Crossroads (33 page)

"You will not fall," she said.

"There is no other way across, and the Grigs are almost upon us," urged the Elder.

"I’m afraid," Kira admitted, hating the infantile sound of her own voice.

"We are all afraid, child," said the Elder. "Do not let your fear be the undoing of all of us."

Reluctantly Kira took her hand and climbed up onto the trunk, surprised to discover that the bark that appeared glassy smooth clung tenaciously to the soles of her shoes and gave good footing. But she hung tightly onto the old woman’s girdlet, her eyes half-closed, refusing to look down until they reached the far side. After the others had crossed the Elder muttered a few more indecipherable words, stroked the trunk again, and the tree rose majestically back into its original position.

"Will the Grigs find a way across?" asked Kira, peering down into the gorge.

The Elder shrugged, then shivered. "Eventually. Some may turn now and seek the Lost instead."

"Can they defend themselves?" asked Kira, thinking of Stomper.

The Elder frowned. "They will do what they must. The Lost can die, as any can, but they will not suffer a Grig to enter the forest."

"Where are you taking us?" asked Sheila.

"I am not taking you
anywhere,
"
said the old woman, sadly. "We are simply running for our lives now."

"But you have the glass," said Kira. "We could escape."

"Do not speak of it," said the Elder, frowning as a very human scream suddenly slashed the woods behind them. "When it is time for the glass I shall know."

A furor of clicks followed, as though a whole herd of Grigs had suddenly begun to feed.

Chapter 43

The sun was at its zenith and just beginning its westward descent. The line of clouds that had been narrow and dark was now immense and threatening, and sharp gusts whistled around the boat. The blow was turning into a traditional N’oreaster, the wind that had begun from the coast was now whirling around the low pressure area. It wasn’t whipping froth off the tops of the waves yet, but soon. Silky paced the compact pilothouse of the
Mary O
with his arms locked in the small of his back like Captain Bligh. His jaw was set, but he seemed to have gotten the rhythm of the boat’s rocking movement over the increasingly tall rollers, while Clem kept the motor idling to maintain their position off the point.

"We’re gonna have to make a decision pretty soon, Silky," said Clem.

If they ran for the mainland now they might make it to Rockport’s sheltered harbor before the worst hit. If they waited much longer they’d be better off just trying to ride it out, but the more Clem stared into the approaching gloom the more he felt sure that for all her seaworthiness the
Mary O
wasn’t equipped to weather what was coming, and two old men for crew didn’t help, either.

Silky shook his head, stopping to lean on the brass bar beneath one of the big portholes, fingering the bolts that dogged the heavy pane into place.

"I won’t leave him," he muttered.

Clem frowned. "He told us to run."

"Yeah, and I did. Forty years I stood beside him, and when he really needed me I ran."

Clem could understand that feeling. He’d felt the same way sitting in the motel after Silky told
him
to leave. You didn’t run out on a friend no matter what that friend said.

"You think there’s something we could do after all to stop this Mogul, maybe?" asked Clem.

Silky shook his head. "I told you, no. If Shandan can’t stop him then you and I surely can’t." 

"So, you’re just talking about wanting to be there when Shandan gets himself killed so you two can die together."

Silky leaned his forehead against the glass. "I guess that’s about the gist of it."

"You can get yourself killed anywhere," said Clem, "anytime. Seems to me he told us to run because he thought we were in more danger than he was."

Silky raised his head, frowning. "Come again?"

Clem shrugged, spinning the wheel a half turn to negotiate a cross wave. The rocks and shoals around the island stirred up the surf like a spoon in a stewpot. Depending on prevailing current and the wind direction the seas could get what sailors understatedly called
confused.
A bad storm around Graves Island could completely
dumfound
this section of the North Atlantic.

"He’s been locked up in that Hall of Mirrors place for forty years," he mused, "and this Mogul hasn’t found a way in. Now we think maybe he, or his spirit or whatever, hitched a ride to the island with me. But that doesn’t necessarily make him any more dangerous to Shandan than he was before. Only more dangerous to anyone else on the island. Right?"

Silky rubbed the bridge of his nose, pondering.

"Maybe," he grudgingly admitted, "but I still run out on him."

Clem felt a tinge in his chest. He reached for the pills in his pocket, then waited. When the pain eased he let his hand slip back to the wheel. He noticed Silky staring at him.

"Gas," he said, but he could see that Silky wasn’t buying it. "Look, if you got some idea we should go back to the island, now is the time. One way or the other we got to make a decision, and I mean right now."

"You’d go back with me?"

Clem frowned. He was really hoping the old man didn’t lean that way. If he did, Clem was still going to try his damndest to talk him out of it.

"Only if there was no other way."

"But you’d go?"

"I’d have to, wouldn’t I, you old fool?"

Silky smiled slowly. "No. You wouldn’t have to, but I take your meaning, and thanks."

"So? We head for the mainland?"

There were more spots of sea foam on the wave crests now, and Clem could feel the wind trying to turn the bow of the
Mary O
back toward the coast, as though the storm itself did not want any witnesses to what was coming on the island.

"Can we anchor on the lee side?" asked Silky.

Clem chewed a thumbnail right off, spitting it onto the floor of the pilothouse in disgust.

"In a N’oreaster there
ain’t
no lee side. The wind wraps around the island like a boa constrictor. Better off docking and tying her up good."

"No," said Silky, swaying with a long roller that raised the boat like bait about to be cast. "I don’t want us touching the island. I just want to be where we can see it, maybe see my house is all."

"For what, Silky? We can’t do anything from out here, anyway. We can come back tomorrow or the next day after the storm blows over-"

"If you think the
Mary O
won’t ride it out, then drop me at the dock and run for the coast."

"Goddamnit! This is foolishness, and it’s the kind of foolishness that could get both of us drowned. Is that what you want?"

"Do I look like I want that? If she won’t ride it out, then do as I say. If she will we’d better get to anchoring pretty soon, eh?"

"Or I could just run for Rockport harbor, and you could do fuckall to stop me."

"I’m tougher than I look."

"I spect maybe you are at that, but you don’t know shit about anchoring a lobsterman in a storm, do you?"

Silky shook his head. "I’d damn you," he said, quietly.

"How’s that?" said Clem, frowning.

"I said I’d damn you. I’d damn you to hell, to never darken my island or my door again. You’d be dead to me."    

Up until that moment Clem would have said that there weren’t words enough to get him to do what Silky wanted. He was prepared to listen to the old man rant and rave and maybe to have to fend him away from the wheel all the way to safe harbor, but the quiet way Silky said what he said, the soft sadness behind his words stung Clem right down to the bone. And it wasn’t any use telling the old man he didn’t mean it just as he hadn’t meant he was running Clem off the island before. This time he did mean it, and there wasn’t going to be any drink of forgiveness later.

"If the wind or the current turns while we’re anchored we’ll get washed up on the rocks so fast the boat will be torn to pieces before we can do damn-all to stop her."

"Make up your mind," said Silky, pointing into the storm that was gathering faster than any Clem had ever seen before.

"Shit," said Clem, spinning the wheel and revving the throttle for the run to other side of the point.

Chapter 44

It was almost dark by the time they reached the perimeter of the Encroachment, but Kira could smell the desecration miles away, and she could sense the wrongness of it even earlier. It was as though every bad feeling she’d ever had was magnified and hung in the air like the smoke of a crematorium. They were drawing close to death, or maybe something even worse than death...something that
survived
.

"Shouldn’t we be going the other way?" she whispered, as the Elder knelt beside her, catching her breath.

"Which other way, Child?"

Kira shrugged. "Away from
that,"
she said, pointing through the thinning fern trees ahead.

A wisp of breeze decided at that instant to weave through those same trees toward them, and Kira noticed the Elder turning up her nose just as she was. The odor of decay and corruption was nauseating. Sheila cleared her throat and spat.

The Elder sighed sadly. "Look back, Child," she whispered.

Sheila and Jen stood behind her, their arms crossed, faces set like twin guardian statues, but behind
them
Kira sensed the same evil she sensed in front of them, spreading like some toxic and acidic fluid poured out across a flat floor.

"The Encroachment can’t grow that fast," she gasped.

"To us it has always seemed that it grew incredibly rapidly, but now it gobbles up our world in great mouthfuls. Soon the forest... our way of life...
we
will be no more."

"What is it?"

"It is the essence of evil meeting the essence of good and winning," said the Elder, barely able to speak, "and that should never be. It is the Dreamtime turned to horror."

"And you want us to go into it?" asked Kira, turning to look at Jen again.

Jen simply stared ahead through the trees. Kira knew that Jen would follow her into the Encroachment or stand right where she was until hell froze over or the Grigs overtook them. Whichever
she
chose. She glanced at Sheila. Sheila’s face was a mirror-reverse image of Jen’s. There was no stoicism there. Instead Kira saw her own indecision writ large in Sheila’s eyes.

"There is nowhere else to go," said the Elder. "The Encroachment is evil, but it is also vast. It may be that we may lose ourselves in it so that even the Mogul may not find us for a time."

"What do you say, Sheila?" asked Kira, quietly.

Sheila stared down her nose at Kira as though trying to focus. Then she turned to the Elder. "You have the mirror. We all know you do. It’s how we got here. Why can’t we simply use it to go home?"

Kira waited to see if the Elder would give Sheila any better answer than she had given her. Finally the old woman reached within a fold of her robe and pulled out a piece of glass not much larger than her palm. The back was silvered but streaked with cracks. When she turned it so that they could all look at the reflective surface Kira saw that it was dull and fogged over, reminding her of the mist she’d seen in the mirror on her father’s rig.

"This is a last resort," said the Elder. "As you can see the way is murky and uncertain. There is no guarantee where it will take you if it takes you anywhere at all, and I do not yet feel the time has come to use it."

"It couldn’t be any worse than where we’re headed," said Sheila, frowning toward the trees ahead. "How will you know when it’s time?"

The Elder took another long look around. "I will know. Shandan will tell me."

"Damned if we do, and damned if we don’t," said Sheila, at last. "Jump through the looking glass or walk into Hell."

"Do not be so certain. The Encroachment is indeed an evil place, but mayhap we have some friends left there yet. There are places where we have no friends at all."

"Been there," muttered Sheila. "Done that."

The Elder nodded. "A life without friends would be a hard thing indeed."

"You have no idea."

This time the Elder waited until their eyes met, and Sheila seemed to sag under the Elder’s steady gaze. "It is true that I have had the Lost to keep me company, but for forty of your years I have not been able to speak to or touch another of my own kin or kind, and for all that time I have been separated from the man I love above all others. Forty of your years would not be a long time to one of us... normally... but it has been an eternity to me."

"I’m sorry," said Sheila, lowering her eyes.

"We all have burdens to bear," said the Elder, finally.

"We pay a penance for things we didn’t do," said Kira.

The Elder turned to her, squinting.

"My mother told me that," said Kira.

The Elder nodded. "It was the last thing Shandan said to me before pushing me away forever.
Now you shall have to pay a penance for things you did not do.
He said the same to your father and mother. I have never seen a man so grief stricken. To witness it upon the face of one you love more than life itself is far worse than death. To know that the grief continues every minute, every day, is a torture you cannot imagine."

"I’m sorry," said Sheila again.

The Elder shook her head. "We are done with this trouble between us. It is of little consequence now."

A rustling in the ferns behind Sheila caused them all to whirl, but it was only Stomper and two other Lost boys. Their clothes were tattered as though they had ripped their way through miles of bramble bushes. Their hair was askew. Sweat drenched them, and their hands, faces, and feet were all scratched and bleeding.