Swan Song (61 page)

The door opened, and a monster walked out. Gene Scully followed behind. Robin just stood and stared, his mouth agape, because he’d never seen anybody so ugly before. The big dude was easily the size of three regular men.

“Jesus,” Paul whispered, and he couldn’t help but be repelled. The man’s single eye fixed on him for a few seconds, then moved to Sister.

She didn’t budge. Monster or not, she’d decided, nobody was going to stop her from seeing Swan.

“Where did you find this?” Josh asked, holding up the object Gene Scully had given him.

“In the parking lot of what used to be a K-Mart. It was in a town in Kansas called-”

“Matheson,” Josh interrupted. “I know the place, from a long time ago. This belonged to a friend. But… do I know you?”

“No. Paul and I have been traveling for years, searching for someone. And I think the person we’ve been led toward is in that house. Will you let us see her?”

Josh looked again at what he held in his hand. It was one of Leona Skelton’s tarot cards, the colors faded, the edges curled and yellowed. The legend on the card said THE EMPRESS.

“Yes,” Josh said. “But just you and the man.” And he opened the door to let them enter.

Sixty-Six - [Daughter of Ice and

Fire]

“You sure?” Glory asked as Josh shut the door. She was stirring a pot of root soup on the stove, and she eyed the two strangers cautiously. “I don’t like the looks of ’em.”

“Sorry,” Paul told her. “I left my tuxedo at the cleaners this morning.” The room smelled like sassafras, and the stove was putting out a lot of heat. A couple of lanterns were set in the room, and by their smoky light both Paul and Sister could see what appeared to be blood stains on the floor.

“We had some trouble here last night,” Josh explained. “That’s why we have to be so careful about strangers wanting to see Swan.”

Sister went cold, in spite of the room’s comfortable warmth. She was thinking of that grinning cripple in the child’s red wagon. If it was him, he could be wearing any face. Any face at all. She wished she had that moment back, wished she’d blown the mask right off his skull to see what was hiding behind it.

Josh turned up a lantern’s wick and examined the tarot card again. “So you found this in Matheson. Okay. But how did this card lead you here?”

“It wasn’t the card that brought us. Tell me: Is there a tree somewhere that’s in blossom, with Swan’s name burned into the trunk? I remember smelling apples. Is it an apple tree in bloom?”

“Yes. But that’s back about fifty or sixty miles from here! Did Sly Moody send you after us?”

She shook her head, reaching into the satchel. “This sent us here,” she said, and she withdrew the glass circle.

The colors leaped and pulsed. Glory gasped, dropping her spoon as her hand fluttered to her mouth. The walls glittered with lights. Josh stared at it, transfixed by its beauty, and then he laid the Empress card down on the table.

“Who are you?” he asked softly. “Why are you looking for Swan-and where did you find that?”

Sister said, “I think we have a lot to talk about. I want to know everything about you, and everything about Swan. I want to hear everything that’s happened to you, and I want to tell you our stories, too. But right now I have to see her. Please.”

With an effort, Josh pulled his gaze away from the glass ring and looked into Sister’s face. Looked long and deep, saw the tribulations and hardships there; but he also recognized tenacity and a will of iron. He nodded and led Paul and Sister into the next room.

A single lantern backed with a shiny piece of tin hung on the wall, casting a muted golden glow. Swan lay on Glory’s iron-framed cot, on the mattress that was stuffed with rags and papers. She was covered with a number of blankets that various people had donated, and her face was turned away from the light.

Josh walked to the bedside, lifted the blankets and gently touched Swan’s shoulder. She was still burning up with fever, yet she shivered and held the blankets. “Swan? Can you hear me?”

Her breathing was harsh. Sister’s hand found Paul’s and clenched it. In her other hand, the shades of the glass ring had turned to silver and gold.

“Swan?” Josh whispered. “Someone’s come to see you.”

She heard his voice, summoning her back from a nightmare landscape where a skeleton on a skeletal horse reaped a human field. Pain shot through the nerves and bones of her face. “Josh?” she replied. “Rusty… where’s Rusty?”

“I told you. We buried him this morning, out in the field.”

“Oh. I remember now.” Her voice was weak, drifting toward delirium again. “Tell them… to watch the corn. Keep the crows away. But… tell them not to touch it yet, Josh. Tell them.”

“I have. They’re doing what you say.” He motioned Paul and Sister closer. “Someone’s here to see you. They say they’ve come a long way.”

“Who… are they?”

“A man and a woman. They’re here right now. Can you speak to them?”

Swan tried to focus her mind on what he was saying. She could sense someone else in the room, waiting. And there was something more, too; Swan didn’t know what it was, but she felt her skin tingling as if in anticipation of a touch. In her mind she was a child again, staring with fascination at the fireflies’ lights as they glowed against the window screen.

“Yes,” she decided. “Will you help me sit up?”

He did, propping a couple of pillows up to support her. As Josh stepped away from the cot Paul and Sister had their first view of Swan’s growth-covered head. Both eyeholes were now sealed up, and there were only small slits over her nostrils and mouth. It was the most horrifying Job’s Mask that Sister had ever seen, much worse even than Josh’s, and she had to fight off a shudder. Paul flinched, wondering how she could breathe or eat through that hideous crust.

“Who’s there?” Swan whispered.

“My name is…” She lost her voice. She was scared to death. Then she drew her shoulders back, pulled in a deep breath and stepped to the side of the cot. “You can call me Sister,” she began. “There’s a man named Paul Thorson with me. We’ve-” Sister glanced quickly at Josh, then back to the girl. Swan’s head was cocked to one side, listening through a tiny hole at her ear. “We’ve been looking for you for a long time. Seven years. We missed you in Matheson, Kansas; I believe we probably missed you in a lot of places and never knew it. I found a doll that belonged to you. Do you remember it?”

Swan did remember. “My Cookie Monster. I lost it in Matheson. I used to love that thing when I was a little girl.”

Sister had to listen hard to understand everything she was saying. “I wish I could’ve brought it to you, but it didn’t survive the trip.”

“That’s all right,” Swan said. “I’m not a little girl anymore.” She suddenly lifted her bandaged right hand and felt in the air for the woman’s face. Sister drew away, but then she realized that Swan wanted to know what she looked like. Sister gently grasped her slender wrist and guided the hand over her facial features. Swan’s touch was as soft as smoke.

Her fingers stopped when they found the growths. “You’ve got it, too.” Swan’s fingers continued across Sister’s left cheek, then down to her chin. “Feels like a cobblestone road.”

“I guess so. A doctor friend of ours calls it ‘Job’s Mask.’ He thinks what’s in the air causes some people’s skin to crust over. Damned if I can figure out why it just screws up the face and head, though.” She reached out and touched the girl’s forehead, then quickly jerked her hand back. Under the Job’s Mask, Swan was running a fever that had almost scorched Sister’s fingers. “Does it hurt?” Sister asked.

“Yes. It didn’t used to hurt so much, but now… it’s all the time.”

“Yeah, mine, too. How old are you?”

“Sixteen. Josh keeps track of my birthday for me. How old are you?”

“I’m-” She couldn’t recall. She hadn’t kept up with her birthdays. “Let’s see, I think I was in my forties on the seventeenth of July. I guess I might be in my fifties now. Early fifties, that is. I feel like I’m gaining on eighty.”

“Josh said… you came a long way to see me.” Swan’s head was heavy, and she was getting very tired again. “Why?”

“I’m not sure,” Sister admitted. “But we’ve been looking for you for seven years, because of this,” And she held the glowing ring with its single remaining spire up before Swan’s face.

Swan’s skin prickled. She sensed a bright light beating at her sealed-up eyeholes. “What is it?”

“I think… it’s a lot of things, all rolled up into a circle of beautiful glass and filled with jewels. I found it on the seventeenth of July, in New York City. I think it’s a ring of miracles, Swan. I think it’s a gift… like a magic survival kit. Or a life ring. Maybe anybody could’ve found it, maybe I’m the only one who could have. I don’t know. But I do know that it led Paul and me to you. I wish I knew why. All I can say is that… I think you’re someone very special, Swan. I saw the corn growing out in that field, where nothing ought to be alive. I looked into this glass ring and I saw a tree in bloom, with your name burned into the wood.” She leaned forward, her heart pounding. “I think there’s work ahead of you. Very important work, enough to fill up a lifetime. After seeing that corn growing out there… I think I know what it is.”

Swan was listening carefully. She didn’t feel very special; she just felt weary, and the fever was pulling at her again, trying to drag her back to that awful place where the bloody scythe reaped a human field. And then what Sister had said dawned on her: “A ring of miracles… all rolled up into a circle of beautiful glass and filled with jewels.”

She thought of the magic mirror and the figure she’d seen bearing a ring of light. That figure, she knew, had been the woman who now stood at her bedside, and what she’d been carrying had finally arrived.

Swan held out both hands toward the light. “May I… hold it?”

Sister glanced at Josh. He was standing behind Paul, and Glory had come from the other room. Josh didn’t know what was going on, and all this ring of miracles talk was beyond him-but he trusted the woman, and he let himself nod.

“Here.” Sister put it into Swan’s hands.

Her fingers curled around the glass. There was heat in it, a heat that began to spread into her hands, through her wrists and forearms. Under the bandages, the raw skin of her hands had begun itching and stinging. “Oh,” she said, more in surprise than in pain.

“Swan?” Josh stepped forward, alarmed at the sound. The glass circle was getting brighter and pulsating faster. “Are you o-”

The ring flared like a golden nova. All of them were blinded for a few seconds as the room was lit up as if by the flaring of a million candles. The memory of the white-hot blast in front of PawPaw’s grocery streaked through Josh’s mind.

Now a searing pain coursed in Swan’s hands, and her fingers seemed locked to the glass. The pain rippled through her bones and she started to cry out, but in the next instant the anguish had passed, and left in her mind were scenes beautiful beyond dreams: fields of golden corn and wheat, orchards where trees bent under the weight of fruit, meadows of flowers and verdant green forests stirred by a breeze. The images poured forth as if from a cornucopia, so vivid that Swan smelled the aromas of barley, apples, plums and cherry trees in full bloom. She beheld dandelions blowing in the wind, forests of oaks dripping acorns into the moss, maples running sap and sunflowers thrusting up from the earth.

Yes, Swan thought as the images continued to flood through her mind in brilliant patterns of color and light. My work.

I know what my work is now.

Josh was first to recover from the glare. He saw that Swan’s hands were engulfed by golden fire, the flames licking up along her arms. She’s burning up! he realized and, horrified, he shoved Sister aside and grabbed the fiery ring to pull it away from Swan.

But as soon as his fingertips touched the glass, he was flung backward with such force that he left his feet before crashing into the wall, narrowly missing breaking most of the bones in Paul’s body. The air was forced from his lungs with a noise like a ruptured steam pipe, and he crumpled to the floor, dazed from the worst knock he’d taken since Haystacks Muldoon had thrown him from the wrestling ring in Winston-Salem eleven years before. Damn thing repelled me, he thought, when thinking was possible again. He tried to struggle up and realized that the flaming ring had been cool under his fingers.

Still half blinded, Sister saw the strange fire, too, saw it crawling up Swan’s arms; it snapped like the uncoiling of a whip and began to wrap itself around the girl’s head.

The fire-noiseless and without heat-had shrouded Swan’s face and head before Josh could get up from the floor. Swan made no sound and lay motionless, but she could hear a sizzling over the wonderful scenes that kept swirling through her mind.

Sister was about to grasp the ring herself, but as she reached for it Josh charged toward the cot again, almost flung her through the wall, braced his legs and got ready to withstand the jolt as he clenched his fingers around the ring.

This time it came smoothly free from Swan’s hands. As he turned to smash it against the wall he heard Sister scream “No!” and she was on him like a wildcat.

“Wait!” Paul shouted. “Look at her!”

Josh held Sister at arm’s length and swiveled his head toward Swan.

The golden flames that covered her hands were going out. The bandages had turned black.

As they watched they saw the fire-or what had appeared to be fire-being drawn into the Job’s Mask like liquid into a dry sponge. The flames rippled, flared, and then disappeared.

Sister wrenched the ring from him and backed out of his reach. He went to Swan’s side, put his arms beneath her shoulders and lifted her up, supporting her head with one hand. “Swan!” His voice was frantic. “Swan, answer me!”

She was silent.

“You’ve killed her!” Glory shouted at Sister. “God A’mighty, you’ve killed her with that damned thing!” She rushed to the bedside, while Sister retreated against the far wall. Her mind was reeling, and the explosion of light still burned behind her eyes.

But Josh could feel Swan’s heart beating like the wings of a captured bird against a cage. He rocked the girl in his arms, praying that this shock wouldn’t be the final burden. He looked up fiercely at Sister and Paul. “Get them out of here!” he told Glory. “Call Anna! Tell her to lock them away somewhere! Get them out before I kill them my-”

Swan’s hand drifted up, touched Josh’s lips to silence him.