Agnes Day Read online

  "Does he know what he's doing?" Tuesday asked as she panted to keep pace with her brother.

  "It looks like it."

  "You wanna bet he's faking it?"

  "Would you have bet you'd be turned into a duck when you left home that night after refusing that offer to do the nude scene with the dolphins?"

  "That," she said primly, "has nothing to do with this. That was a clear matter of artistic judgment. Besides, dolphins have cold noses."

  Red wandered on, eyeing the vertical slope and grunting to himself.

  "I didn't know that," Gideon said.

  "That's because you've never been goosed by one."

  "You were goosed by a dolphin?"

  Red looked back, looked ahead, and kept walking.

  Tuesday told him she didn't want to talk about it, that the memory was painful enough without him dredging up memorable sidelights to the last night of her career. She fell into a pout. Gideon, sighing, reached down and pulled her out, kicked some dirt into the pout to cover it in case other travelers came this way, and refocused his attention on the lorra, who was bulling through a screen of heavy brush, his horns slashing the way clear for his companions.

  By midafternoon the sun was high and warm overhead, and he was ready to concede that his sister might have been right. Then Red stopped, lifted his head, and bellowed.

  "Now that," said the duck, "is a sign."

  —|—

  "Nice," Gideon said, stroking the lorra's neck.

  Here, beyond the now-battered foliage screen, a switchback series of stepped ramps had been cut into the slope's face. They were not steep, though they promised eventual agony for his legs, and they were wide enough so that he would not be forced to walk a tightrope between the face of the cliff and a direct invitation to oblivion.

  As he craned his neck, he thought he saw indications of caves farther up, and the sighting brought back another memory—as he was falling toward the lake, he had turned to look at the cliff and had seen a series of caves and ladders which, at the time, had seemed to him an infinitely more convenient way to get to the bottom than the one he'd been using. He began to hope, then, that he'd be at the top in less time than he had feared.

  "Well," he said, "I suppose we'd better get going."

  Tuesday balked. "What's your hurry? Don't you think we ought to rest for the night? We're not going to get all the way up in one day, you know."

  Gideon checked the straps that held the supplies on the lorra's back. "Sis, you know as well as I do that the longer we take, the worse it will be when we get there. Who knows? We may even be too late now."

  "Well," she said, "if we're too late, there's no sense in going in the first place, right?"

  He looked over his shoulder. "What the hell's the matter with you?"

  She looked up.

  He looked up. He looked down. "You're kidding."

  "If I could, I'd cross my heart."

  "But you're a duck!"

  "Watch it," she warned.

  "I mean, you can fly!"

  "You'll notice I don't go very high. And when I do, I close my eyes."

  "How can you fly with your eyes closed?"

  "A wing and a prayer," she said, and swatted his rump with the former. "I can't do it."

  "Then don't look down."

  "If I fly, I'll look down."

  "Then walk."

  She lifted one flat, orange foot.

  Gideon slowly lowered his head onto Red's back and considered leaving her behind. After all, she wouldn't be much use to him or Ivy if she was catatonic from fright before they were even halfway to their destination. And, when he thought about it a little longer, he also suspected she wouldn't be much good in a fight. One on one, she was terrific, as he'd already seen; against an army of the sort Wamchu had likely raised, however, she would probably be a disaster.

  On the other hand, if he did leave her behind, there was a chance that one of Wamchu's henchmen might capture her before she reached the safety of the city, and then he would feel guilty for the rest of his life because he had deserted her. And since she was the only member of his family left, duck or not, he didn't think he wanted to be an orphan this late in life.

  He lifted his head and swiped the hair from his eyes.

  "Well?" she said.

  He pointed at the foot of the ramp.

  "Shit."

  Red's purr sounded very much like a snicker, and she glared at him, glared at her brother, and twitched her tail in a gesture that, had she had a hand, and the appropriate finger, would have been all too clear. As it was, Gideon had to assume, for the sake of her sisterly reputation, that she was merely signaling him to get on with it, stop stalling, let's get it over before my other foot gets cold.

  Red followed.

  Gideon brought up the rear.

  And as they climbed, the afternoon faded into twilight, the sky darkening to bands of purple and rose as a smattering of unfamiliar stars presaged the advent of the faceless moon. The cliff's face shaded from dark brown to nearly black, save where it was irregularly streaked with an odd shade of yellow that more than once made him think of demonic faces leering at him from the depths of the rock.

  The going was fairly easy, aside from a few patches of loose stone that almost pitched him over the side forty feet up, and the uneven way the steps had been carved into the ramps so that he never knew where his foot was going to land, and the way Tuesday kept to his right, huddling against his leg and forcing him closer and closer to the edge until he had to nudge her away and then pet her so she wouldn't feel rejected.

  The temperature dropped.

  Red ruffled his fur, and Tuesday fluffed her feathers.

  Gideon pulled out his pacch cloak and slung it around his shoulders, fastening it across the throat by means of a solid gold hook-and-ring in the center of which was a pale green jewel in the shape of a fanged hare. The garment, for all its stiffness, was remarkably comfortable and warm, and he was all the more glad for it when, two hours later, the wind came up, sweeping relentlessly around the face of the cliff with the mournful cry of a midnight owl, pummeling first his back, then his front. His cheeks ached. His ears burned. His legs began to feel as if he were walking a treadmill of slippery pebbles.

  There was no sense looking up—the top of the range was still out of sight and, once the sun was gone, even the clouds merged into the black that crept toward them like a vast and sentient shadow.

  An hour into the evening the ramp leveled to a broad ledge; in its center was a shallow cave, and Gideon, not wishing to take an unfortunate misstep, suggested they stop torturing themselves and camp for the night. Tuesday was inside before he knew she had even moved, and Red, after realizing there would be no decent foraging, grumpily paced for several minutes before curling up in the cave's mouth. Gideon knelt behind him, arms folded on the animal's spine, chin on his wrists.

  "You know," he said quietly, "it's really lovely up here."

  Red bobbed his head.

  "I remember when I first saw this place—boy, it seems like a hundred years ago. God, I was scared. You wouldn't believe it to see me now, but I was absolutely certain I was going to die without ever seeing you or Sis again. I just knew it. I had, I guess, one of those premonitions, you know what I mean? Like I did when they told me that Sis was dead in that car crash. I didn't believe it. I really didn't. I just knew she was alive. Deep down, so far down inside me I didn't know it was there, I knew for a fact she wouldn't leave me without saying goodbye. Of course, I didn't die, and she didn't say goodbye because she was a duck by then, but you can't be right all the time, right? or else you'd go crazy. Knowing everything that's going to happen in the future, I mean. Wouldn't that drive you out of your mind, knowing all that? Having all that responsibility? Having all those lives, the very world, in your hands? God, that scares me just to think about it."

  Red shifted.

  The dark erased everything but the sound of his voice.

  "And now here
we are. Incredible. It reminds me of the time me and my first sweetheart went to the movies and—"

  "Gideon, do you mind?"

  He glanced into the cave. "Sorry. I didn't know you were sleeping."

  "I'm not. But I want to be."

  He turned, using the lorra's side as a pillow, the cloak for a blanket. "You don't have to listen, you know. Red and I were just waxing nostalgia."

  "You were waxing. Red was sleeping."

  Red snored.

  Gideon sighed.

  He had stopped counting the number of times he had wondered why everyone seemed to blame their misfortunes on him, and to stick him with the jobs no one else wanted to do. It wasn't as if he didn't have problems of his own. There was Ivy, and there was his sister, and there was the plain and simple fact that, love or not, he was truly homesick. This world, for all its beauty and danger, wasn't his; this world, peopled as it was with some of the most interesting characters he had ever met—aside from his third-grade teacher, who ate raw hamburger for lunch and kept a pet turtle in her drawer—this world, as exotic as it was, couldn't beat his own living room on a Sunday night, when he would settle down in his bathrobe with a crossword puzzle and a glass of moderately poor scotch.

  Which was what he had been doing, come to think of it, when this all started.

  He wondered who was in his house now.

  He wondered how many calls he'd gotten since he'd left, calls from his agent offering him positions on championship-bound teams that needed, just for the season, a seasoned quarterback in case the star sprained a thumb or jammed a toe.

  He tried to figure out how those damned Bridges worked—gateways between worlds, as it had been explained to him, that came and went depending upon the need of the person.

  He sat up and stared into the darkness over Red's back, and wondered how that pair of slanted red eyes had gotten all the way up here.

  Red eyes he had seen before.

  Malevolent red eyes that could belong to only one person.

  "Tuesday," he whispered urgently.

  "I see them," she answered.

  "What should we do?"

  "You're the hero, you tell me."

  The eyes vanished, and he heard a mocking laugh carried away by the wind.

  "I think we should get some sleep."

  "What, and be murdered in our beds?"

  "Then you stand guard. I'm going to have to be clearheaded in the morning."

  "What, and lose my sleep?"

  He settled down again and closed his eyes. When his sister called to him, he ignored her; when she called a second time, he rolled over and ignored her; when she called a third time, and added a fairly good scream besides, he sat up, rubbed his eyes, and saw that the sun was already lighting the sky overhead.

  He also saw the creature standing on the ledge, a spear in its hand and a gleam in its eye.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Slowly, not wanting to antagonize the creature into doing something stupid like killing them all and ending forever his dream of returning to New Jersey, Gideon reached for his bat, specially forged for him by Whale Pholler, and cursed when he realized he had taken the belt off sometime during the night. Without moving, he glanced side to side, and saw the weapon off to his left, under Red's tail.

  Tuesday waddled up behind him and poked him in the back. "Do you see it?"

  "How could I miss it?" he whispered, at the same time telling himself it was only a dream and not to worry, he would wake up any minute now and discover his sister sitting smugly on his chest and nibbling at his nose. Probably, he thought, it was something he'd eaten that his body refused on principle to digest, one of those leafy concoctions Tuesday had whipped up for them last night as they climbed. It was only to be expected; she was a lousy cook, and always had been from the first time she began experimenting with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on toasted rye and discovered that by adding a touch of pimento and a dash of soft-boiled egg she had hit upon the perfect, if not lethal, cure for a hangover.

  "I think it's naked," she said, not altogether shocked.

  "How can you tell? It isn't wearing anything."

  It was not quite as tall as Gideon, but it gave the appearance of great height nevertheless as it stood boldly framed against the blue of the sky and the green vista below. It was vaguely humanoid, if one, after screaming himself hoarse, discounted the sloping, bleached white, naked skull that had shimmering grey holes where the eyes should have been, the broad skeleton-like torso whose flat polished ribs enclosed shimmering grey hair, and the bony arms and bandy legs that seemed not to have a shred of flesh upon them; and it would have been more than a little corpse-like had it not been able to manipulate its facial structure much the way a human does shortly after waking and discovering he's died during the night.

  Gideon shuddered.

  Red yawned, looked around, saw the thing standing not ten inches from his muzzle and scrambled to his feet, his tail high and whipping, his eyes instantly black. There was the start of a menacing growl before he changed his mind and shook his head as if in disbelief, then backed hastily into the cave and sat on his haunches.

  The creature took a step forward.

  Gideon and Tuesday each took a step back.

  Red began to sample the rare taste of a rock he discovered at his feet.

  Suddenly the creature lifted the bone-tipped spear over its head, waved it around in an elaborate circle, and jammed its point deep into the ground.

  "I think he's telling us he wants to be friends," Gideon said with more hope than certainty.

  "I think he's telling us he can tear us apart with his bare hands."

  The creature approached them again, tilted its head sideways and stared at the duck. There was the unmistakable sound of a quizzical whimper in its throat, wherever that was, and Tuesday responded with a whimper of her own, one a bit more definite about what she was thinking.

  Gideon knelt and put an arm gently over her back. "It's all right," he said without taking his gaze from the thing. "I honestly don't think it intends to harm us."

  "Prove it," she said.

  When he looked at Red for support physical or moral, the lorra looked at the roof of the cave; when he looked at his sister, she scuttled away from his arm and squatted between Red's two front hooves; when he looked back at the creature, it held out its hand.

  He stood, hesitated, made a wish, and grabbed it.

  The creature instantly yanked its hand free and shook it, blew on it; the shimmering grey darkened. "Damn," it said. "What are you trying to do, kill me? For heaven's sake!"

  Gideon smiled cautious relief. "I'm sorry. I guess I don't know my own strength."

  "Too right by half." It blew on its hand again, then pulled the spear from the ground with a minimum of effort. "Besides, you have a cushion, so to speak, and all I have is this petrified calcium."

  It sighed, and Gideon turned his head politely away from the breath that made him think of the mold he used to find on the shower curtain in the middle of the summer before he learned to take baths and examine the rings instead.

  The creature drew itself up then and pointed to the right. "Well, let's get going, shall we? This awful wind's going to blow me into toothpicks if I don't get out of here soon." It started along the ledge, paused when it realized no one was following, and returned to put its free hand on its hip. "Well?"

  Gideon, with a look to the others to keep them in their place, which by their disgusted expressions they had no intention of leaving in the first place, casually walked over to his belt and picked it up, strapped it on, and let his hand close over the handle of the greenwood bat. The bat that no one in this world could lift but him. Immediately, the holster opened and the bat was at port arms, lightly tapping his shoulder as he gauged the distance between him and the spear carrier.

  "I think, before we leave, we'd like to know where we're going."

  The creature tapped a foot impatiently. "I see."

  The bat swung
slowly down to point at the ground. "I'm sure you do or you wouldn't have found us, but I still want to know where you think we're going."

  "My name," it said proudly, "is Junffer. Jeko Junffer."

  Gideon nodded.

  Junffer tilted its head again. "Well?"

  Gideon, supposing he was caught in some cliff ritual the breach of which might or might not result in the loss of his life, made to introduce himself and the others, but he was cut off by a wave of the spear.

  "I already know your names," Junffer snapped crossly. "You don't think I come out to this dreadful place every day, just on the off chance I might run across a stranger or two, do you?"

  Gideon frowned. It was bad enough standing hundreds of feet above solid ground, in a wind determined to blow him back where he came from, talking to a skeleton that carried a spear and had clouds for eyes; but how did it know who they were? Was it some devilish lieutenant of Wamchu's, cleverly seeking information for the forthcoming battle? Was it a cold and callous mercenary of some sort, peddling its diabolical combat skills to the highest bidder, which in this case was obviously the Wamchu? Or was it an innocent denizen of the cliff itself, desperately scratching out a meager living on this scoured and naked rock, thinking they were rich merchants he could hold for ransom and thus escape his miserable lot?

  "Junffer," the skeleton repeated carefully. "Jeko Junffer."

  "You said that already."

  "You mean... you mean you've never heard of me?"

  Gideon shook his head; Tuesday shook her head; Red stood up and walked out of the cave, sniffed Junffer from gleaming bone pate to dusty boned toes and shook his head.

  "Well, I'll be damned," Junffer said. He started to walk away, returned and shook his head. "I'm a star, you know."

  "Pleased to meet you," Gideon said, and gave the duck a quick kick in the side when he heard her clear her throat. "I've never met a star before."

  Tuesday grumbled, and took a piece of his boot.

  Junffer rasped a fingertip over his jaw. "You're sure you never heard of me."

  "We're strangers here," Gideon explained.

  "Ah, I see."