The Prophet of Panamindorah, Book One Fauns and Filinians (2 page)

Finally, the director said.
“His records
are full of incident reports. You can read them.”

No, don’t read them!
Corry almost said
aloud.
Talk about them! You’ve got to talk!

“…
no idea how to use zippers…behaved as if
all foods were strange to him. Electronic devices… He loves books,
and I think he’s learned a lot of what’s normal from reading. He
asked me one day how we got all the letters to look the same shape
and size. He’d never seen typeset.”

Corry sagged against the wall. He could
vaguely remember some of that. For a moment he couldn’t hear them
and thought they might be reading.

“
What’s synesthesia?”

“
A sort of cross-wiring in the brain that
causes some senses to trigger others. It’s a rare condition. With
Corry, his sense of smell seems most effected. It’s mixed up with
his other senses, particularly with his sense of sight. He talks
about smelling and tasting colors.”

Corry bit his lip. He didn’t really think he
had synesthesia. At least, he’d never been able to find a
description of the condition that matched his own. For one thing,
his ability to smell and taste colors came and went in a way that
he could not always control. And hearing vibrations? He hadn’t been
able to find any information about that.

They were talking about boring things now,
things he already knew—how he didn’t get along with the other
children, how he liked animals, how he was small for his age, how
they didn’t really know his age for sure, but placed it between
twelve and fifteen.

Corry felt an intense wave of disappointment.
He took his hands from the wall.
They hardly know any more about
me than I do.
He was still staring gloomily at the bookcases
when the library monitor came to tell him the director wanted to
see him in her office.

* * * *

He dreamed of a wood beneath a crescent blood
red moon. Wolves. A pack? An army! Thousands, tall as ponies,
preparing to rest now as the suggestion of dawn fanned across the
horizon. Two-legged creatures walked between them, moving supplies,
setting up tents.

A figure appeared—taller than the rest. In
the pre-dawn darkness he presented little more than a silhouette
with the suggestion of a cape and boots. “Where
are
you,
Corellian?”

Corry moaned as he woke. He felt an aching in
his sweaty hand. Bringing it close to his face in the dark bedroom,
he saw that he was still clutching the cowry. His foster mother had
given it to him. He’d seen the shell in a display when he walked
into her house, and he couldn’t help but stare. It was glossy
orange-gold, and she’d laughed when he told her he couldn’t accept
it. Too valuable. She said it was worth only ten dollars. Corry
felt foolish, but he’d taken it greedily and clutched it during the
strangeness of supper in a new house with two other foster kids.
The shell calmed him.

Corry opened his hand wide and saw the red
indention of the shell’s little teeth in his palm. He sat up on his
elbows, dropped his head in the pillow and clutched the shell in
both hands as though in prayer. He could almost taste the acid
frustration.

Dreams often troubled him, but it had been
months since the images had been so vivid. Corry looked at the
cowry again. Each time his eyes rested on it, something jumped
inside him, and he could
almost
remember. When he first came
to the children’s home, his dreams had been clearer. He had had a
strong sense that some wrong had been done him, that he’d suffered
some terrible loss.
They said I spoke a different language when
I came, but I can’t remember it now. I know that I’m losing
something important. No matter what I do, it just keeps slipping
away.

Corry rolled over and sat up. The glowing
clock on the table read 6:30. Faint sunlight filtered through the
blinds. The lump under the covers in the other bed was still rising
and falling rhythmically. Corry could hear pleasant sizzling and
clinking coming from the kitchen, along with warm smells of
biscuits and coffee and eggs.

He rose and dressed, then tiptoed into the
hall, through a door into the garage, and then outside. A five-foot
chain-link fence ran along the back of the property, bordering an
orange grove. Corry inhaled deeply, drinking in the scent of orange
blossoms and the blue of the Florida sky.

He stepped onto the cool concrete sidewalk.
Corry could not remember seeing orange groves until the drive
yesterday from Orlando. The trees crowded close together in
staggered rows, their deep green leaves contrasting with the pale
gray sugar sand between. Corry found the grove appealing. It
reminded him of the cowry in a way he could not explain. He made
his way along the sidewalk until he reached a gate.

At that moment one of the Tembril’s cats came
strolling through the back garden to have a dust bath on the
sidewalk at Corry’s feet. He smiled and crouched to pet her. Bent
close to the ground, Corry could look beneath the first row of
trees. To his surprise, he saw a pair of dainty hooves and slender
legs. They looked quite small, and Corry wondered if it might be a
baby deer.

Slowly he stood up. Although he could not see
the hooves from this angle, he fancied he saw a trace of brown fur
between the leaves. Corry maneuvered the gate open and stepped onto
the sugar sand.

“Corry!”

He turned toward the voice. At the same
instant, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shape bolt from
behind the tree and away through the grove.

The voice was Patrick’s, one of the other
foster kids. “What are you doing?”

Corry said nothing.

Patrick eyed him with a frown. “Mrs. Tembril
says to come in and help with breakfast.”

Corry gave the grove another long stare
before moving away. He was almost certain the shape had fled on two
legs.

* * * *

“Mrs. Tembril, who lives in the grove?”

“I don’t think anyone lives out there.” She
glanced at her husband.

He shook his head. “A juice company owns it.
Pickers harvest the oranges, but they’re gone now. I don’t want you
wandering around in the grove, Corry.”

Corry kept his expression neutral. “I thought
I saw a deer out there this morning.”

Martin, who’d stayed in the house several
summers, spoke up. “You’ll see plenty more if you keep your eyes
open—raccoons, rabbits, armadillos, foxes. This area has a lot of
wildlife.”

Corry nodded. “Wildlife. Yeah.”

* * * *

The Tembrils said Corry needed to earn his
room and board, and they had an endless list of small maintenance
items for their foster kids to complete. Patrick called it slave
labor, but it was still better than summer at the children’s home,
so nobody complained very loudly.

An hour or two before sundown, everyone was
usually permitted free time. Patrick and Martin liked to watch TV,
but Corry wanted time alone. He went for long walks, explored
palmetto and scrub oak thickets, examined gopher turtles, startled
armadillos, and chased the occasional snake through the long
grass.

Every day Corry carried the cowry shell in
his pocket, and he did not know why.

* * * *

One evening Corry wandered to the lake east
of the house. It was an attractive spot, smelling of pine and leaf
mold. In one direction a trail ran to the edge of the orange grove,
where a break in the palmetto hedge gave a glimpse of the orange
trees.

As Corry walked, he thought he heard faint
music, like a flute or recorder. He thought it might be coming from
the direction of the grove, although it was so faint he could not
be sure. Soon after he reached the lake, the music ceased.

Corry paused on the shore, watching the
minnows dart. As he squatted, his eyes strayed upward, and he
froze. Above his own reflection, he saw a girl’s face.

“Thul tulsa?” he whispered. Corry did not
know what the words meant.

This girl was older than he and had a
wildness about her that was at once charming and intimidating. Her
ears appeared to be pointed, though it was difficult to tell
because they were also tufted with long, soft fur around the upper
rim. A few locks of her thick hair cascaded over one shoulder, and
she wore a delicate chain around her neck that dangled in a sharp
V.

After a few seconds Corry reached out to
touch the face in the water. Instantly it vanished. He scrambled to
his feet, only to find she was already about ten yards away towards
the grove.

The girl wasn’t human. Her legs were covered
in thick cinnamon fur and ended in split hooves. She wore a long
tunic of brown cloth, belted at the waist. Corry was so interested
in her hooves that he hardly noticed the rest of her. They were, in
fact, deer hooves, as her legs were deer legs. Her skin was about
the same color as her fur. For an instant, she remained as still as
some delightful painting, one hand gripping the end of the chain
about her neck.

At last Corry stepped forward.

The girl whirled with the fluid grace of a
wild animal and bounded toward the grove. As she turned, Corry
caught a brief glimpse of a six-inch deer tail beneath the flying
skirt, snowy underside turned up in alarm. Before he could run four
steps, she was beside the break in the palmetto hedge. She
hesitated, watching Corry as he raced towards her. Then she turned
without a sound and vanished among the trees.

* * * *

The creature was called a faun. Corry found
pictures of the mythical beast online. He lay on his bed for a long
time that evening, still fully clothed, thinking. Patrick came in
and got ready for bed. The lights had been out for five minutes
when Corry terrified his roommate by leaping suddenly to his feet.
“It means fauness!”

Patrick sat up grumbling, but Corry had
already gone into the bathroom and begun getting undressed. “For
just a moment,” he muttered, “I was thinking in that other
language. Tulsa means lady…or something like it. And thul means
fauness.”

Chapter
2. Music
in the Dark

They say it was a trinket in the Temple of
the Creator for a thousand thousand years before it came into
Panamindorah. They say he commissioned a shelt to bear it in his
service. They say I lost it, which is not quite true. Gabalon stole
it from me, but only because I was careless.

—Archemais,
A Wizard’s History of
Panamindorah

From that day on, Corry spent every evening
beside the lake. On the fifth day, he was trudging home near dark
when he heard soft music. Moving furtively, he started back towards
the opening in the palmetto hedge. Corry poked his head around a
tree to have a look at the grove and something hit him between the
eyes. Corry crumpled over. Through his pain, he was dimly aware
that the projectile had glanced off him to land with a plop in the
lake.

“No, no.”

Corry squinted up at the voice. Through
doubled vision, he saw a deer—bone white, like a ghost in the
gathering gloom. Atop her back sat the fauness. As Corry watched,
she hopped down. The fauness walked around him, scanning the sand.
She took no more notice of Corry than she might of a toad.

His vision was beginning to steady. He tried
to stand up. “What are you doing?”

The fauness stiffened and turned slowly.
“What did you say?” She did not speak English. Her words seemed to
Corry like the face of an old friend, half-forgotten and somewhat
aged.

“I said, what are you doing? What did you
just throw at me?”

She looked as though she’d been hit with
something herself. “How do you speak my language?”

“I don’t know.”

She smiled. “You speak strangely—in the old
way. Perhaps it is a property of the music.”

“What music?”

She shook her head. “What happened to the
thing that hit you?”

“I think it fell in the lake.”

She straightened up. “Oh. Good.” She turned,
took a running leap, and mounted her deer.

“Wait!” Corry tried to chase them, but every
step made his head pound. For a moment he stood still on the gray
sand. Then he turned back to the lake. By now he knew the surface
like his own hands, and he could see a new hole in the blanket of
water plants. It was several yards from shore. Corry hesitated a
moment, thinking of alligators in the dark water. He’d never seen
one, except in books, but he knew they were all over Florida.

Another moment, and it would be too dark to
even contemplate a search. Corry stripped off his shoes and stepped
into the water. He reached the spot while still only thigh deep,
bent, and plunged his arm to the shoulder in the murk. His head
throbbed. His fingers trailed along the slimy bottom.
Don’t
think of alligators, don’t think of alligators.

His fingers touched metal, a thin chain.
Corry grabbed it and headed for the shore. He could tell without
looking that the chain was a necklace, and it had something hanging
on it. He slogged up the bank and sat down beside his shoes,
shivering. Then he raised his prize. To his amazement, he could see
no object, although the chain hung down in a sharp V. Corry grasped
at the point of the V and felt a solid weight. He blinked hard in
the deepening twilight. He could see…
something
, traced in
water droplets. He closed both his hands around the object.
Amazing!
He was definitely holding something, and he even
thought he recognized the shape.

* * * *

In his bathroom at the Tembril’s, Corry shut
the door and turned on the sink. He placed his hand under the
stream and watched as the water traced a shape out of the air above
his palm. Corry reached into his other pocket, took out his cowry,
and put it beside the sink.
I was right!

The invisible object was shaped like a cowry.
It had three holes either side of midline and a hole at one end.
Corry remembered the music he had heard before seeing the fauness.
It’s a little flute.
On one side of the flute, he found a
loop, all of a piece with the instrument, threaded by the chain.
She was wearing it around her neck the first time I saw
her.