Stoneskin's Revenge (6 page)

He was depressed—or so confused and perplexed he could hardly tell the difference. Three days in various Otherworlds would do it to you—too many things to rationalize all at once, too many snap decisions, too many preposterous things to accept without thinking them through.

And for the past two hours he'd been trying to do exactly that and was making absolutely no progress, which was really starting to annoy him. That was what he was here for, after all. Elsewise he could be in a red Mustang riding up the road with his friends, or better yet, be on a bus on the way to see Sandy.

Instead of getting eaten alive by gnats, which was yet another irritation.

Answers? Ha! He still hardly knew what the
questions
were—except that they had to do with the nature of reality and the rationale behind magic, and how to reconcile the worldview he'd been brought up to believe in with one that was much more irrational. For he, Calvin Fargo McIntosh, was one of the very few people on Earth (as far as he could tell) who knew with absolute conviction that the World men saw was only part of what actually existed.

His friend Dave Sullivan had been the first to learn the truth, two years ago, when he'd heard music in the night and followed it into the woods to discover that the Irish myths he'd lately begun to explore were based far more on fact than he'd ever suspected. For that night Dave had met the Sidhe—the Faeries—the old gods of Ireland—as they embarked on one of their ceremonial tidings. There'd been a contest of riddles between Dave and one of the Faery lords which had ended with Dave triumphant and possessed of a magic ring that protected him from physical intervention by the Sidhe. But Dave had quickly learned to his sorrow that it was not wise to make a lord of Faerie look foolish…

Yeah, that was how it had begun; with Faerie—a land as real as this one, but all unseen, that lay upon this World like wet tissue paper tossed upon a globe.

But there were other Worlds, too: the Lands of Fire, through which Dave had journeyed a year later; and the Realm of the Powersmiths, which bordered—at some distance—a country much closer to Calvin's own heart.

For beyond what the Powersmiths called the Burning Sea lay Galunlati: the Overworld of the Cherokee Indians.

It was invisible, of course, hidden from the sight of men by what Dave called the Walls Between the Worlds, but in most other ways it was more or less like pre-Columbian North America. It had the same trees, for instance (though Galunlati's were bigger and healthier); possessed the same wildlife—plus a few: passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets and great auks—and creatures that had been extinct longer, like saber-toothed tigers and mastodons and dire wolves. Calvin even had a friend there, an archetypal being called Uki, who was also his patron and a shaman of sorts, and had charge of the weather in the southern quadrant. (Not being a strictly spherical World, Galunlati needed help with things like that, which was one of the notions Calvin had a hard time comprehending.)

The really remarkable thing, though, as far as Calvin was concerned, was that he alone of the Ani-Yunwiya had actually been there in modern times; uniquely among all his tribe, he
knew
that Galunlati was as real, as solid as the earth beneath his body or the bark behind his back.

He had breathed its air and it had sustained him; had drunk its waters, tasted its food, and ventured to this World intact if not unchanged.

But it was
hard,
dammit, to look at the World around you and know there was more than one. But doubly hard it was to accept that the laws by which one lived—the things you took for granted, like what Isaac Newton had worked out, or Einstein, or Steve Hawking—didn't necessarily hold true everywhere.

Like such basic concepts as what the World was made of.

Science said it was all matter and energy, each shifting back and forth and all bound up in time. But where did that leave the less tangible things like spirit? Was consciousness only the interaction of chemicals and the flow of electrons? Or was there something more? Had there been a spiritual Big Bang as well as a physical one? Had God—for lack of a better word—once embodied all of spirit there was and consciously chosen Second One to fragment himself into an infinity of souls that slowly reconnected across the eons and became ever more conscious in the process, even as matter slowly clumped together into stars and planets? Would the End of the World—that point when all matter had rejoined and collapsed back onto itself—have some kind of analog whereby souls merged more and more and eventually united again into one Over-Spirit that encompassed all knowledge—that, indeed, knew everything that a trillion-trillion-trillion separate consciousnesses had ever seen and felt and understood?

It was too much, too goddamned much.

And that wasn't
even
considering Power.

That was what the Sidhe called it, and Calvin had picked up the habit from Dave, who knew more about it than anybody he had regular commerce with. Most people would call it magic—or maybe psi, depending on how it manifested. His tribe called it medicine, witchery, many names. But what
was
it? It was immaterial, but it could influence the material—in that way it was like energy. But it was born of sentience—though, apparently, it could also be conferred upon non-sentient objects the same way some substances absorbed water; which implied that all the other elements had to act or react to one another as well. Maybe they did. Maybe matter weighed down spirit. Maybe Power—magic, whatever—was the active principle to spirit's passive one. Maybe there really were only two elements, matter and spirit, and each also had an active and a passive aspect: energy and Power, respectively. Or maybe…

Calvin clutched his head, closed his eyes. No, dammit, he was
still
thinking like a white man—natural, given that was the culture he had been born into. Though at least half Cherokee, Calvin's father had renounced his heritage, had tried to live the white dream as a high-steel construction worker in Atlanta. His mother's blood was what he needed now: the World her medicine-man father had shown him before his death had made Calvin take to the road to find himself. He had to think like the Ani-Yunwiya.

The
premise
of Cherokee magic was simple: there were classes of being that, very roughly, aligned with the four elements of air, fire, earth, and water. Four was a Power number: four directions, each with their totem color; the Four Councils Sent From Above. But things that were in more than one category, or that combined elements of more than one category—ah, that's where the fun began.

Which brought him to the uktena.

An abomination, white men might have called it; a monster, though it was a natural part of Galunlati—or as natural as anything there could be. It
looked
like a vast, ruddy serpent patterned white down its back with blotches red as a coral snake's red bands—except that it was hundreds of feet long and had horns. But it had once been a man, before Kanati, the Hunter God of the Ani-Yunwiya, enchanted it, so it was already in two categories right there. And it had horns like some kind of antelope, so there again it combined the characteristics of two classes of being. And its scales were hard as crystal—maybe
were
crystal for all he knew.

Without really being aware of it, Calvin rested his hand on his bare chest and tapped the two-inch-long clear/white triangle that lay, entwined with silver wire and depending from a rawhide cord, between his pecs. Absently, he slipped a finger along the vitreous edge, careful not to push too hard. For, though it
looked
like a shark's tooth, it was a scale of the great uktena he had helped to slay on his first trip to Galunlati, and it did strange things when it tasted blood.

Like change you into an animal.

Calvin knew: for he had himself been transformed that very way—into a 'possum—and had been lost in the 'possum brain until Dave had freed him. Since then he'd shifted shape twice more: both times into a peregrine falcon. He'd been more prepared those other times, but it had still scared him shitless, because he could sense, every minute, the avian consciousness hovering there waiting for him to drop his guard so it could take over. The best way to combat that, he'd discovered, was to make up songs, like the one he'd started jotting down on the yellow pages of the small notebook he'd bought at the Magic Market. “Werepossum Blues,” he was calling it: the whole long tale of how he and Dave and their friends had gotten tangled up in the politics of the Sidhe. It had another function, too: one darker and much more serious—but he didn't even like to
think
about that, and
certainly
not now, when he was trying to come to terms with something much more imminent that frightened him to death on the one hand, yet tempted him almost past tolerance with the range of its possibilities on the other.

He had determined, in short, to master his fear of skin-changing. And, he supposed, there was no time like the present to begin.

Sighing, Calvin stood and slipped out of his jeans and skivvies—your duds didn't change with you, and you could find yourself in quite a bind if you chose your new form badly. Fortunately his riverside sanctum was warm and secluded.

Once naked, he lay down again, and took the scale in his left hand, adjusting it so that if he squeezed, the edges and the twin points at the root end would quickly bring blood. Now what did he want to become? It had to be something he was familiar with, something he could imagine. It also had to be something he'd eaten—presumably so one's body would have some sort of pattern to go by. (He'd tasted most wild game—even sampled falcon when he accidentally shot one and was forced to eat his kill by a grim-faced grandfather.) And—so Dave had said—you had to
want
to change. Which might be a problem because he was scared to let himself go. Those other times he'd been practically consumed with a desire to escape a situation—and that fear had helped him overcome his apprehension. But here, now, there was only doubt, wonder, frustration. Only one thing else he knew—something Uki had told him quite casually. It was best to transform into something with roughly your own body mass; that help keep the beast-mind at bay. Let's see, he was about one-sixty, and what kind of critters weighed that much? Not many around here: deer, maybe, or at least big does and mid-sized bucks. Cougar? But he hadn't eaten cougar and didn't want to. Besides, if he turned into one of them he might rouse undue interest because there were not—officially—any cougars in Georgia.
'Gators,
maybe? He didn't much like that last notion, either; their thoughts were likely to be too different from his own.

Which left him where he'd started.

Now, where to begin?

Well, the procedure he'd followed before called for him to close his eyes, squeeze the scale until it brought blood, while imagining how it would feel to be the animal desired. The
change
had then come upon him quite abruptly.

But, he wondered suddenly, how would it be if he tried to shift a little at a time, or maybe only
one
part?

Yeah, he'd try that.

Left hand still clutching the scale, he tightened his grip slightly, and felt a jolt of pain as the substance pierced his flesh. A trickle of warmth slid over his palm, cooling rapidly, but he did not look that way. Rather, he was gazing at his other hand, thinking how the bones lay and imagining them stretching, merging, bringing the outer fingers with them as his nails grew thick and long and hard and became a cloven hoof. He could feel something now, a dull throbbing, a sort of grinding in his hand—a warmth flooding up from his other palm, through his arms and chest, and back down to the experimental appendage. There was a tingling as well—but he tried to banish it, though he had begun to feel dizzy. He was sweating all over, too, and more than his hand was now twisting and stretching. There was a truly appalling itch at the base of his spine, and he felt decidedly uncomfortable lying flat on his back. A glance down showed far more body hair than he'd had before (which was almost none), and his penis seemed to have shifted a little higher. And his vision kept blurring and dimming, so that he had trouble focusing on one thing. He also had a headache.

No, it wasn't working—or rather, was working
too
well. He had to stop,
had
to, for already he could sense strange instincts filtering through his thoughts: a desire to flee, to run; an almost insatiable urge to eat his fill of green grass and tender leaves.

His hand was on fire, but the rest of him was too. And it all had to end right
now
! He thought of the things that made him a man, forced himself to run his free hand along his side, over his chest and belly and hips, ignoring the coarse hair, his single desire to once more find a man's shape there.

Abruptly the heat faded, his vision cleared.

He sank back against the tree, mortally exhausted. And slept.

A dream found him: sky, clouds swirling around him like pieces of some alien landscape, as he had seen them from a plane once—or better, as he had seen them far more recently in the shape of a falcon. No longer remote, they were things to be touched, felt, toyed with, dived through.

But he was not alone. There were others there, darting down from either side to flirt with him: a pair of peregrines. And that told him something: