The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (14 page)

Her eyes bulged out of her face.

“Bag lady likes poteen!”

Alan ignored Mark, staring in nervous fascination.

With a growl of satisfaction the old woman inverted the small flask over her broad, fissured lips, her tongue making lapping sounds as she swallowed the contents in a single draught. She trumped a loud, long resonant fart.

“Ooh—gross!” came a chorus of exclamations.

Alan murmured, “I think she’s been taking lessons from you, Mark!”

The old woman gazed at the now empty flask. She secreted it away in some pocket of her dress. Then she came to Alan and held out her hand, growling.

“What does she want?”

Kate urged him, “Give her your phone!”

“Why should I?”

“The phones don’t work here anyway. And they frighten her.” Kate searched for her own cell phone, finally holding it out at arm’s length. “You too, Mark. It’s lying right next to you, where Alan left it.”

Mark complained, “It still has my music in it!”

Alan muttered, “That’s the only goddamn blessing.”

With a croak, the old woman snatched the three phones from their hands and stuffed them into a pocket of her dress before shuffling back to squat by the fire. She retrieved the silver flask from another
pocket and coddled the gleaming silver, her finger chasing the embossed outline of the eagle that decorated the front surface, turning it over and over mere inches from her eyes. She began to sway and croon over the dancing flames, then calmly, as if it were nothing unusual, she leaned forward and pressed the flask into the fire.

The flames erupted much higher, spitting and flaring in what was now a crackling furnace. Though her back was half-turned to him, Alan could see that she had no fear of being burned as she pressed her cupped hands deep into the flames. She was crooning happily, her body swaying from side to side, as she performed a series of molding caresses with her hands.

In amazement, he watched her lift something out of the fire. What had been the flask was now shiny and molten, in the process of being coaxed and transformed in her hands. Its elements were woven with the elements of fire, with added ingredients of charcoal and sand—and even her own spit—until it appeared to move within her fingers, as if imbued with life.

There was a chorus of gasps from the watching faces. Kate put her arm around Alan’s shoulder.

A tiny bald eagle, as bright as the sun, beat its wings within the cradle of her splayed fingers. It rose several feet into the air, the brilliance of its fluttering wings reflected in the dark eyes that beheld it.

Catching his breath, Alan watched the eagle settle back with a gentle grace within the cage of her fingers.
Then she closed her hands over it, reforging its elements to become a goblet, whorled with blue and silver. Finally, with a circular friction of her finger that set up a melody of harmonics, she finished the bowl with a perfectly lipped edge.

“Muh-muh-muh-magic!” Mo whispered.

Immersed in her act of creation, she warbled from deep within her chest before applying a final smoothing gloss by licking the goblet inside and out with her tongue. Then she held it aloft, reveling in the rainbow sparkle of its luminescence, a sudden brilliant glow that eddied and coruscated over the walls and ceiling of her cave.

Alan’s voice was guttural with shock. “Who—or what—are you?”

In her sudden glower, in her croon of triumph, they all heard what sounded like a name: “Graaannneee Dewwww.”

“Granny Dew—is that what we call you?”

“Duuuvaaalll!” She was mocking him again in that gravelly voice, while polishing the goblet on the murky folds of her dress. “A biiirrrddd siiingggsss.”

Against the mockery of her reply, he felt foolish and ignorant, but he was determined to find out more. “What kind of a place is this, Granny Dew? Where are we?”

A crinkle of amusement lifted the corners of her eyes at his use of her name. She thrust the goblet deep into the simmering pot, removed it now brimming with the oily liquid, and then, in a whirl of uninterrupted movement, she brought it purposefully against his lips. This
time he found himself unable to refuse it. He drank the lot in a series of gulps, ignoring the nausea. The potion had a wilder, deeper taste than leaves or roots, or even herbs. There was a taste of fungi, with gristly bits, which seemed to creep and crawl in his mouth in a way he just didn’t want to think about. The gruel tingled on his tongue. It slithered down his throat, expanding to fill every corner and hollow in his gut.

Alan felt weak and light-headed as he watched, without hope of understanding, the old woman return to the fire and refill the goblet. He was unable to drag his eyes away as she brought the goblet to Kate and Mark in turn, all the while cackling with glee as she invited them to drink the gruel from a vessel born out of magic.

Strange Comforting

Mo had always been able to sense an aura about people, one of those qualities that Grimstone loathed about her. And now, in the cave, she sensed that there was a very powerful aura about the old woman, if she was human at all, that reminded Mo of an experiment with magnets that her teacher had once conducted in science class at school. The teacher had put the pole of a magnet under a piece of paper and sprinkled iron filings on top of the paper. When she tapped the paper with her finger the iron filings had lined up along the lines of magnetic force, all around the focus of the pole of the magnet underneath. The old woman’s aura was something like that; it was as if she was the focus of immense lines of force—lines of power. So it was, dry-mouthed with nervousness, that Mo watched
as her three friends were lulled into sleep by the gruel. Only then did Granny Dew extract the cell phones she had secreted away in the folds of her dress, and study them once again in the firelight. How closely she pored over the phones, showing the same fascination she had shown earlier with the silver flask, sniffing at each phone individually and peering closely into the face of its owner, all the while whispering in those strange, growly cadences.

Mo wished, desperately, that she knew what was going on. She’d felt decidedly strange since crossing into this world and now that sense of strangeness grew as Granny Dew finally turned her attentions to her.

In Mo’s case there was no phone to be examined. Instead the old woman did something entirely unexpected, coming across to pick Mo up into her arms and carry her over to the fireside. Here, ignoring the goblet, she scooped a bare hand deep into the pot and carried the gruel to Mo in this personal cradle, crooning softly as she pressed it to her lips. Mo didn’t dare to resist. She gulped down the earthy liquid until only an oily sheen of wetness was left on those grimy fingers. Nor did she resist when Granny Dew laid her head against her cobwebby breast, crooning softly.

Mo had often wondered if her real mother, her biological mother, had ever held her to her breast. She would have had plenty of opportunity to do so since she hadn’t abandoned Mo until she was eleven months old. According to Grimstone, the date October 31 had been scrawled
in felt-tip pen on the skin of her arm, so that he never tired of informing her that All Hallow’s Eve, or probably the more paganish Halloween, was her birthday.

Whoever had abandoned her, whether it had been her real mother or someone else, they hadn’t even taken the trouble to wash her clean. Mo knew this too because Bethal frequently reminded her of it. Bethal took a delight in pointing out that a mother who couldn’t even be bothered to wash her baby was hardly the sort to caress her, or croon over her. Not that there was any doubt in Bethal’s mind as to the reason why. Bethal would haul her up in front of the mirror and show her why she had been unloved from the very moment of her birth. There was no loving or caressing the product of sin. But now, curled up against that strange cobwebby breast, Mo felt strangely comforted by Granny Dew.

Lifting up her gaze, Mo looked deep into those all-black pupils. What she sensed there caused tears to gather in her own eyes, which she blinked away, but all the while she just wanted this feeling to go on and on and never stop. She closed her eyes as Granny Dew stroked the skin of her face, brushing back the fallen fringe of her hair, crooning softly and occasionally singing a word or a phrase in a language so guttural that Mo could not imagine what it meant . . .

“Meeerrrraaa . . .

Arrrrrryynnnn . . . Arrrrrryynnnn

Aaaarrrrrggggghhhh!”

Alan woke from his daze to a sharp crack on his shins. He saw that the fire was down to its embers and that his friends were being woken up in similar fashion. There was no longer any mystery about the whereabouts of the spear. Granny Dew held it in her right hand, while in her left she gripped a torch, with flames at least a foot high. All four climbed shakily to their feet—those who did so too slowly receiving a second rap on the shins from the spear shaft—before they were assembled, looking bewildered and brushing moss from their clothes.

Granny Dew brought the spear around in a wide arc and then pointed forward in an unmistakable gesture.

“Cha-teh-teh-teh-teh-teh!”

She led them out of the chamber, down a steep descent, step by step into a winding tunnel. At times she seemed to force a way through solid rock that creaked and groaned in protest at their passage. Alan’s ears caught the murmuring of water deep underground, and his nostrils sniffed the mustiness of rot and damp, and as they bore deeper, the stink of sulphur. Yet all the while the solid rock appeared to open up before that strange squat figure, trailing her cataract of frosted hair in the storm of her progress as she scurried through her protesting underworld, rapping out her purpose with the spear.

They rested from time to time, although it seemed to Alan that it was more for their benefit than their guide’s aged bones. He heard echoes, as if her snarls were being
answered by forces within the mountain. At other times her shadow, cast by the torch, would expand to gigantic proportions and her cackle, reverberating about the massive walls, would rumble in her wake like thunder.

It was easy to lose track of time and distance. But he gauged they must have traveled deep into the roots of the mountains. Here at the center of the labyrinth of caves the old woman led them into a chamber whose walls glittered with reflections, like a hall of mirrors. Suddenly the light of her torch flared and every mouth dropped open. The sight simply took their breath away.

The walls, floor and ceiling were carved out of crystals of every color and shade. Even Mo, despite her fascination with crystals, could not even begin to name them, since there was such a proliferation of shapes, textures and hues. High above them, stalactites as fine as straw trailed down from the ceiling, their surfaces dazzling with glints and sparkles as if they were studded with diamonds. But the old woman ignored the beauty that surrounded them, pausing to squat on the crystal floor before a lake of sulphurous lava.

They abandoned their whispering to watch her reach into the depths of those spidery rags and find the goblet. Once again, in the creative weave of her hands, the vessel metamorphosed into the glowing eagle.

“Aw, man!” Alan sighed in a mixture of bewilderment and awe, watching it rise up out of its living cage to spiral for a moment before making a fluttering descent into the spitting lava. With her left hand, Granny Dew
reached back into the folds of her dress, bringing out Alan’s cell phone. All of their gazes followed the descent of the old woman’s left hand into the yellow-spuming furnace. Still holding the phone immersed in the lava, with her right hand she beckoned to Alan, demanding that he should come over to join her. Alan backed away with all of the others.

“Duuuvaaalll—paaahhh!” She grabbed hold of his reluctant right hand, prying open his fingers and then dashing them into the sulphur.

Clenching his teeth in anticipation of scorching heat, he was startled instead to encounter an icy cold. He yanked his hand out. Red light spilled out in rays and darts from between the fingers of his clenched fist. When he opened them there was an oval ruby as large as a bantam’s egg in his palm. Granny Dew was nodding her head and growling incantations.

“Quuurrruuunnn!”

He stared at the glowing gemstone, the light of which cast shapes and gyrations into the air about it, fathomless creations that melded and writhed in his vision as if forever on the point of producing something even more wonderful. Granny Dew reached deep into her voluminous dress and retrieved the two remaining cell phones. With sudden snatches, she took, in turn, Kate’s hand and then Mark’s, pressing their phones back into each reluctant grasp. Each hand, with its phone, was dashed into the sulphurous yellow furnace to emerge holding a glowing egg-shaped crystal. Kate’s had a soft green
matrix speckled with shifting autumnal shades of gold, while Mark’s was black as obsidian in which tiny arabesques of silver appeared to glisten and pulsate.

For Mo there was none.

Standing back, Mo watched as each of her friends in turn drew his or her crystal from the glowing furnace. She could only wonder at the shock it seemed to induce in its new owner, observing how her friends’ eyes glazed over as they came into contact with their crystals amid Granny Dew’s incantations. Alan’s eyes were already closed as the old woman, consumed by a new purpose, took the ruby egg from his grasp. She inspected the stork mark on his brow and scratched at it with the long fingernail until she was rewarded by a trickle of blood.

Mo was terrified of what might happen. She grabbed at the wrist of the old woman. “Nuh-nuh-nuh-no! Puh-puh-please!”

The left hand of Granny Dew caressed Mo’s brow, as if reassuring her, while she closed her eyes and cackled some hymnal cadences, hatching some strange new magic within herself.

Mo sensed that she was the sole enraptured audience as, by the same mysterious force of will, Granny Dew transformed the ruby into a repository of her own energy. She saw how the features of Granny Dew’s face, grotesquely distorted by the rays and spangles of light that burst through the cradle of her enfolded clasp, turned colder and grayer as the ruby increased in power. The light grew even more brilliantly incandescent, illuminating
the bones of those gnarled fingers. Mo couldn’t drag her eyes away from this new vision. Suddenly, the old woman pressed the ruby against Alan’s bleeding brow.

He came out of his trance with a scream.

Mo took hold of Alan’s hand. At the touch, she felt an immense wave of power coursing through him. But Granny Dew pulled their hands apart. She shook her head, gazing down into Mo’s eyes with a glare of caution before returning her attention to Alan.

“Duuuvaaalll aaassskkks! Duuuvaaalll sees!”

Mo pleaded. “Puh-puh-puh-please . . . Yuh-yuh-you muh-muh-must suh-suh-suh-stop.”

But the old woman paid her no heed. She wheeled away, satisfied that her work was now done. Growling, she woke the others out of their trances with prods and taps of the spear shaft, like a schoolteacher exasperated by a class of lazy pupils. Her power and strength were ferocious and they gave up any pretense of fighting back. The four friends could only follow her onrushing figure for what appeared to be miles through the groaning walls of stone until they arrived at a new cave, close enough to the surface for them to feel the biting cold. With an impatient wheeze she tapped her knobbly index finger against Kate’s and Mark’s hands, each still grasping the crystal eggs, then pointed to Alan’s still-bleeding brow in which the ruby crystal was implanted.

They stared back at her in fright.

With a shake of her head, Granny Dew hammered the base of the spear against the floor of the cave. It provoked
an explosion of sound, deep under foot, as if a peal of thunder was passing through the very grains of the rock.

Still muttering her impatience she tapped around the floor and walls, eliciting a flurry of spidery movement—and shrieks from the four friends. From the floor, walls and ceiling, the cave was invaded by armies of spiders. Myriad spinnerets wove cloaks about them, made from the same cobwebby material as the old woman’s dress, the living edges expanding rapidly over their heads until each of them was cloaked from head to toe in a mantle of living lace. Mo, Kate and Mark all found themselves staring at each other from holes they had poked through for their startled eyes. Even Alan shuddered, although he already felt warmed by his own body heat inside the creepy mantle. He established that he could at least breathe through it. Reaching up with shaky hands, he copied the others by poking two slits for his eyes to peer out of.

Within minutes, they found themselves outside in the bitter cold, the driving snow settling over their thick new coverings. As if with a will of their own, their legs began to shuffle forward, so they formed a small single-file line, trudging like clockwork mannequins down from the mountain.

Alan even thought he heard a tick-tock in his head that beat time with his legs.

Mark was the first to rouse from the automatic trudging, many hours later. He was still heading downslope
through the blizzard. Seeing no one ahead of him, he felt a momentary stab of panic. But he was not alone. A glance behind confirmed that the others were following behind him in what appeared to be an animated stupor, so camouflaged with snow it was as if minuscule fragments of the landscape were on the move.

Snow gusted about him. It blew into his eyes. Even where the snow could not penetrate, the cold did, searing his nostrils and his gaping, breathless mouth. The cold—the anguish of it, pierced his skin and stiffened his muscles underneath. But it no longer troubled him. Anger—rage—was the force that drove him on. He had learned the lesson of rage long ago, when it had enabled him to survive life in the Grimstone household. And now he took refuge in his rage. His exhausted legs drew strength from it to make another step, another ten, a hundred yards. A series of hundred-yard intervals and—as Alan might have declared, “Hey, man!”—it was another mile.

Had he dreamed that stuff back there in the cave?

No, he didn’t think so, tightening his fist about the jet-black crystal. Boy, did it feel hard and heavy, yet coursed with some weird inner power. He squeezed it and identified with it, enduring the continuing shock of what felt like static electricity. The bag lady had also given them something in the gruel. The gruel had given them the strength to make this journey. But here in the snow it was he and not Alan who was the leader. It was he who had decided there could be no resting. Because he knew, absolutely, that if they stopped for a rest they would fold over and die.

Under the spiderweb mantle he patted the shape of the harmonica in his coat pocket, recalling how he had first acquired it.

It had been six years ago, when he was nine years old. A bad time at home. It had been some tramp, a man with straggly fair hair like his own, and about the right age to be his father, who had bumped into him in the rain-washed street. The tramp had pushed the harmonica into his hands. It had been early evening, in winter, and Mark remembered the tramp’s face, illuminated by the harsh yellow glare of the streetlight, with absolute clarity. He remembered the haunted look in his eyes—that had impressed him, and the fact he hadn’t asked for money. Actually he never said a word. Mark remembered how Grimstone had reacted to finding the harmonica in his possession, squeezing the story out of him with a terrible beating. Mark had derived a perverse, if painful, pleasure from the look in Grimstone’s eyes when he had described the tramp.