Swan Song (88 page)

It was gone in an instant. “Did you see it? Did you?”

“See what?” Robin looked at the ground, saw nothing.

But in the next moment, it happened.

They all felt it.

Heat, like the rays of a searchlight behind the clouds, slowly sweeping across the parking lot.

Sister watched the ground-and as she felt the heat spread across her back and shoulders like a healing balm she saw her shadow take form on the pavement, saw the shadows of Josh and Swan and Robin all gathered around her own.

With a mighty effort, she lifted her head toward the sky, and the tears ran down her cheeks.

“The sun,” she whispered. “Oh, dear God… the sun’s coming out.”

They looked up. The leaden sky was moving, plates of clouds colliding and ripping apart. “There!” Robin shouted, pointing. He was the first to see a patch of azure before the clouds closed up again.

“Josh! I want to go… up there!” She motioned to the peak of Warwick Mountain. “Please! I want to see the sun come out!”

“We’ve got to get some help for you before-”

She clenched his hand. “I want to go up there,” she repeated. “I want to watch the sun come out. Do you understand me?”

Josh did. He hesitated, but only for a few seconds, because he knew time was short. He lifted her in his arms and started up the side of Warwick Mountain.

Swan and Robin followed as he climbed through the rough terrain of boulders and dead, twisted trees, carrying Sister up toward the turbulent sky.

Swan felt the sun’s touch on her back, saw the shadows of rocks and trees appear around her; she looked up and caught a hint of bright blue off to the left, and then the clouds sealed up. Robin grasped her hand, and they helped each other climb.

“Hurry!” Sister told Josh. “Please… hurry!”

Shadows scurried across the mountain. The wind was still cold and whipped violently, but the clouds were beginning to break up, and Josh wondered if that last storm hadn’t been the final gasp of a seven-year winter.

“Hurry!” Sister pleaded.

They came out of the woods and into a small clearing near the peak. Rough-edged boulders were strewn about, and from this height there was a view to all points of the compass, the landscape around them fading into the mist.

“Here.” Sister’s voice was weakening. “Lay me down here… so I can see.”

Josh gently put Sister on a bed of dead leaves, with her back molded into the smooth hollow of a boulder and her face turned toward the west.

The wind swirled around them, still carrying a bite. Dead branches snapped from the trees, and black leaves flew overhead like ravens.

Swan caught her breath as rays of golden light streamed through the western clouds, and for an instant the harsh landscape softened, its forlorn colors of black and gray turning to pale brown and reddish-gold. But just as quickly, the light was gone.

“Wait,” Sister said, watching the advance of the clouds. Whirlwinds and eddies moved in them like tides and currents after a storm. She could feel her life quickly ebbing away, her spirit wanting to bolt out of her tired body, but she clung to life with the same dogged tenacity that had helped her carry the glass crown mile after rugged mile.

They waited. Above Warwick Mountain the clouds were drifting apart, slowly unlocking, and behind them were fragments of blue, connecting like the pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle finally revealed.

“There.” Sister nodded, squinting up as the light spread over the land and up the mountainside, over dead leaves and trees and boulders and onto her face. “There!”

Josh shouted with joy. Huge holes were breaking open in the clouds, and through them streamed a golden light as beautiful as a promise.

From down in the distant valleys and hollows below Warwick Mountain other cries of joy echoed from the hillsides, where little communities of shacks had finally been touched by the sun. A car horn blew, followed by another and another, and the shouts grew and merged into a mighty voice.

Swan lifted her face up and let the wonderful, stunning warmth soak into her skin. She drew a long breath and smelled sweet, uncontaminated air.

The long twilight was ending.

“Swan,” Sister rasped.

She looked down at Sister, saw her radiant with sunlight and smiling. Sister lifted her hand to Swan; she took it, grasped it tightly and knelt down beside her.

They looked at each other for a long time, and Swan put Sister’s hand against her wet cheek.

“I’m proud of you,” Sister said. “Oh, I’m so proud of you.”

“You’re going to be all right,” Swan told her, but her throat was closing up, and a sob welled out. “You’ll be fine as soon as we get you to-”

“Shhhhh.” Sister ran her fingers over Swan’s long, flame-colored hair. In the sunshine, it gleamed with the intensity of a bonfire. “I want you to listen to me, now. Listen close. Look at me, too.”

Swan did, but Sister’s face was blurred through the tears. Swan wiped her eyes.

“The summer’s… finally come,” Sister said. “There’s no telling when winter will be back. You’re going to have to work while you can. Work as hard and fast… as you can, while the sun’s still shining. Do you hear me?”

Swan nodded.

Sister’s fingers tightened around the girl’s. “I wish I could go with you. I do. But… that’s not how it’s going to be. You and I… are going in different directions now. But that’s all right.” Sister’s eyes sparkled, and she looked over at Robin. “Hey,” she said. “Do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“How about you?” she asked Swan. “Do you love him?”

“Yes,” Swan said.

“Then… that’s half the battle won right there. You two hold onto each other, and you help each other… and don’t let anybody or anything pull you apart. You keep going, step after step… and you do the work that has to be done while it’s still summertime.” She turned her head, and squinted up at the black giant. “Josh?” she said. “You know… where you have to go, don’t you? You know who’s waiting for you.”

Josh nodded. “Yes,” he finally managed to say. “I know.”

“The sun… feels so good,” Sister said, looking up at it. Her sight was dimming, and she didn’t have to squint anymore. “So good. I’ve come… a long way… and I’m tired now. Will you… find a place for me to rest up here… so I can lie close to the sun?”

Swan squeezed her hand, and Josh said, “We will.”

“You’re a good man. I don’t think… even you knew how good you were. Swan?” Sister reached up with both hands and cupped them around Swan’s beautiful face. “You listen to me. Do the work. Do it well. You can bring things back… even better than they were. You’re a… natural-born leader, Swan… and when you walk, you hold yourself strong and proud… and… remember… how much I love you…”

Sister’s hands slipped away from Swan’s face, but Swan caught and held onto them. The spark of life was almost gone.

Sister smiled. In Swan’s eyes she could see the colors of the glass crown. Her mouth trembled and opened again.

“One step,” she whispered.

And then she took the next.

They stayed around her as the sun warmed their backs and thawed out their muscles. Josh started to close Sister’s eyes-but he didn’t, because he knew how much she loved the light.

Swan stood up. She walked away from them and dug her hand into her pocket.

She brought out the silver key, and she climbed up on a boulder and walked to the edge of Warwick Mountain.

She stood with her head held high, staring into the distance. But she was seeing more armies of fighting and frightened men, more guns and armored cars, more death and misery that would still be lurking in the minds of men like a cancer waiting to be reborn.

She gripped the silver key.

Never again, she thought-and she flung the key as hard and as far as she could.

Sunlight winked off it as it fell through space. It bounced off the limb of an oak tree, hit the edge of a boulder, fell fifty more feet into a small green pond half hidden by underbrush. As it drifted through the water and into the leaves at the pond’s bottom it stirred up several tiny eggs that had been hidden there for a long, long time. Shafts of sunlight stroked the pond and warmed the eggs, and the hearts of tadpoles began to beat.

Josh, Swan and Robin found a place to let Sister’s body rest; it was not sheltered by trees or hidden in shade, but lay where the sun could reach it. They dug the grave with their hands and lowered Sister into the earth. When the grave was filled again, each of them said whatever was on his or her mind, and they ended with “Amen.”

Three figures came down off the mountain.

Ninety-Five - [Prayer For the

Final Hour]

Sunlight had touched the camp of the Army of Excellence as well, and each man, woman and child there saw what was exposed.

Faces that had been hidden in twilight now emerged monstrous. The light hit the grotesque demons on the carved steps of the Central Command trailer, fell upon the trucks with their cargoes of bloodstained clothing, illuminated the black trailer where Roland Croninger had tortured in his quest for truth, and men who’d learned to live for the sight of blood and the sound of screams shrank back from that light as if pinpointed beneath the eye of God.

Panic ruled the mob. There were no leaders now, only followers, and some men fell to their knees and jabbered for forgiveness, while others crawled into the familiar darkness beneath the trailers and curled up there with their guns.

Three figures walked through the howling, sobbing mass of humanity, and many could not bear to look at the face of the girl with hair like fire. Others screamed for Colonel Macklin and the man they’d come to know as Friend, but they were not answered.

“Halt!” A young, hard-featured soldier leveled his rifle. Two other men stood behind him, and a fourth came out from behind a truck to aim his pistol at Josh.

Swan regarded each of them in turn and held herself tall and proud, and when she took a step forward, all of the soldiers moved back except the man who’d spoken.

“Get out of our way,” Swan said, as calmly as she could manage, but she knew the man was scared, and he wanted to kill somebody.

“Fuck you!” the young soldier sneered. “I’ll blow your head off!”

She tossed something to his feet, into the steaming mud.

He looked down.

It was the black-gloved hand of Colonel Macklin, its palm and nails smeared with dried gore.

He scooped it up, and then he grinned crazily as the realization hit him. “It’s mine,” he whispered. “It’s mine!” His voice grew louder, more frantic. “Macklin’s dead!” he shouted, and he lifted the hand for the others to see. “It’s mine now! I’m in command! I’ve got the pow-”

He was shot through the forehead by the soldier with the pistol, and as the false hand fell to the mud the other men went after it, fighting like animals for the symbol of power.

But another figure leapt amid them, flinging first one man back and then another, tearing the gloved hand away and holding it in his own grasp. He stood up, and as his mud-smeared face swiveled toward Swan she saw the shock and hatred in his eyes; he was a brutal, dark-haired man in an Army of Excellence uniform-but there were bullet holes across the front of his shirt and dried blood around the heart. The face seemed to ripple for just a fraction of a second, and then the man lifted one dirty hand to either shield himself from the sun or ward off the sight of Swan.

Maybe it was him, she realized. Maybe he’d already put on a new skin and climbed into a corpse’s clothes. She couldn’t tell for sure, but if it was him, she had to answer the question he’d asked her down in the mine. “The machine’s stopped, and the missiles aren’t going to fire,” she said. “Not ever.”

He made a low, garbled noise and stepped back, still hiding his face.

“There won’t be an end,” Swan told him. “So yes, I do forgive you, because if it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have a second chance.”

“Kill her!” the dark-haired man tried to shout, but his voice came out weak and sick. “Shoot her down!”

Josh stepped in front of Swan to protect her. The soldiers hesitated.

“I said kill her!” He lifted Macklin’s hand, his face averted from Swan’s. “I’m your master now! Don’t let her walk out of here a-”

One of the soldiers fired at point-blank range.

The rifle bullet went into the dark-haired man’s chest, and the impact staggered him. Another bullet hit him, and he tripped over the dead man and fell into the mud, and already the other soldiers were leaping onto him, fighting again for the nail-pierced hand. And now more soldiers were coming, drawn by the shots, and they saw the disembodied hand and threw themselves into the fight as well. “Kill her!” the dark-haired man demanded, but he was being pressed down into the mud under the thrashing bodies, and his voice was a high whine. “Kill the little bi-”

Someone had an axe and started hacking with it. The dark-haired man was down at the bottom of the pile, and over the curses and grunts of the fighting men, Swan heard him jibbering, “It’s my party! It’s my party!” She saw a boot mash his face into the mud.

Then the soldiers closed over nun, and she could no longer see any part of him.

Swan went on. Josh followed, but Robin paused. Lying on the ground was another pistol. He started to reach down and retrieve it-but he caught himself and did not touch it. Instead, he shoved it deeper into the mud as he passed.

They went through the encampment, where soldiers ripped off their filthy, blood-caked uniforms and threw them into a huge bonfire. Trucks and armored cars roared past as men and women fled to destinations unknown. The shout, “The colonel’s dead! Colonel Macklin’s dead!” was carried over the camp, and more shots rang out as last quarrels were settled or suicide was chosen.

And, finally, they came to Sheila Fontana’s trailer.

The guards had gone, and the door was unlocked. Swan opened it and found Sheila inside, sitting at her dresser before the mirror, looking at herself and holding the shard of glass.

“It’s over,” Swan said, and as Sheila stood up the piece of glass pulsed with light.

“I’ve… been waiting for you,” Sheila told her. “I knew you’d come back. I… I prayed for you.”

Swan walked toward her. She embraced the other woman, and Sheila whispered, “Please… please let me come with you. All right?”

“Yes,” Swan answered, and Sheila grasped her hand and pressed it against her lips.

Swan went to the mattress, reached inside it and brought out the battered leather satchel. She could feel the shape of the crown in it, and she pulled it to her chest. She would protect it and carry it with her for the rest of her life, because she knew the man with the scarlet eye would be back. Maybe not today or tomorrow, maybe not even next year or the year after that-but someday, somewhere, he would slip from the shadows wearing a new face and a new name, and on that day she would have to be very careful and very strong.

She didn’t know what other powers the crown held, didn’t know where the dreamwalking would lead her, but she was ready to take the first step. And that step, she knew, would take her along a path she’d never imagined when she was a child, growing her flowers and plants in the trailer park dirt of Kansas a world and a lifetime away. But she was no longer a child, and the wasteland awaited a healing touch.

She pulled back from Sheila Fontana and turned toward Josh and Robin. She knew Sister was right: Finding someone you loved, and someone who loved you, was half the battle. And now she knew, as well, what she had to do to make the wonderful things she’d seen in the glass crown come true.

“I think… there are others who might want to go with us,” Sheila said. “Other women… like me. And some of the men, too. They’re not all bad men… they’re just afraid, and they won’t know what to do or where to go.”

“All right,” Swan agreed. “If they put down their guns, we’ll welcome them.”

Sheila left to gather the others, and she returned with two bedraggled-looking RLs-one a heavily made-up, frightened teenager and the other a tough black woman with a red Mohawk haircut-and three nervous men, one of them wearing a sergeant’s uniform. As a show of good faith, the ex-soldiers had brought knapsacks full of canned Spam, corned beef hash and soup, as well as canteens of fresh water from the spring in Mary’s Rest. The black prostitute, whose name was Cleo-“short for Cleopatra,” she announced dramatically-brought an assortment of gaudy rings, necklaces and trinkets that Swan had no use for, and the teen-age girl-“They call me Joey,” she said, her dark hair all but obscuring her face-offered Swan her prized possession: a single yellow flower in a red clay pot that she’d somehow kept alive.

And as the light of the new day faded a truck with Josh at the wheel and carrying Robin, Swan, Sheila Fontana, the two RLs and the three men left the camp of the Army of Excellence, where a group of rampaging madmen had set fire to Colonel Macklin’s trailer, and the last of the ammunition was exploding.

Long after Josh had driven away, the wolves began to come down from the mountains, and they silently circled the remnants of the Army of Excellence.

The night passed, and patches of stars came out. The truck, with one remaining headlight and not much gasoline, turned west.

In the darkness, Swan cried for a while with the memory of Sister, but Robin put his arm around her, and she leaned her head against the strength of his shoulder.

Josh thought of Mary’s Rest and of the woman he hoped was still waiting for him with the boy at her side. Sheila Fontana slept the sleep of the innocent and dreamed of a beautiful face looking back at her from a mirror.

Sometime during the night, Cleo and one of the men jumped out of the truck with a knapsack full of food and water. Josh wished them good luck and let them go.

The stars faded. A thin red line crept across the eastern horizon, and Josh almost cried when the sun peeked back through the thinning clouds.

The truck coughed and ran out of gas about two hours after sunrise. They started off on foot, following the road that led westward.

And on the afternoon of that day, as the light slanted through the trees and the blue sky was dappled with white, slowly drifting clouds, they stopped to rest their legs. But Swan stood on the edge of the road looking down into a valley where three small shacks were clustered around the brown stubble of a field. A man in a floppy straw hat and a woman in overalls were working in that field with a shovel and hoe, and two small children were on their knees carefully planting seeds and grain from burlap sacks.

It wasn’t a very large field. It was surrounded by withered trees-maybe pecan or walnut trees, Swan thought. But a sparkling stream of water meandered across the valley, and it occurred to Swan that it might be a trickle from the underground river that had powered the machines in Warwick Mountain.

Now, she thought, that same water could be used for life instead of death.

“I’ll bet they’re planting beans,” Josh said, standing beside her. “Maybe squash or okra, too. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

He smiled faintly. “Yes, you do.”

She looked at him. “What?”

“You do know,” he replied. “You know you have to start somewhere. Even a field as small as that one.”

“I’m going back to Mary’s Rest with you. That’s where I’m going to st-”

“No,” Josh said, and his eyes were gentle but pained. Across his forehead were three gashes that would heal into scars and forever remind him of the old wrestling trick. “We don’t Have enough food and water left for us all to make it back to Mary’s Rest. That’s a long way from here.”

“Not so far.”

“Far enough,” he said, and he motioned toward the valley. “You know, there’s plenty of room down there for more crops. I imagine there are a lot of other shacks in these mountains, too. Plenty of people who haven’t had fresh okra, beans or squash in a long time.” His mouth watered at the thought. “Soul food,” he said, and he smiled.

She watched the man, woman and children at work. “But… what about the people in Mary’s Rest? What about my friends?”

“They made do before you got there. They’ll make do until you get back. Sister was right. You need to work while it’s summertime-and there’s no telling how long that’ll be. Maybe a month, maybe six. But the cold will come back. I just pray to God the next winter won’t last as long.”

“Hey! Hey up there!” The farmer had seen them, and he lifted his hand and waved. The woman and children paused in their work and looked up toward the road.

“It’s time to make new friends,” Josh said softly.

Swan didn’t reply. She watched the man waving, and then she raised her own hand and waved back. The farmer said something to the woman and started up the winding trail that connected their land with the road.

“Start here,” Josh told her. “Start now. I think that girl-Joey-might even be able to help you. Otherwise how could she have kept that flower alive so long?” His heart was aching, but he had to say it: “You don’t need me anymore, Swan.”

“Yes, I do!” Her lower lip trembled. “Josh, I’ll always need you!”

“Bird’s gotta fly,” he said. “And even a swan has to spread her wings sometime. You know where I’ll be-and you know how to get there.”

She shook her head. “How?” she asked.

“Field by field,” he said.

She reached for him, and he put his arms around her and held her tight.

“I love you… so much,” Swan whispered. “Please… don’t go yet. Just stay one more day.”

“I wish I could. But if I did… I wouldn’t leave. I have to go while I still know I want to.”

“But-” Her voice cracked. “Who’s going to protect you?”

He laughed then, but his laughter was mixed with tears. He saw the farmer coming up the trail, and Robin was walking to meet him. The others had gotten to their feet again.