Wrede, Patricia C - SSC (14 page)

"What about?" Janet said
warily.

"Which half of the room you
want; whether you read in bed with a flashlight; how early you set your alarm.
Mrs. Craig's shuffled all the room assignments around; the two of us are
sharing tonight.

"Oh. Sure." Janet sank
back down into her chair. She had been rooming with Lynnanne, who had twice as
many bags as anyone else on the trip and who would have changed clothes four
times a day if she could have gotten away with it. Janet wondered what it would
be like to room with Beth, who argued about car engines with the boys and who
seemed perfectly happy to wear the same jeans and Kmart sweater for days at a time.

The other girls drifted away from
the table. Beth glanced around the neat little dining room and leaned forward.
"All right, Jan, what's the matter with you?" she said bluntly.

"I— Nothing," Janet said
weakly.

"Baloney. Something has you
spooked. I can tell. Unless you're still upset about this afternoon?"

"You mean the business with
Peter? No. But I can't explain. It'll just sound weird and stupid."

"S'all right; you've warned
me," Beth said. "So what is it?"

"I think somebody's
missing," Janet said, and launched into a more detailed explanation before
Beth could object that that was ridiculous. It felt wonderful to tell someone.
Beth listened intently, and when Janet finished she sat frowning at the
tabletop. "Do you think we should tell Mrs. Craig?" Janet asked
doubtfully after a minute. "Do you think she'll believe us?"

"I don't know," Beth
said. She was still frowning. "I don't know if I believe it. I mean, you
aren't even sure yourself. And Mr. Norberg and Mrs. Craig are pretty careful
about counting heads. They wouldn't just mislay somebody."

"I know, I know," Janet
said. "But still..."

"And where would your missing
person have gotten to?" Beth went on remorselessly. "Somebody would
have noticed if he'd fallen off the cliff; there are boats and tourists and
cars on the road all day."

"So maybe I'm crazy."
Janet stared past Beth at the darkness outside the
Gasthaus
windows and
shivered. "This place is weird. Maybe the pine trees and the echo and the
mountains and everything are making me crazy."

"Spruce. They're spruce trees,
not pine."

Janet made an exasperated noise.
"I don't care what they are! Haven't you been listening?"

"Mmmm-hmmmm. Tell you what—let's
go look around outside. Maybe we'll find something."

Janet nodded, and together they
went out. The sun had set, but a bright half-moon was already well up in the
sky. The bus was a shadowy lump on the far side of the parking lot, with the
sharply pointed silhouettes of the evergreens behind it. "I bet the bus is
locked up," Janet said.

"If we don't look, we'll never
know," Beth replied.

The bus door was locked, but the
baggage compartments underneath were open. Beth dug a flashlight out of the
little green backpack she carried instead of a purse and swept its beam into
every corner. "Empty," she said at last in tones of great satisfaction.

"So?" Janet said.

"So if somebody's missing,
they'll find out when they sort out the luggage. So you can quit worrying."

"I suppose— What's that?"

"What's what?" Beth said.
"I don't hear anything."

"Shhh," Janet hissed.
Beth shrugged, but she didn't say anything else. Janet strained her ears to
catch the sound she had heard. For a long moment, there were only the noises
from the
Gasthaus
windows: the clatter of dishes being cleared, Lynnanne
and Maggie yelling about something in one of the upstairs rooms, the shouts of
the boys clowning around as they carried their bags up to their rooms. Then she
heard it again. "I think it's music."

"Music?"

"Singing." Suddenly Janet
felt very frightened. "Come on," she said, and began to run.

The beam of Beth's flashlight
followed her for a moment, then cut off abruptly. Janet ran around the corner
of the
Gasthaus,
past the ghostly white stone of the Lorelei statue and
on toward the cliff's edge. The singing was growing—not louder, but easier to
hear. She no longer had to strain to pick out the soft, sweet music from among
the shouts and laughter leaking out of the
Gasthaus
and the noise of her
own breathing.

The dirt footpath was slanted and
uneven. Janet stumbled and had to slow down. And then there was rock under her
feet, rough and lumpy, and she had reached the clear area at the cliffs edge.
The sound of the singing was all around her, but the clearing was empty.
Through the gap in the trees at the far side, she could see the lights of St.
Goarshausen below, along the river's edge. The
Rhine
itself was a broad, dark belt with just a glimmer of silver along the far shore
where the moonlight was beginning to touch it.

The glimmer spread and grew
brighter, and Janet blinked. Suddenly there was a woman leaning against the
iron railing that was supposed to keep tourists from falling down the cliff.
Her head was thrown back, and her hair hung loose and pale, almost to her feet.
She wore a long, loose tunic that came down past her knees and underneath it a
full skirt that covered her feet. Her skin glowed faintly, white and cold, like
the glitter of the moonlight on the
Rhine
. She was singing.

"Stop that!" Janet
shouted.

The singing stopped, and there was
an eerie silence, sudden and complete. There was no noise from the traffic on
the riverside highway, no rustling of the wind in the trees, no faintest sound
of shouts and giggles from the
Gasthaus
a few hundred yards away. Janet
could hear nothing but the sound of her own breathing.

The woman lowered her head and
seemed to see Janet for the first time. The expression on her face made Janet
feel as if her jeans were torn, her sweater stretched out of shape, and her
hair limp and greasy.

Janet clenched her teeth together,
the way she did when Lynnanne was being snide, and took a step forward.
"You're the Lorelei, aren't you?"

"Clever child," said the
woman. "Yes."

"Where is he?" Janet said
fiercely.

"Where is who?" said the
Lorelei. Her lips moved without showing her teeth, and the motions didn't seem
to fit her words. It was like watching a foreign movie with the sound dubbed in
English. With a slight sense of shock, Janet realized that the Lorelei was
speaking German, but Janet was hearing her in English.

"The boy who disappeared this
afternoon," Janet said. "You've got him, haven't you? Where is
he?"

"Ah. Him." A flicker of
expression crossed the Lorelei's face, but it was gone before Janet could tell
what it was. "He's one of the stubborn ones." She looked at Janet
with a trace of interest. "I suppose you, too, are stubborn, or you would
not have heard my song."

Janet wondered what was taking Beth
so long to catch up. She felt cold and scared, and all she could do about it
was to demand for a third time, "Where is he?"

The Lorelei smiled, and her teeth
were dark and pointed. She gestured toward the cliff's edge.

Janet swallowed hard and forced her
legs to carry her across the rough rock. She gave the Lorelei a wide berth and
caught hold of the iron railing farther along. Taking a deep breath, she
clenched her hands around the rail and leaned over to look down the cliff.

At first she could see little. The
moon was behind her, illuminating the clearing and the ragged gray tops of the
rocks in front of her, but then the cliff sloped steeply down into shadow. It
was not a sheer drop, and lower down a forest of full-grown trees hid the rocks
and soil. Even near the top, where Janet stood, there were small, scrubby trees
clinging to cracks and hollows in the rock. Then her eyes began to adjust, and
she saw that one of the dark places was not a hollow at all.

He was pressed flat against the
rock; all Janet could see was his back and the top of his head and the arm he
had flung sideways to grab at the roots of a bush. She could hear him panting
in great gasps, as if he had run too far, too fast. He was only about twenty
feet below her, but it might as well have been a mile.

"Hey!" Janet called,
unable to think of anything else. "Hey, are you all right?"

The boy on the rocks raised his
head and stared blindly upward. "Who's that?" he said. "You
don't sound like— Who is it?"

"Dan?" Janet said
incredulously. "Dan Carpenter?" Hearing herself, she realized that
deep down inside she hadn't really believed any of this until now—not the
missing boy, nor the odd quiet of the air, and most especially not the Lorelei
witch leaning against the iron rail a few feet away and watching with enigmatic
eyes.

"Who is it?" Dan said again,
and this time his voice didn't sound quite as strained as before.

"It's me, Jan Laine. I came
out looking for . . ." Janet let the sentence trail off, unable to explain
in any convincing manner just how she happened to be there. Especially not to
Dan.

"Has she gone, then?" Dan
demanded.

Before Janet could answer, the
Lorelei began to sing again. Her voice was low and soft and sweet, but it had
the penetrating quality of Holly Fitzgerald's flute when she was trying to hit
the top note loudly and missing. The words of the song seemed to flow together
and twine around each other, and Janet could not catch any of them clearly.
Underneath the words, behind the music, Janet could hear something strong and
wild and fearful, but it could not touch her. The song and the dangerous
underside of the song streamed past Janet and down the cliffside.

Dan's face twisted as the Lorelei's
singing reached him. He began scrambling up the rocky cliff toward Janet,
moving with reckless speed. Janet could see dark scratches on his face and
hands, and she was terrified that at any moment he would slip. She crouched
beside the railing, holding her breath and wishing she had a rope or a belt or
anything she could throw down to Dan. She didn't think she could stand watching
him roll and slip and crash down the side of the cliff, even if she didn't like
him much. "Stop it!" she screamed at the Lorelei.

The Lorelei did not seem to hear;
her eyes and all her attention were on Dan. Her expression was not emotionless
anymore; there was a fierce pleasure in it, and an eager anticipation. Janet
stood up and started toward the creature. She didn't know what she was going to
do, but she had to make the Lorelei stop singing.

The Lorelei stopped. Janet was
completely taken aback for a moment; then she turned and saw Dan climbing under
the guardrail onto the cliff top. His shirt was torn, and Janet could see the
mud stains on his jeans even in the moonlight. She let out a breath of relief.
Behind her, the Lorelei laughed.

Janet looked back at the Lorelei.
The witch smiled her pointed smile; then her figure shimmered and spread like
moonlight on the river below. An instant later, she was gone.

Janet stared. Finally she drew a
deep breath. "Well," she said in a shaky voice, "well, that's
good, anyway."

"She's just playing
cat-and-mouse," Dan said. "She's been playing it with me for—for
quite a while, I think."

"Then let's get out of here
before she comes back," Janet said, and started for the
Gasthaus.

"It won't do any good,"
Dan said, without moving. "Do you think I haven't tried?"

"What do you mean?"

"I told you, she's playing.
She lets me get three or four steps, and then the singing starts again. Once
she let me get all the way to the end of the path before she hauled me
back."

"I can go, though. I can get
Mrs. Craig." Janet knew, even as she said it, that this would do no good
at all, even if she could get away from the charmed cliff top, even if she
could think up a story Mrs. Craig would believe. The Lorelei had slipped and
let Janet through into this strange, silent world, but she would not slip
twice. If Janet left now, she would not be able to get back until the Lorelei's
games were over, any more than Beth had been able to follow Janet into the
Lorelei's world.

"You know better," Dan
said.

"You suggest something,
then!" Janet said, but as she spoke the singing started again.

This time the song came from the
foot of the cliff. Dan made a gasping noise and lurched across the rock toward
the guardrail. Janet stood motionless for a moment, in a frozen rage at the
Lorelei witch, who had found this new game to play when the rocks in the river
were blown up and her songs could no longer lure boatmen to crash on them. Like
a German Siren, Mr. Norberg had said . . .

Dan had almost reached the railing.
Janet ran forward and jumped onto his back. He staggered and they fell sideways
together. Janet clapped her hands over his ears and clung tightly. Dan seemed
dazed, unable to help or hinder.

Suddenly, the Lorelei's song changed,
becoming softer and more plaintive. It tugged at Janet, and she became aware of
how tired she was and of all the places where she had been bruised when she
fell. She wanted to go back to the
Gasthaus
and relax in the light and
warmth, to forget about all this unpleasantness and become absorbed in her
embroidery . . .

Embroidery?
"I don't
sew," Janet said loudly. "And even if I did, I wouldn't let you have
anybody just because I wanted to be comfortable for a few minutes. Maybe that's
what people did three hundred years ago, but not anymore!"

The singing faltered, then changed
again. This time it whispered promises. Janet saw herself at the center of a
group of boys, all begging for dates. Even Peter Fletch, who was apologizing
for ever having teased her about anything. The girls were there and liked her,
too, and all of it could happen if she only let go of this one boy . . .