When they finally got to Ave Maria, last in the song line-up, Sarah was beginning to get pretty nervous about her part.  She'd done fine so far, but this last-minute addition had been practiced only by her and Mr. Hecatomb that afternoon, and her voice had cracked every time.  Sarah had been kind of secretly hoping that the number would be dropped.  But, scanning the faces of the audience, with her parents there, and Granny Pansy, Mr. Burrbuckle sitting tall above the others in the middle of the crowd, and even her cousins Abbey and Dar, with their parents in from the city and holding hands--and, of course, Great Uncle Charlie, who had motored down to Traeshurstaene in his broken-down old Rolls Royce, Sarah felt she just had to give it a try anyway.

Sarah gulped a quick glug of water from the glass on the stand next to her.  She straightened the music sheet before her, but couldn't quite manage the "professional smile" that etiquette demanded.  Her cousin Dar thought that she looked kind of like that soldier in that old black and white movie--the one who gets a blindfold tied around his head before the firing squad.  Bart Hecatomb gave her a strong look of calm competence.  He had no doubt that Sarah Tone could do anything she set her mind to.

Sarah cleared her throat, and then nodded to Mr. Hecatomb.  He tapped his sharp baton lightly to get the attention of the other members of the choir, and then began the song with a firm downstroke.  The organ came in low and soft, very soft, as if the first snow were falling on some lonely midnight forest.  Sarah took a deep breath, and then started to sing with an otherworldly ease.  It was as if the song were coming fresh to her lips, as if it was her own spontaneous prayer--one of gratitude in a world that had somehow welcomed her back after all.

    Ave maria

    Maiden mild!

    Oh, listen to a maiden's prayer

    For thou canst hear amid the wild

    'tis thou, 'tis thou canst save amid despair

    We slumber safely till the morrow

    Though we've by man outcast reviled

    Oh, maiden, see a maiden's sorrow

    Oh, mother, hear a suppliant child!

Sarah's voice rose and broke over the tune, stretching with a breathlessness that kept the listeners on the edges of their seats.  They wanted to know that this lonely soul would be heard, would be found in the dark wood and shown her way home.  Everyone in the audience was saying a silent prayer themselves for the sake of the child whose voice they heard.  They knew how long the night could be, how wide and empty the world was sometimes.  They heard in Sarah's voice the rhythmic echo of their own hearts, but singing out as they never had.  Sarah was singing for them.  They came to the song together, and together Sarah and the audience felt the simple tears of sympathy, joy and gratitude well-up in their eyes.

    Ave maria

    Ave maria, gratia plena

    Maria, gratia plena

    Maria, gratia plena

    Ave, ave dominus

    Dominus tecum

    The murky cavern's air so heavy

    Shall breathe of balm if thou hast smiled

    Oh, maiden, hear a maiden pleadin'

    Oh, mother, hear a suppliant child

    Ave maria

    Ave maria

It seemed that everything had turned out all right after all.

Sarah sang on.

THE END

 



After Note

Dear All:

This November, I participated in National Novel Writing Month, started by nanowrimo.org.  The goal was to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of November, having started on November 1st.  I wound up writing a 64,000 word first draft of a children's novel titled "The Singing Well" in eighteen days.  This averages out to some 3500 words penned per day.  This means that my novel is not three times worse than a Hemingway novel, but seven times worse.

I pursued the NaNo nonsense pretty restlessly the last three weeks.  I woke and wrote at 5 AM every day, and even drank less. The infernal NaNo backwards clock got into my head. I felt as if each second were being tattooed on my skin, erased, and then tattooed again with the new time--one second less than I'd just had to accomplish the task!  I guess I'll write one hell of a sloppy memoir on my deathbed if this is any indication.

Some of the remarkable things I noticed during this process were that my writing style changed considerably.  Changed even from what I thought I would write, or would be able to write when pouring through a story at top speed.  What I thought I'd be doing, since I am a poet and the story involves a good deal of singing and spell-recitation, was writing poems and witchy rhymes for the characters to use to change their reality.  Most of my other prose work has some form of elaborate meditation on inner states, or ornate remembrances.  So, I thought I'd have vast descriptive passages punctuated by snippets of limericks, etc.  What came out instead was a fast-paced, character and adventure-filled narrative.  I found myself chasing after the story, putting down only the minimal notations to forward the action.  Shock!  "The Singing Well" was not merely magical in its proposed subject matter, but magical in its effect as well.

Perhaps the most interesting thing of all is the love story that occurred.  During the writing of this novel, I fell in love with a fourteen year old girl.  Her name is Sarah, and she's the heroine of "The Singing Well."  Her grit, her fidgety aloofness, her disdain and self-doubt all brought me up into her difficulties and sorrows.  Whether these fibrillations are ultimately redemptive or damning, the reader must tell.

The entire production, first draft foibles and all is available online here:  http://www.gregglory.com/singingwell/.  Personally, I recommend waiting until the draft has at least been gone through once entirely for typos and simple grammar errors.  Check back in December.

Happy holidays!

Sincerely,

Gregg