Summerland (52 page)
Authors: Michael Chabon
It took them a while to catch their breath, and regain their land legs, and generally recover from the crossing. Then they took stock of their losses.
"Everything," Cinquefoil. "We lost everything. Everything but Splinter."
"And the egg," Ethan said. "And whatever that gross black stuff was Taffy had inside it."
"Yeah," Jennifer T. said. "What is that stuff, Taff? Taff?"
But though they searched the orchards for two hours, until it turned dark, they could not find Taffy the Sasquatch.
AT THE EDGE OF THE WINTERLANDS,
near the center of the Tree, there is a pool of water. Though no wider than a country pond—you could throw a stone halfway across it—this pool is deeper than any lake on earth. It is deeper than sleep, and blue-black as the winter night sky. Some say it has no bottom; others that it flows into the Summerlands as the Big River and the Witch River and the River of Dreams, and down into the Middling to feed the Nile, the Amazon, the Volga, the Mekong, the Mississippi, the Congo, the Yangtze, the Colorado, the Rhine. It was on the banks of the pool of Murmury, some say, that She-otter caught Salmon. Instead of devouring him, she admired his steady eye and shining brow and fell in love. Salmon spat a cool jet of the water of Murmury Well at She-otter's hindquarters. Nine months later, She-otter gave birth to a child, a boy of silver, a fireballing phenom who eons later grew into Old Mr. Wood, the Maker of the Worlds. The waters of Murmury sustain the Tree; they also bring wisdom to all who drink of them (about six people ever, so far).
All around the still banks of Murmury Well the perpetual ice of the Winterlands begins to melt away. It fades and thins and streaks until green shows through the grayish white. This in-between land, the Greenmelt, marks the end, and the start, of the Winterlands. On the far side of the pool, the ice gives out altogether in the sweet lush grass of Diamond Green. On the near side of Murmury rises a high frozen crag called Shadewater Tor. Atop this icy hill stands Outlandishton, citadel of the shaggurts.
Cutbelly had never cared for shaggurts, and nothing he had seen in their journey across the Winterlands so far had inclined him to change his mind. They had all the poor qualities of graylings—noisy, cruel, ill-tempered, quarrelsome—but they were twenty feet tall. So they had
more
of all the graylings' faults. They claimed descent from Owlmirror John, the very first giant, and like their distant cousins, their appetites were vast and bloody. They were also addicted to fighting, courageous in battle, and horribly strong. At their hands the Rade had suffered tremendous losses in the course of the journey over the ice. Only its great numbers, and the relative scarcity of shaggurts, had enabled the Rade to make it to the jagged walls of Outlandishton.
The citadel rose into the sky, massive, black and spiky, like a pile of hammerheads. It had been raised in the dawn of time to mark the border of the Winterlands at the center of the four worlds, and to keep out wanderers and invaders. It stood high on frozen Shadewater Tor, glowering down now on the surviving steam-sledges and werewolf teams, daring them to try to take its walls.
Cutbelly clung to the iron rail atop the
Panic
, craning his neck to look up. All the mushgoblins and graylings were craning their necks, too. Now that they had reached their goal, they wanted Coyote to instruct them about just what he wanted them to do. But they had not seen Coyote in some time.
"He's, heh-heh, already in there," Padfoot said. He alone was not gawping up at the iron ramparts of Outlandishton. He sat on the roof of the
Panic
with his legs crossed, filing his teeth with a chunk of gray stone. "That's the scam, see? He's working some kind of bamboozle on the brains of them shaggy-bags this minute. Messin' with their minds, such as have them. Any minute those gates is going to swing open from the inside and we can just stroll on in."
"If he could just waltz into Outlandishton so easy as that," Cutbelly said, "he wouldn't have needed this Rade at all, nor taken so long a journey."
"Maybe," Padfoot said. "You might be right. Heh-heh. But you might be wrong. You might not be takin' into considerable-ization that the Boss didn't want to get here too soon. That he might've been waitin' for certain other things to occur, like."
"What other things?" Cutbelly said, but the conversation was cut short by the rumble of shaggurts, far up on the top of Shadewater Tor. The next moment there was a howling, lonely and sad, and then a series of sharp yips, and then something whistled through the air. It was coming right toward them. It hit the ice alongside the
Panic
and went skidding along for several hundred yards, kicking up a powdery roostertail, before it slammed into a steam sledge that was bringing up the rear of the Rade. The steam sledge crumpled in on itself with a deafening clang, and its grayling crew flew like ninepins in all directions. The thing that had dropped from Outlandishton kept on sliding along for another ten yards or so beyond the shattered sledge, where at last it came to a halt.
For a moment it seemed to Cutbelly as if nothing was moving in a thousand-mile radius. The wind whistled sadly to itself. The ice tinkled and sighed. Then the thing that had fallen stirred. Slowly, shakily, it rose to its feet. It shook itself off. It was Coyote. He had been tossed out of Outlandishton like an empty beer can from a passing car. He staggered back across the ice toward the
Panic
, lurching and reeling.
"I guess the shaggurts weren't very bamboozled," Cutbelly said. "Looks like this scam needs more work."
"Shut up," Padfoot said. "The Boss has everything under control."
"Since when?" Cutbelly said. "He's never had everything under control once in his entire long, wild career. Not once. Why should it be any different now?"
"It is different this time. The Boss has been really tryin' to pay attention. Stay focused. Keep his eye on the ball."
"I think," Coyote said, "that I just made a terrible mistake."
He was just there, somehow, standing beside Padfoot. He sank to the roof of the sledge and buried his face in his hands.
"Boss," Padfoot said. "What happened?"
But Coyote just shook his head.
"Tell us," Padfoot said. "We've come all this way. We deserve to know."
"I took my eye off the ball," Coyote said. "There was somebody I neglected to reckon with."
"Who was that boss? Boss, who?"
"WITH HIS WIFE!"
Even from high atop the citadel, the voice came down, so loud and so irritable that even at a distance it deserves to be written in capital letters.
"Oh, brother," Padfoot said. "Not again."
"I thought she was dead!" Coyote said. "I thought that champion from the Middling—what was his name? Beowulf—he was supposed to take care of the old bag." He grabbed two handfuls of hair and began shaking his head back and forth. "Oh, Betty. Angry, Angry Betty. What did I ever—?"
But he broke off before he could finish his question, which no doubt, Cutbelly thought, would have been,
What did I ever see in a great stinking shaggurt like you?
Coyote let go of his hair, and smoothed it back, and gazed up at the citadel. A startling look of affection—even adoration—entered his bright mocking face.
"Betty!" he cried. "Oh, Betty! Please don't be angry with me! I came all this way to see you!"
At this point there arose from the assembled remnant of the Rade a sound that Cutbelly had learned to recognize. It sounded like three hundred saws tearing all at once through three hundred planks. It sounded like fire snapping through a dry meadow. It was the sound of the werewolves trying to suppress their own laughter. The Boss was up to one of his tricks.
A head appeared over the gates of Outlandishton. It was thatched with unkempt white hair, and though at this distance its features were hard to make out, the tone of voice was unmistakable.
"COYOTE ALWAYS DID THINK BETTY WAS STUPID," Angry Betty said.
Coyote looked shocked. "What?" he said. He turned to Padfoot, the fingers of one hand pressed to his chest. Padfoot shrugged, as if to suggest that he had no idea what Betty could possibly have meant by this strange and mistaken remark. "
Stupid?
On the contrary, dear, you know I—"
"CLEAR OUT!" Angry Betty said. "BEFORE BETTY COMES DOWN THERE AND EATS EVERY WRETCHED ONE OF YOUR WRETCHED LITTLE FRIENDS."
The werewolves stopped snickering. Angry Betty had a taste for wolf that was legendary.
"Darling," Coyote said. "Come on down! Help yourself. They're a bit stringy by this point, I imagine, living on nothing but ice mouse for these last weeks and months. But you're more than welcome to a snack."
The werewolves had stopped capering and rolling in the ice. They huddled together amid the sledges, looking up at Coyote with an expression of reproach.
"BETTY CARES ONLY FOR THE NEXT MEAL, THAT'S WHAT COYOTE THINKS! THINKS BETTY CARES NOTHING FOR THE LIFE OF THE MIND!"
"Nonsense, Betty. Come down, dear. Bring your family. Come on. Eat my werewolves. Come, you can have them
all
" An audible whimpering started up in the werewolf pack, threaded with a few angry growls. "I only got a glimpse of those brothers of yours, of course, before you…showed me the door. But my goodness they have grown, haven't they? How is little Geryon?"
The rumbling from the citadel grew louder. Individual voices could be made out among them, clamoring for wolf. Cutbelly saw some of the werewolves began to slink away, back into the Winterlands. The werefox didn't blame them. It was hard not to imagine that someone with a taste for wolfmen might look on a fox-man as a nice little appetizer.
"SHUT UP!" bellowed Angry Betty, and the rumbling of her
wild
relations ceased. "ANGRY BETTY IS THE SHAGGURT QUEEN, NOW. SHE LAYS DOWN THE LAW. AND THIS THE LAW IS: NOBODY NEVER FALLS FOR THE TRICKS OF THE CHANGER AGAIN."
"How very wise," Coyote said. He was pacing back and forth now, limping a little from his fall to earth. "And may I say, I'm not at all surprised to learn that a woman of your intelligence has risen to such lofty heights. You always were a clever girl, Betty dear."
There was a silence in the wake of this remark, and then a low sound, a trembling in Cutbelly's eardrums. It sounded, or felt, like nothing so much as the purring of an enormous cat. Angry Betty was pleased—in spite of herself, no doubt—by Coyote's flattering words. A moment later a squeal tore the frigid air, and then a deep iron groan. The great gates of Outlandishton were swinging open.
"Were you listening? Did you catch it?" Coyote hissed in an undertone to Padfoot. "Did you hear the keygrammer that opens the gates?"
Padfoot nodded eagerly two or three times, then stopped. He shook his head.