Ariel (14 page)

* * *

Ariel woke me at sunrise. She was a perfect alarm clock.

My sleep had been disturbing, full of twisting dream-images, misty and elusive. I don't know if it was part of my dreams or if it really happened, but sometime in the night it seemed as if I had awakened with an erection so hard it was painful. It pressed uncomfortably into my stomach and I twisted around. I remember feeling upset I had an erection; I don't know why. I had rolled onto my back and slept again.

"Sleep good?" I asked Ariel as I got up from the couch and stretched. The couch had been uncomfortable to sleep on; a spring had shuffled off its mortal coil, stuffing had rubbed against my nose, the towels tucked into the cushions kept coming loose, and it was hot and stuffy.

"Mmm," she answered.

"I'm going to wake the others."

"Right-o."

I looked at her carefully. She seemed to be acting too casual. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Don't bullshit me. What is it?"

"I'm really not sure. Maybe that's what's bothering me: I don't like not being able to see directions. I don't know if this dragon-slaying business is going to turn out all right for him or not. Or for us, for that matter."

"Why are we going to New York?" I blurted.

She looked surprised. "I don't know the answer to that, Pete. I thought you did."

I thought about it. I wasn't any superhero justice-maker; I wasn't setting out to make the world safe for anything except me and Ariel. Maybe that was my answer. Her life was endangered just because she was what she was. A good man had died for her; a near-stranger who was also a friend had taken it upon himself to defend her by pulling up stakes and setting out alone on a dangerous journey. Those were good enough reasons for us to go. Nothing's worth living for if there's aren't things you think are worth dying for. I guess that makes sense.

I rubbed sleep from the corners of my eyes. Halfway up the stairs to wake the Neimans I stopped. "Hey, doesn't it bother you that we're going to attempt—and I stress the word attempt—to kill a dragon?"

"I don't like killing anything, Pete. But dragons are bullies. They get what they deserve."

* * *

I knocked softly on George's bedroom door. He answered quickly; I don't think he was asleep. He blinked in the gray morning light, opened the door wider, padded back to his bed in his underwear, and grabbed clothes laid out on his dresser. I stayed in the doorway. His bedroom walls were covered with pictures: commercial jets, fighter jets, cars of all kinds, a monorail, a supertanker. Chariots of George's gods.

One skinny leg filled a dangling blue-jean leg. "I'll get Mom and Dad up," he said. "I'll try not to take too long."

I nodded. "We're in a hurry." He looked scared and I didn't know what to say. Besides, I had places to go, people to see, evil wizards to confront, that sort of thing. I went back down the stairs.

There wasn't much to do to get ready. I'd slept in my clothes (Army shirt and black cords, the only ones I'd brought), and except for shouldering my pack, slinging the Aero-mag, and strapping Fred onto my hip, all I had to do was put on socks and hiking boots, double-bowing the leather laces. Leather had turned out to be a mistake. It got wet, dried, and broke easily afterward. Next time we passed a drugstore I'd have to remember to get new ones.

I strapped Ariel's pack onto her, ignoring her token complaints ("I know it's light and all I have to carry is the crossbow, but It's The Principle Of The Thing"), cocked the crossbow, and put it butt-first in the large pocket on her left side.

I sat on the couch and waited, feeling the ridges on Fred's handle. Ariel stood before the fireplace, tapping out uneven rhythms on the wooden floor with a hoof:
tink, tink-tink-tink, tink. Tink-tink,
scrape, pause,
tink
. It started to get on my nerves and I was about to ask her to cut it out when the Neimans trudged down the staircase, George in the lead. George wore a khaki Boy-Scout knapsack, white T-shirt, and faded jeans. The legs were too short and his blue tennis shoes stuck out comically, along with a good three inches of white tube socks. His belt drooped down on his left side where he wore, I swear to god, a large broadsword in a metal sheath. "Ready?" he asked, trying valiantly to appear as if he looked like this all the time.

I shouldered my pack and shoved Fred through my belt. Great—now we looked like some fucked-up Boy scout dramatization of
The Fellowship of the Ring
.

I eyed the broadsword. "You know how to use that thing?" I asked.

"I, uh—no, I don't," he answered in a small voice.

I sighed. "Let's go."

George's mother hugged him tearfully, telling him to be careful and to come back soon. His father shook his hand gravely, then did the same to me. "You won't be sorry," he told me. I didn't tell him I already was, but I thanked him and his wife for everything.

Well, the food
had
been good.

Evie, in plain white nightclothes, gave Ariel a farewell kiss on her lowered brow. George picked her up and hugged her and told her to be good.

We set out.

I looked back once when George did. They were still there, just outside the front door. I pictured them watching us walk along the road to the Interstate in the crisp morning air until we were out of sight.

* * *

We were in Greenville by a little after nine. It was a small town and had that kind of dead look that made me wonder if it had been just as lively before the Change. Probably; there were few cars in the middle of the streets, more in the parking lots of small shopping centers and car lots. Bird shit had made small white explosions on the windshields and helped turn the bodies to rust. Their South Carolina plates were red, white, and blue, with a palm tree and a banjo in the center, making me think of Dixie, mint juleps, and Tara. A lot of pickup trucks had a rebel-flag front plate and a shotgun rack holding, more often than not, an axe handle. There were also popular bumper stickers, faded by rain and torn by time: nra; only free men own guns; you can have my gun when you pry my cold, dead fingers from it; if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns; forget, hell! and the like.

"You say the town's completely deserted?" I asked George as we walked through the main street.

"Pretty much. Some people live just outside of town, but I ain't heard of anybody living in it in a long time. My family never had no problem coming in and getting stuff if we needed to."

I stopped in a drugstore—the door was unlocked—and grabbed cigarettes (there were two packs left), new shoelaces (nylon), and a pack of peppermints for Ariel. The store owner had kept a snub-nosed .38 behind the register. I opened the magazine. Six bullets. I spun it and snapped my wrist. It clacked home. I brought the barrel to my temple and pulled the trigger.

Click
.

But there'd been one heart-speeding second: what if, just this once, a gun went off?

I threw it to the floor. It clattered to the foot of the magazine section. I turned and left the drugstore.

"What are you laughing about?" asked Ariel as I joined her in the street.

"Nothing." I tossed her the packet of peppermint. She let it fall to the asphalt: what was she supposed to do with it? I opened it, still laughing, and began untwisting the cellophane packets. What a weird world.

* * *

We were back on the open road by ten. I walked on Ariel's right, George on her left. As we walked I practiced my daily regimen of drawing Fred and trying to return it to the sheath in one smooth motion without looking. I'd already cut my thumb once.

"Hey, Pete," George said as I drew the sword once more. "If you're in such a hurry to get up north, why don't you ride a bike? Ariel could keep up with you, couldn't she?"

I locked my wrist. Yeah, that felt right. Resisting the temptation to look at my left hip I slowly bent my sword arm at the elbow. The back of the blade slid along the top of my left wrist. "Yeah, she could keep up," I said, pulling the blade back and trying again. "But I won't ride one." I pulled the blade up until I felt the tip slide to the top of the scabbard.

"Why not?"

Now if I used my left thumb as a guide  .  .  . yeah! It went into place and I brought right hand close to left. The guard met the scabbard with a small clank. "Because you can't hide when you're riding a bicycle." I drew Fred again. My stride made the blade bob and I missed yet another attempt to return it to the scabbard on the first try. "Besides, I tried to ride one once. It wouldn't work." I cheated and looked. The sword went into the sheath. "Shit, I'll never learn how to do this." I walked in front of Ariel, who'd been watching me with amusement, then over to George. "Let me see that," I said, indicating his broadsword.

"Huh? Oh, sure," He pulled it from his belt, scabbard and all, and handed it to me.

I turned it in my hands, then drew it. "George, you couldn't cut a fart with this thing."

He colored. "I'll learn to use it," he said defensively.

I shook my head. "Sir Lancelot couldn't use this," I said, and it was true: what I was holding was a sword someone had taken from a gift shop somewhere, more wall decoration than weapon: dull, unbalanced, unwieldy, ill-fitted, wholly impractical. "Where'd your dad get it?"

"I dunno." He ducked his head and kicked at the ground. "Found it."

"Found it." I sighed, sheathed it, and handed it back to him. "Step away from Ariel," I told him. "I want to see you draw that thing."

Awkwardly he put it back into his belt. "Okay." He grabbed the double-handed grip with his right hand and pulled. And kept pulling. His arm was straight out and the sword was still in the sheath. It was longer than his reach.

"You're going to have to get a bigger belt and sling it lower," I told him.

"It'll drag the ground."

"What can I say? It's one or the other."

Ariel scraped a hoof on the road.

"Oh, neat," George exclaimed at the trailing sparks. "Did you see that?"

I glanced at her. "Yeah. Whoop-tee-doo."

She looked over at me, mock hurt in her midnight eyes. "Whatever happened to the
Don Quixote
you were reading me?" Her voice was pouting.

"It's in the pack somewhere."

She looked at me expectantly.

"Jesus Christ, now?"

"What's wrong with now? I want to find out what happens. Besides, I like Rosinante."

We passed a Ford station wagon turned sideways on the left side of the road. With headlights knocked out and front grille bent it looked like a sleeping drunk. "Rosinante's just a stupid, worn-out horse," I commented. "She's hardly even dealt with."

She scraped a hoof. I ignored George's awed exclamation. "So? Rosinante follows Don Quixote faithfully—no matter how futile the quest." She looked at me pointedly, to use a bad pun.

I snorted. "That's because Rosinante's too dumb to know any better. 'A horse is a horse, of course, of course,'" I sang. "R-r-right, Wi-ilbu-u-rrr?"

"Why, Pete, you sound a little hoarse."

I groaned. "You're making an ass of yourself, kid."

She let out a horse-like fricative. "How can a kid make an ass of itself? Besides, I'm an equine unicorn, not a caprine one.

"So now it's goats, is it?"

"Fuck ewe." She looked smug.

George looked around, surprised. "Hey, you mean she talks like that?"

I ignored him. "What happened to your horse puns? They run out on you?"

"Yeah—they weren't very stable in the first place."

I groaned again. "No more. Please."

She shook her head. "Pretty fleece."

"You aren't even being consistent. Fleece is from sheep."

"You're full of sheep. Anything can have fleas."

"Stop, you're killing me."

A gleam in the black diamond of her eyes. "Whatever you say, Pete—just quit stallion around and read me some
Don Quixote
."

I made another pained sound. "All right. You win. Anything to stop the offal puns."

"I suppose you could try punishment."

I threatened not to read if she kept it up. She shut up. I asked George to reach in the lower left pocket of my pack and pull out the thick, dog-eared, paperback copy of
Don Quixote
. He did, then looked around at the scenery, gaze settling on the power lines ahead that played host to dozens of birds. "Lotta birds around."

"Mmmm." I opened the book where it had been marked, knowing George was bored. I hadn't asked to play nursemaid; he was going to have to think up his own ways to occupy time. I unfolded the marked page.

"When do we stop for lunch?" asked George. Ariel shot him an irritated glance.

"We don't," I said. "We eat while we walk. Only time we stop is to eat late dinner and go to sleep."

"What are you in such an all-fired rush about?"

"I'm trying to get to New York to meet a friend. Now be quiet." I cleared my throat and began reading. "'Chapter XVII.
Wherein is continued the account of the innumerable troubles that the brave Don Quixote and his good squire Sancho Panza endured in the inn, which, to his sorrow, the knight took to be a castle.
'" I glanced up to Ariel. She nodded attentively and I continued.