Ghostcountry's Wrath (20 page)

Still Brock did not move, seemed lost in hero worship.

Calvin straightened. “That was a
hint
kid! For fire, you need firewood, and it's been rainin' a lot, so why don't you see what you can find under some of these brushpiles?” He indicated a size and length. “An armful that big if you can manage it.
And watch out for snakes!”

Brock's mouth opened as if he were going to smart off, but thought better of it—wisely. It wasn't too soon for the kid to learn patience, nor to discover that most things worth having required preparation and planning, of which magic was not the least. And while Calvin waited, he cleared a section of ground of leaves and the sparse undergrowth, then scooped a circle a yard in diameter in its center. A pair of thigh-thick branches dragged in from either side made seats. And while he was prowling, he found a bit of kindling himself, mostly dry, perhaps indicative of the fact that the rain here had been light. A search through his pack brought out char-cloth, thistledown, and the inner bark of cedar: all good tinder. Paper and match would have done, of course, but this time…well, the kid had crossed an ocean to be here, and foolish or not, he deserved some content for his trouble.

If he'd just get his fuzzy butt back!

Calvin checked the sky again, wondering why he was so jumpy. And just then Brock returned: arms full to overflowing with a staggering weight of exactly what Calvin had ordered. The boy's face was smudged, his chest, arms, and belly begrimed and plastered with leaves and splinters of bark.

“Over there,” Calvin grunted, pointing.

Brock nodded sullenly, dumped the mess, then ambled over to lounge beside Calvin. “Okay,” Calvin began with a sigh, “most times when I need a fire, I just build a fire. Matches or a lighter, paper, and so forth. But one of the underlying tenets of magic is that you have to have the proper reverence for both the
act
and the
preparation
—in fact, you really shouldn't separate 'em. I honestly don't know how a lot of it works, and I suspect some of it's simply a matter of mental discipline. But a lot of it involves fire. But if you just strike a match and dive in from there, you've taken fire for granted, and Cherokee never took fire for granted. They called it Sacred White and Sacred Red, and there were priests whose only job was to keep Sacred Fire burnin' from year to year. But you had to treat any fire with reverence. You didn't put it out with water, because fire and water were enemies and fire might not work for you then. And to piss on a fire or something like that was an insult and could bring bad luck. Therefore if to make a really proper fire you first have to find just the right tinder—gather thistledown when the thistle's ready, not when
you
are, and stuff like that—and then make cordage and find poplar wood and cedar and make a bow-drill, and put forth all your skill and coordination—and patience and endurance—until you've got an ember, and then take care of it like it was a baby—then you appreciate that fire and won't use it for anything frivolous. You get my drift?”

Brock nodded skeptically.

“You can relax,” Calvin told him, as he held out flint, steel, and charcloth. “I'm not gonna make you do any of that, but I'll show you how sometime—this is only slightly more modern. Besides, I'm not gonna teach you anything yet—but I wanted to impress on you how serious this stuff can be, that it's not a toy to be used to impress your friends and make 'em think you're cool.”

Again Brock nodded.

And Calvin bent himself to making fire. Flint struck steel, sparks flew into charcloth, went out. Again sparks flew, caught this time. Calvin held the down close, blew into it—gently: ever so gently. Flame flared, caught scraps of cedar bark. More fire. He set it under twigs, and blessedly they too caught.

“Cool,” Brock cried, bending close.

“Hot, actually.” Calvin chuckled, leaning back. “Now that that's over, how've you been? When'd you get here? Shoot,
how'd
you get here, and all?”

“Been here 'bout an hour longer than you,” Brock told him. “Flew into Atlanta yesterday morning, picked up some stuff, and took the bus down to Hinesville, then hitched the rest of the way.”

Calvin started to say something about that being both stupid and dangerous, then remembered that he'd done pretty much the same thing, eschewing the flying, when he'd been Brock's age. “Good enough,” he said finally. “So, were you plannin' to camp here, or what?”

A shrug. “I've got a one-man tent I rented, got food, got some cash my sis gave me.”

Calvin perked up at that. “How
is
Robyn, anyway? And the kid?”

“She's fine. Got a new boyfriend who's in a band. The kid's a kid: loud, smelly, wet frequently. Cute, though.”

“Who's he look like?”

“Mr. Potato Head, mostly. Folks say he looks like me. Hard to tell, without hair.”

Calvin studied him for a long moment. “And what're you doin'? That doesn't seem to figure in your notes much.”

Another shrug. “Goin' to school, which is pretty neat. Got a part-time job in Robyn's guy's folks' store. I get by, and Mom sends me money.”

“How d' you like London?”

“Awesome, man! So much to see, so much to do! All the museums and churches and stuff, and all of it so old; and all the neat folks and stores and things. Everything you want's there, man!”

Calvin gestured at the surrounding woods. “Everything?”

“Well, not this, but the countryside's not bad, 'cept that it rains all the time, and you can't get a tan.” He looked down at his flat white belly. “The guys back in Jacksonville'd laugh me off the beach now. Shoot, I don't even have a tan line anymore.”

“Got any friends? A girlfriend maybe?”

“Couple of guys I hang with. A chick or two, nothin' serious.”

“You're a bit young.”

“I'm
fourteen
!”

“I'm not talkin' about your hormones or your plumbin', kid, I'm talkin' about your head: responsibility, and all that unpleasant stuff.”

“They've got condoms in England, man!”

“And I hope you
use
'em, if you're doin' anything that suggests one—but that's not what I was talkin' about.”

Brock cocked his head.

They spent the ensuing half hour catching up on a year, the only caveat seeming to be the one subject they had come there to confront. Calvin spoke a lot about finally starting college, of his studies of his own people, of what living with Sandy was like, of her place in North Carolina and their friends. And Brock talked more of his older sister, Robyn, whom Calvin could have loved had he let himself, and of life in England, and how his mom was putting her life back together after the revelation that her second husband had raped her own daughter and left her pregnant, prompting her and Brock to run away from home the previous summer, on which occasion they'd met Calvin—and been exposed to magic.

Eventually Calvin shifted his position to avoid a knob on the branch that was poking his butt. He added a twig to the fire. It burned almost smokelessly, the heat rising straight up, keeping the campsite—relatively—cool. “It really is good to see you, Brock,” he said at last. “You look like you're doin' pretty good; sounds like you're doin' okay, too.”

Brock looked wary. “Sounds like you're leading up to something.”

Calvin sighed. “I am. I didn't want Sandy to come down here at all, and I wasn't sure I was coming, except that you seemed to want it so bad, and I
had
promised, and… Well, I really do like you, and you did me a bunch of favors back a year ago when all that Spearfin-ger stuff was goin' down…”

“I sense a
but
approaching.”

Calvin nodded. “
But,
Brock, I can't stress enough to you that magic's a responsibility—and I've debated long and hard about what I could teach you and still be safe. Something that would be real to you and obviously not a trick, 'cause I owe you the real thing. But not something you could get in trouble with even if you misused it—and that's been a lot harder than you think. See, I don't know
that
much, and so much of what I do know's mixed up with folk wisdom and folk medicine, or else it's just not relevant to your reality. Like, I know some huntin' charms: ones to make you shoot true. But you don't hunt, unless you've changed in the last year; and you shouldn't use 'em for any other purpose except for that purpose, and only then if you intend to use as much of what you kill as you can. Am I makin' sense?”

“More or less.”

“And there's also the question of most of what I know bein' Cherokee magic, except that even that's a bad way of puttin' it, 'cause properly experienced the whole world's magic to a Cherokee. There's an intricate play of forces and cause and effect between—I was gonna say the natural world and man's world, but really there's only the one, and men are a part
of
it, not apart
from
it, but they can still manipulate it in some senses. But anyway, I'm not sure how appropriate it even is for me to teach you Cherokee magic if you're not of that blood—you're not, are you?”

Brock shook his head.

“Seminole? Creek? You got the hair.”

“Comes in a bottle.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot.”

“No big deal.”

Another pause to tend the fire and check the sky. “Anyway, like I was sayin', I'm not even sure it's cool to teach you Cherokee magic 'cause you're not of that blood, so it might not work for you—that is, you haven't grown up soakin' in it, even unconsciously, for years. Nor am I sure what'd happen if you tried it over in England, say, given that it's a place with its own kind of magic. I'm not sure how the different kinds would get along.”

Brock's eyes narrowed. “You sure there's even magic
in
England?”

“The place is supposed to be eaten up with it,” Calvin replied, thinking that he knew rather too much about the assorted magical Otherworlds that lay about this World. “There's magic—or what we call magic—everywhere.”

Brock's eyes were wide, earnest, and far too hopeful. “But you're still gonna teach me something, aren't you?”

“I promised, therefore I will. But I want you to think about it for awhile, first, okay? I want you to go off somewhere by yourself and think. I want you to think about what you could use magic for that would enable you to do good things for people—and you can forget about shapechangin';
that's
right out. What I've in mind isn't anything major, so we don't have to do any preparation, or anything, elsewise I'd make you fast and sweat and purge and go-to-water—and I may anyway, just so you'll know how to center yourself properly. But for now, just go off and think. Try to get centered, get serious, and…just think.”

Brock rose, his face indeed very solemn. He glanced down at his dirt-stained chest. “Can I clean up first?”

“Be my guest. Just be back before noon.”

“Why noon?”

“One of the
between
times, therefore a good time to do magic.”

“Oh.”

Calvin checked his watch again, then the sky. Brock paused halfway to the stream. “Why do you keep doing that?”

“What?”

“Looking at the sky. It's like you're watching for something.”

“I am,” Calvin said softly.

“What?”

“Better you don't know. Better we conclude our business and go our separate ways.”

Brock stood unmoving, looking hurt.

“Not 'cause I don't like you,” Calvin told him, motioning him on to the creek. “But 'cause I like you too much.”

Brock's reply was a stiffening of his shoulders as he turned and wandered down to the waterside five yards away. He squatted there, scooped up water and splashed it along his face, arms, and chest, sluicing away the grime his load of kindling had smeared across him. He rose then, stood shimmering and dripping in the morning light: black and white and golden like a young god—then put on socks and sneakers and marched up the bank toward the woods.

Calvin caught him by the forearm as he passed and pressed something into his damp fingers: a sprig of cedar. “Hang onto that,” he said, and let go. He did not see which way Brock went, nor did he hear, for the lad moved with the silence of the dead.

Calvin stared at the fire, watching the wood slowly blaze up then turn to coals. Glory and decay—like a man's life, if a man was lucky enough to even have glory. Most merely lived, then rotted. Brock wasn't one of those; neither was he, nor Dave, nor Sandy, nor Cousin Kirkwood. They all had their edges, their madnesses, their contacts that could lead them to glory—but perhaps too soon thereafter to ash and ruin.

At least he was close to solving one problem: a few hours from now it would be one down, two to go.
If
he was lucky. If Brock kept his head on straight. If Sandy didn't interfere. If there was no owl.