The Deavys (24 page)

“We'll be on our way now.” Pithfwid lowered his paw. “And no hard feelings.”

“THERE BE NONE.” Reeking of flames barely held in check and the heady smell of smoldering alcohol, the dragon smiled down at the infinitely smaller, but notably wiser, feline. “I KNOW THAT WERE SIZE AND SITUATION REVERSED, YOU WOULD HAVE DONE THE SAME HERE AS I.”

“Not really,” Pithfwid demurred. “I don't much care for the taste of snake. Not even if it comes pre-heated.” With that, he started northward, following the sprawled-out length of the dragon. Hurrying to catch up with him, Simwan leaned low to whisper to his feline companion. Pithfwid listened, nodded, then turned to shout back at their scaly former adversary.

“One last thing. We've come a long way and have overcome many dangers in our quest. We seek the return of something that was taken from a friend of ours. It resides in the possession of a miserable creature called the Crub. That's where we're headed. Or will be, if you can help us refine our route.”

Looking toward its tail end, the massive head drew back slightly from the four youngsters and one feline. “THE CRUB! YOU DON'T WANT TO GO THERE. BETTER TO FORGET THAT WHICH WAS TAKEN FROM YOU AND GO HOME.” Raising its gaze, the dragon stared up into the mist-shrouded night sky. “AS I MYSELF WILL WITH THE COMING OF THE DAWN.”

Simwan took a couple of steps backward, in the direction of the head that had turned to consider them. “We can't do that.” Gesturing with one hand, he indicated the coubet. “We're Deavys. I realize that probably doesn't mean anything to you, but it means a lot to us, and to those who know our family.”

“IF YOU MUST KEEP ON, KEEP ON IF YOU MUST. THAT WAY”—the great head rose high and gestured north—“LIES THE LOCH. WHERE IT BECOMES THE RAVINE, BENEATH THAT YOU WILL FIND THE ENTRANCE TO THE LAIR OF THE CRUB.” Quadruple iridescent wings thrust outward and began to fan the air. Simwan blinked as droplets of water were flung in his face by the force of the dragon's wing beats. He felt as if he were standing at the entrance to a car wash.

“LOOK FOR THE TWINNED TREE,” the dragon advised them as it rose into the air. “OPPOSITE AND DOWN AND UNDERNEATH LIES THE WAY IN. DESCEND THERE AT YOUR PERIL. MYSELF, I WOULD NOT DO IT.”

Having delivered himself of both instructions and a warning, Slythroat the Slaughterer ascended until they could barely make out the dragonesque silhouette soaring among the low clouds. Then he folded his wings to his sides and dropped, plunging earthward at speed sufficient to surpass the best efforts of a peregrine falcon. Simwan started to run, only to relax when he saw that the dragon was not aiming for them. Spinning faster and faster, round and round like the bit of a drill, Slythroat struck the crest of the low hillock from whence he had initially emerged to confront them. In an instant he was gone, having bored straight back down into the subterranean hiding place where he slept during the night. The wyrm had burrowed back into the Big Apple's core.

They stood there staring at the silent hillock for a moment longer. When it was evident that the dragon had no intention of putting in a reappearance, they turned as one and resumed their northward trek.

“Isn't a loch a Scottish lake?” Amber wondered aloud.

Rose started uneasily. “I hope we haven't wasted all this time tramping through the wrong country.”

Reaching into a pocket, Simwan brought out the small map of the park and unfolded it. The girls gathered around as he pointed to markings in the darkness.

“It's right here. The Loch is a stream that runs from the Pool to a much bigger lake called Harlem Meer. I guess whoever laid it out thought it would be nice to give it a Scottish name.”

I hope we're ready for this
, he thought, since the task was enough to intimidate a dragon. He found himself suddenly wishing that their parents were with them. Martin Deavy was an accomplished wizard, and Melinda Mae had a master's way with witchy words.
They
would know how to deal with the likes of the Crub. But their parents weren't present. Their dad was back home in Clearsight, confident in the knowledge that his offspring were having a swell time visiting New York, taking in the sights and enjoying the city while he dealt with his own worries. Their mom was in the hospital, seriously weakened by the absence of the Truth. If only they knew.

Simwan visualized the Deavy den, with its home electronics and roaring (occasionally simpering) fireplace, shelves of books, comfortable couches, and thick carpets. He pictured his sisters clustered off in a corner chattering about some arcane figment of girl stuff, his father sitting in his favorite chair reading a book while the pillow supporting his head and neck looked over his shoulder, his mother avidly attempting to conquer the latest video game. Himself following this or that sport on the TV while the stack of homemade cookies in front of him was methodically reduced in stature. It was a warm, familiar, comforting image. He wished he could inhabit it instead of just envisioning it.

Turning his head away from a brief gust of wind, he blinked rain out of his eyes. Nearby, his sisters yammered on incessantly. To look at them and listen to them, one would never know that they were about to risk their lives to recover something as intangible—but invaluable—as the Truth. In spite of all their persistent put-downs, Simwan discovered that he was as proud of the coubet as a big brother could be of three constantly nagging, needling, nosy younger sisters. He could, if pressed, even confess to loving them.

But not out loud, of course. And certainly not in front of any of his friends.

They were fortunate in that their chatter allowed them to temporarily take their minds off their mother's condition and the serious work that lay ahead. Unlike the coubet, Simwan had no brother to confide in. He did, however, have a cat—though if queried Pithfwid would immediately have seen to the reversal of the possessive.

“That was something, back there.” He gestured behind them, through the drizzle. “I've never heard or seen pictures of a dragon like that.”

Pacing alongside, Pithfwid replied thoughtfully. “Very different,” he agreed. “For a voracious, fire-breathing, befanged, taloned, carnivorous giant mutant flying numinous reptile, he wasn't such a bad sort at all.” The cat glanced up at Simwan. “You could invite him to your next party. I'm sure he would be a big hit at the dinner table.”

Simwan made a face as he searched the dimly lit expanse of meadow that stretched out before them. “Sure he would—as long as he restricted himself to cooking the food and not the guests.”

XXI

It was not only dark when they finally reached the Loch, it was late. As the Deavys silently worked their way through the trees and down to the water's edge, Simwan found himself wondering if Uncle Herkimer was aware of the lateness of the hour, of their continuing absence, and if he was worried. No time for that now, he told himself grimly. They dared not call their uncle lest he ask where they were and what they were up to. If not already at the Crub's front door, surely they were knocking at the gate. More than anything else, he needed for his mind to be clear, his physical and mental reflexes sharp, and his senses alert.

The Loch was different from anything they had previously encountered within the park. Not for nothing, Simwan saw, was this section called the Ravine. Deep, dark, and mysterious during the day, it was transformed at night into a geologic interloper from another planet. With its dense brush, overhanging branches of mature ash and maple and oak and hickory, hidden forest floor flowers peeking out from among the goldenrod and spurge, it looked like a strip of green-walled water that had been lifted whole and entire from somewhere in the oldest, deepest part of the Adirondacks.

For the second time that day they found a part of the park reminding them of home, of the woods near the Deavy homestead in eastern Pennsylvania, and by inference, the reason they were here in the middle of the night picking their way through bushes and thickets that clung to their clothes as if desperately trying to keep them from penetrating any farther.

“Don't go in there!” the oaks seemed to be silently whispering.

“Go back where you came from,” the maples were all but shouting.

Though they heard the warnings voiced by the trees, the Deavys pressed on until they had reached the edge of the creek itself. Grasses and weeds had cobbled together enough mud to form transitory islands in the middle of the stream. The persistent clamor of a small waterfall could be heard but not seen. Hemmed in by the banks of the ravine and with nowhere to go, fog pressed in closer around them than it had anywhere else. Gently descending mist made it difficult for them to see one another, let alone locate the singular growth the dragon had described. Somewhere out in the stream, a frog croaked. It was too late in the year and too cold for frogs to be about, the Pond they had crossed being an enchanted exception. Evidently, no one had informed this particular amphibian. Though in no wise especially informative, the sound was a welcome indication that normal life existed in the otherwise oppressive creek bed.

“What now?” Both Rose's voice and attitude were uncharacteristically muted.

Aware that his sisters were once again looking to him for direction, he nodded and gestured downstream. “We'll head that way, toward Harlem Meer.” He squinted into the fog and damp. “As long as we can see both sides of the brook, we'll be okay. If we don't find what we're looking for before we reach the lake, we'll just have to turn around and retrace our steps upstream to the Pool, where the Loch originates. Everybody keep a sharp lookout as we go.”

“As opposed to a dull lookout?” Amber kicked at a dead branch as she turned and started walking. Simwan didn't mind the mild belittling. So long as his sisters managed to sustain their usual high level of sarcasm, he knew they were all right.

At first the going was easy enough, where a narrow but well-maintained path followed the course of the stream. But soon they encountered places where it did not. Here the Deavys had to clamber over rocks made treacherous by the constant damp, and push their way through thickets that had been left to grow wild. In one place the combination of foggywet weather, poor lighting, and an absence of any clear trail was so rough that they nearly missed what they were looking for. Pithfwid and Simwan had walked right past it (in Pithfwid's defense, the cat's line of sight was considerably closer to the ground than those of his humans) when N/Ice called out.

“Hey, hold up, you guys. I think this might be it.”

Turning, Simwan and the cat retraced their steps. To Simwan's relief, there was nothing ambiguous about the ancient oak N/Ice had found. “Look for the twinned tree,” the dragon Slythroat had instructed them. Joined by her sisters, she stood gazing at a pair of trunks that thrust separately upward from the moist soil, only to meld together several feet above the ground to form a single bole.

“This has to be it.” Rose was stroking the conjoined trunk with the flat of her palm, lightly caressing the weathered bark.

“I think you're right.” Simwan could not imagine finding along the length of the Loch another tree that better fit the dragon's description.

“Assuming it is,” murmured Amber as she turned from the tree to study the flowing stream opposite, “where do we go from here?”

“Remember the rest of the dragon's words.” Rose repeated them aloud. “‘Opposite and down lies the way in. Descend there.'”

“‘At your peril.'” Amber added the final words that her sister chose to eschew.

Having tiptoed down to the water's edge, Pithfwid finished lapping up a drink before sitting back on his haunches to study the riparian riddle that lay set before them. “‘Opposite and down lies the way in. Descend there.' Clearly, our scaly acquaintance meant for us to find the entrance opposite the twinned tree. And downward.” His fur having turned a forest green checkerboarded with black, he leaned slightly forward. “I see nothing on the opposite bank that suggests an opening of any kind.”

“Maybe it's hidden under a big rock,” N/Ice suggested.

“Or a big spell,” Rose added as she contemplated the far shore.

Simwan had been doing some hard thinking of his own. Perhaps it was the extensive esoteric reading he had done in his parents' library. Or maybe it was all the video games he'd played. For whatever reason, moreso than the girls he found himself taking the dragon's directions literally.

“Slythroat didn't say the way in lies
across
and down. He said
opposite
and down. And in.”

His sisters eyed him uncertainly. “Brother,” exclaimed Amber, “I'm not sure I see the difference.”

He proceeded to elaborate. “If the dragon had said ‘across,' then the instructions would be unmistakable.” He nodded at the far side of the creek. “We'd have to look for an entrance over there somewhere. But he didn't say across. He said ‘opposite.' Opposite and
down
.” With one hand, he gestured at the gunmetal-gray, running water. “I think the way in does lie opposite this tree, but
under
the water.”

“That's crazy,” Amber insisted immediately.

“That's stupid,” added Rose without hesitation.

“That's—wicked,” ventured N/Ice rather more thoughtfully.

Pithfwid had already lowered his gaze, redirecting his attention away from the far bank and back to the stream itself. “What it
is
, contentious coubet, is an interesting notion. What better place to hide a hidey-hole from the casual view of Ords and the more perceptive sight of non-Ords than beneath flowing water itself?”

Amber frowned. “Wouldn't it flood? I mean, even if there's an airtight door of some kind, or a vacuum spell, what's to keep the creek water from pouring in every time somebody wants to go in or come out?”

“An interesting question to go with the interesting notion,” Pithfwid admitted. “Hopefully, we'll come up with an interesting solution.” He tilted his head to peer up at Simwan. “Boy, I am possessed of paws that will soothe, and claws that will kill, but I must confess yet one more time to the lack of opposable thumbs. Give me a hand here, please.”

Unsure of what the Deavy feline had in mind but knowing from experience never to question it, Simwan knelt beside Pithfwid. The cat then proceeded to direct Simwan to do something that was patently impossible. Even if some sorcerer
had
patented the idea, it still seemed an outrageous defiance of all laws both natural and unnatural. But wasn't that what the Crub was all about, Pithfwid pointed out when Simwan questioned his instructions? Defiance of laws?

“This is crazy,” Amber muttered.

“It isn't going to work,” N/Ice murmured with conviction.

“Aren't we wet enough already?” Rose concluded.

“Go on. Do it.” Pithfwid's unblinking stare was locked on Simwan's eyes.

Oh well
, Simwan thought as he reached forward and down. Regardless of whatever eventuated if he followed the cat's instructions, it was unlikely to hurt. Extending both arms he reached out and, doing as he had been instructed, grabbed at the glistening edge of the water.

Just as Pithfwid had predicted, it lifted up easily in his hands, like a shimmering, wet blanket.

The cat examined the perfectly inexplicable phenomenon as though it was something he encountered every day. “‘Under the water.' Your presumption turns out to be spot on, boy.” Lowering himself back onto all fours, he started forward. “Opposite the twinned tree and down lies the way in. So sayeth Slythroat the serpent. Come along, now, kittens.”

Utterly ignorant of exactly what he was doing and how he was doing it, Simwan lifted the side of the creek higher to make room enough for his crouching sisters to slip underneath. When the last of them had disappeared, he joined them below the manifest impossibility.

Though they scrambled down into the depths of the creek bed, the underside of the water remained just over their heads. Looking up, Simwan could see the occasional dark shape of a fish or salamander swimming past. Once, he reached up and stuck a finger into the underside of the stream. It came away wet.

“What kind of spell is holding it up, and away from us?” Rose stumbled downstream, careful not to trip on any of the small rocks or clutches of pebbles underfoot.

“A really strong one.” From time to time N/Ice would drift upward until her head vanished into the underside of the creek, only to reappear moments later dripping wet down to her neck. “Somebody around here knows how to handle water.”

Handle
was the right description, Simwan mused as he made his way downstream along the dry creek bed. Hadn't he “handled” it when Pithfwid had directed him to lift up the water's edge?

They had gone maybe half a mile when a dull, greenish glow caused them to slow. Sister pressed close against sister, sister moved nearer to brother, while Pithfwid hunkered low against the water-worn rocks and licked his lips, his tail switching back and forth, his ears aimed expectantly forward like miniature radar scopes.

They had found the Way In. And it was blocked.

Before Simwan had lifted up the edge of the stream so they could slip underneath, they had wondered how an opening located below it could avoid being flooded. Now they saw that there were two reasons. First, the Way In was not located under the water—it was situated
under
under the water. And second, it was tightly plugged by something that not only prevented any water from entering, but kept
anything
from entering.

A hoofin.

It was a full-blown, unmentionable, Four-G hoofin, too: green, glowing, gross, and grotesque. Its bulbous backside effectively stoppered the entrance. Three great protruding black eyes dominated the high, oval skull. Half a dozen red horns erupted from its swollen head. A narrow, questing trunk probed the air under the creek while the too-wide mouth almost split in half the puke-yellow head. Mucus drained from the oversize, scalloped ears and the tip of the trunk while green drool dribbled from one corner of a mouth that was filled with needlelike teeth. It squatted in the entrance gurgling unpleasantly to itself, the three round black eyes closed as it dozed on duty.

The hoofin was a nightmare. Traditionally, about seven on a scale of ten. Not sufficiently frightening to cause a heart attack, but plenty scary enough if it invaded someone's dreams to cause them to wake up screaming. Seen outside a dream, it was no less frightening than if it had been encountered during slumber. It was also arguably much more dangerous in this state, because it could invade the awake.

That was what made it such a perfect sentry, Simwan realized. In the event of trouble it did not have to raise the alarm itself. All it had to do was enter the mind of an intruder and cause it to start running around in circles shrieking uncontrollably as it tried to escape. They had no choice but to approach it with care and caution. With its fat butt plugging the Way In, their quest would end right there and then unless they could find a way to dislodge it. Preferably without sending any of them running and screaming.

He was trying to think of a spell that might work when N/Ice stepped out from behind the cover of the rocks and started forward. Flashing the fearless demeanor of a decidedly downsized pre-adolescent Valkyrie, his sister eyed the menacing shape of the hoofin and declared in a voice both cocky and unafraid, “This one's
mine
.”

“Are you sure, N/Ice?” Rose asked worriedly.

“Be careful, sis.” Despite N/Ice's declaration of confidence, Amber too was preparing herself for battle. “You know what is said. Anyone who tries to targle a hoofin and fails risks encountering that nightmare every time they fall asleep.” She cast an anxious glance her brother's way. “What do you think, Simwan?”

That's right; put it all on me again
, he thought resentfully. “It's N/Ice's call. With her being half girl and half dream herself, maybe she is the best equipped of all of us to tangle with something …”

“Targle,” Rose quickly corrected him. “Targle with.”

“Targle
and
tangle,” Simwan growled irritably. He turned his attention back to his half-a-sister. “N/Ice, I don't know any spells for targling a hoofin.” He looked embarrassed. “I've never studied how to deal with anything more advanced than a Two-G nightmare.”