8 Gone is the Witch (31 page)

“
If that’s true, how did Yammer know where to find it?”

“Good point. So maybe it hasn’t moved.”

“And maybe it was never here.”

“It’s gotta be
here,” Carlos argued. “Jerome was with us a few minutes ago and now he’s across the ravine, probably roasting on a spit. They didn’t just fly across there.”

I saw Tony look at me just as I looked up at him. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

We both turned to face the ravine. “I don’t know. Are you thinking the portal is right in front of our faces?”

Carlos stepped to the edge and looked
out. “I don’t see anything.”

Ursula
picked up a rock and chucked it into the ravine. It sailed a few feet out over the edge before disappearing in a ripple of turbulent air, distorted by its own wake.

“`Tis the old saying, Master Carlos. Plain be thy nose on thy face, yet thee see naught for thy eyes look far and away.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Carlos. “It was right in front of us all this time.”

Tony
gave me a hesitant look. “Now what?”

I presented a path over the edge with
a sweep of my hand. “No guts, no glory. After you?”

“
No,” said Carlos, bumping me aside with a not so gentle nudge. “After me.” He stepped back, gathered speed with a running start and catapulted himself off the edge of the cliff.

You know
, it’s a shocking sight, seeing a man leap off the edge of a cliff like that. When Carlos did it, I could feel the flutter in my stomach, imagining for a moment that he had made a grave mistake.

I guess I expected him to disappear the moment his feet left the ground. Instead, I watched his legs kicking in thin air, his arms windmilling as he tried to keep his balance
throughout his lofty descent.

It looked clumsy, but I don’t berate him for lack of form.
Ursula, bless her heart, let out a scream to wake the undead. I suppose I’d have screamed, too, if it hadn’t happened before he hit bottom.

But it did
happen.

Perhaps larger objects take longer to negotiate the portal than smaller ones
do. I reckoned it to a kind of standardization effect. Objects of varying weights and mass probably shoot out the other end of the portal at dangerous speeds if not properly calibrated.

In any case,
the portal did eventually accept Carlos. Of course, Yammer’s campsite was much too far away for us to know if he made it there safely, or at all.

I stepped back and cleared a path for Tony next. I have
to tell you, the man’s got balls. He gave himself a running head start, much the same way Carlos did, only Tony added Olympic flare to his jump. He trotted three full steps before leaping off the edge, tucking his knees to his chest and doing multiple 360 tumbles all the way down into the ravine until the portal finally swallowed him up, as well.

I put my hand out
. Ursula took it. “Ready?”

“Aye,” s
he said, with a thin smile stitched across her lips. “What is it then we say? Alamo?”

“Umm no,
hun. It’s Geronimo.”

“Uh, yes. The gremlin.”

“No. That was Gizmo.”

“Art thou sure?”

“Just jump, will you?”

We stepped back, took a running head start and
threw ourselves over the edge.

I don’t remember yelling Geronimo, but I do remember
the silent shout of reason, scolding me for jumping into a cavernous gulch without consulting my rational side first. Perhaps that’s what made it so fun.

I
reveled in the charge of surrendering to the unknown, the intense freefall inciting a riot of emotions from sheer terror to absolute exhilaration. I welcomed the angry rush of wind raking over my body, tugging at my clothes and standing my hair on end. And of course, Ursula, outwardly frightened and giddy at the same time, squeezing my hand so hard, my fingers grew numb.

I doubt we fell more than a few seconds, though it seemed much longer
before something incredible happened. The sky around us turned frosty white, and the air thick and gummy. I felt I could chew it.

Gravity
eventually abandoned its claim on our bodies, allowing the viscous atmosphere to slow our descent to a gradual stop. Gone was the rush of the wind, the sensation of falling and the fear of certain death awaiting us at the bottom of the gorge.

It was just me and Ursula
then, holding hands, suspended in a tempered medium that seemed neither wet nor dry. She looked at me and crooked her brow. “Well?”

Like I knew. “Well what?”

“Hath thee a notion?”

“A notion?”

“Aye. What be thy thoughts? Be we dead?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Art thou sure?”

“I don’t remember hitting bottom.”

“Aye.” She looked down at the milky clouds swirling at our feet. “`Tis a quandary, then, is it not?”

“I suppose.” I looked back over my shoulder. “I don’t see Tony or Carlos. You think they made it through
okay?”

“One can
but hope.”

“Yeah
, hope. So, why do you suppose we didn’t make it? You think it’s because we went together? I mean we’re holding––”

I broke our handhold, and the second half of the ride
suddenly kicked in. The two of us fell into a blind tumble, whisked away in opposite directions by the swirling clouds that seemed to take individual ownership of our bodies.

The sensation of falling returned, accompanied this time by a side-to-side thrashing as if swishing down a serpentine water
slide while wrapped in wet burlap.

“Ursula!” I
screamed, though I knew she couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t even hear myself.

At the bottom of the
slide, the ride leveled out. The white sky turned dark again and the viscous air thinned to atmospheric conditions I could once again relate to.

I heard a loud pop and a swishing noise like a wave breaking
over the shore. My body thumped along the sandy ground head-over-heels and came to rest at Tony’s feet. I looked up at him, my stupid grin pulling at my cheeks. He looked down at me.

“Lilith?”

“Hey handsome.”

He reached down and helped me to my feet. “You okay?”

“Yeah. You?” I began brushing the sand off my butt when I felt his hand pushing down on my shoulder.

“I’m good,” he said, “but stay down.”

“Why?”

He pointed out over the tops of some thorny shrubs.
“That’s Yammer over there. He’s got Jerome tied to a tree.”

“What’s he do
ing with him?”

“I think he’s
about to gut him.”

“We have to stop him!”

I started out from behind the bushes when Tony pulled me back in. “Lilith, no. We should wait on Carlos.”

“Carlos?
He hasn’t come through the portal yet?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“He went before you.”

“I know. By the way, where’s Ursula?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. We separated in the mist. Maybe they’re together.”

“I hope so. I guess if they
both––”

“Nooo!” Jerome
cried.

Yammer
had drawn a charcoal line down the center of his chest with the charred end of stick he pulled from the fire.

“That’s it,”
I said. “We can’t wait. I’m going in.”

“
No. I’ll go. You stay here.”

Tony
unsheathed his bayonet and broke through the thicket, storming Yammer’s campsite in a one-man cavalry charge.

“
Stay here, indeed!” I said, though mostly to myself, seeing Tony was already halfway across the clearing. I came out from behind the bushes and started after him.

Yammer heard the commotion and turned to confront us with his charred
stick and a stone-flaked knife.

“Who goes there?”

“Me,” said Tony.

“Who the blazers are you?”

“I’m Tony.”

“Who?”

I said, “Tony, he doesn’t know you. You haven’t met him yet. Remember?”

“Oh yeah.” He pointed
to Jerome. “I’ve come to get my friend back.”

“
Your friend? I ain’t got your friend. I’m alone here, Mister.”

“I’m talking about him.”

Yammer looked back at Jerome, clearly puzzled. “Him?”

“Yes.”

“But that there’s a driget.”

“I know. You took him from us.
I want him back.”

“N
a-uh, I don’t think so.” Yammer dropped his stick and raised his stone-flaked knife. “I think you’re gonna have to come take him from me, Mister.”

“Don’t do it,” I said to Tony, “Just
pull your gun and shoot him. We’ll get Jerome and be on our way.”

“No,” he said, all macho like. “I can take
this old bird.”

“Tony,
this old bird has probably been knife fighting for a hundred and fifty years. Just shoot him and be done with it.”

“
Shooting people is not the answer. It’s a method of last resort.”

“Oh, is that what they teach you at the police academy? Someone brandishes a knife and you go all West Side Story on him?”

“What?” He took his eyes off Yammer just long enough to tell me what a stupid remark that was.

Yammer, undoubtedly more skilled in street fighting than Tony gave him credit for,
took advantage of the diversion by pitching his knife at Tony from five yards out. The blade cut Tony’s hand above the thumb, causing him to drop his bayonet in the sand.

“Now will you shoot him?” I said.

He didn’t answer, but I could see him trying to pull his robe up high enough to draw his sidearm. In the meantime, Yammer reached into his beltline and produced a second, much larger knife. He ratcheted it up over his head and was just about to release it, when I heard a shot ring out.

Tony looked up, stunned, his hand still reaching for his weapon. Yammer fell to the
knees and then onto his back. Carlos stepped out from behind the boulders on the other side of the clearing, his gun barrel smoking.

“Amigo!
Amigo!” Jerome shouted.

“Shit,” was all Tony could say.

We went up to Yammer. Blood dribbled out the corner of his mouth as he stared unblinking at the starless sky. Tony knelt beside him. “You want us to do anything, old timer?”

“Yeah, I do,” Yammer sputtered.

“What?”

“Send me through the portal `fore I die
.”

“He wants to go back in time,” I said, “before Carlos shot him.”

“We can’t do that,” said Carlos. “He’ll just turn around and kill one of us the first chance he gets.”

Tony looked up at me. “What do you think?”

“Hell, what are you asking me for? I’m the one who wanted him shot in the first place.”

“Yeah, but what do you think now?”

“Oh, crap.” I looked at Carlos. He seemed to crowd me into a corner with his hooded eyes. The age thing was definitely catching up with him. “Carlos, the man felt threatened.”

“
Threatened?” He walked over to Jerome and cut him free from the tree. “The man tried to kill your husband, and he had every intention on eating Jerome.”

“Please,” said Yammer, and he coughed up another splatter of blood.

Tony said, “Lilith?”

“All right,
fine. Let’s pitch his ass through the portal and just hope we never see him again.”

“Where is it?”

I looked around. “I don’t know. Around here somewhere. Start tossing some sand up and watch where it goes.

I squatted down and began scooping up handfuls of sand and spraying it into the air. Tony followed my lead
, and after a while, even Jerome joined in. Carlos, wanting nothing to do with it, just stood and watched.

“There.
” I said, after noticing an invisible curtain about the size of a car door where the sand went in but didn’t come out. “That’s it. Let’s get him in there, quickly.”

Tony and I hurried back to Yammer.
His eyes were closed now. His blood-soaked beard glistened crimson in the glow of firelight. I noticed then the exit wound on his chest. Tony pressed his fingertips to the side of Yammer’s neck. He looked at me and shook his head.

“He’s gone.”

“Yup. Well...” Carlos picked up Tony’s bayonet and handed it to him. “Que sera sera. He had a good run. Now where’s Ursula?”

“We don’t know
. We thought she might be with you.”