“Nature summons you,” the neigh-voice said.
“I can wait till I get home,” Zane muttered, conscious of Luna’s presence.
“The Incarnation Nature,” the horse clarified. “Gaea. She says to dally only long enough to pick up one soul.”
“Nature-the-person? If she wants to talk to me, why doesn’t she come herself, as the other Incarnations have?”
“She is the Green Mother,” Mortis neighed, and there was an undertone of equine respect. “She governs all living creatures. Do not annoy her, Death.”
“You had better go,” Luna said. “I don’t know which of you Incarnations has the most power, but Nature surely is not to be trifled with. You can drop me off anywhere near Kilvarough, and—”
“Do not go near Kilvarough!” Mortis warned. “Operate from the ghost world.”
“But I can’t leave Luna among the ghosts!” Zane protested.
“Bring her.”
“I’d like that,” Luna said. “Is it permitted?”
“I’ll do it regardless,” Zane decided. “I’m not going to leave you in any strange place unprotected.” He turned on the Deathwatch countdown. It showed nine minutes. He oriented on the client, using the special gems of his bracelet. He nudged Mortis, aiming the stallion in the right direction. “Take us there,” he directed.
The horse leaped away from the carnival. Clouds wafted by, and the cosmos was inchoate. “Ooo, lovely!” Luna breathed, hugging Zane from behind.
Then Mortis landed in a great dance hall in the city of San Diego. Magic clothed the walls with royal trappings and made the floor resemble solid silver. It did not at all look like a place of death.
“So this is what your job is like,” Luna murmured. “You must enjoy it well.”
“It varies,” Zane said. “Parts of it are not fun.”
They dismounted, and Mortis stepped into the background. No one noticed that he was a horse, for he was protected by the magic of his own office.
The watch showed four minutes. Zane went to the spot indicated by the gems. It was a section of the dance floor. Dancers crossed it and moved on, doing the Squirm; he could not tell who was fated to be there when the time came.
There were two empty seats beside a young woman who was not dancing. Zane and Luna took them.
Two young men walked along the edge of the dance floor, engaged in animated conversation or moderate debate. They halted abruptly near Zane. “Well, then, let’s try it!” one exclaimed. “Random selection, yours against mine.”
“Done!” the other agreed. “Winner takes them both. A disinterested judge.”
The first turned to a seated youth who was drinking a beverage from a bottle. “Do you know how to play a guitar?”
The youth laughed. He set down his bottle and stifled a burp. “Me? I’m tone deaf! I can’t even play a triangle!”
“He’ll do,” the second man said. He turned to Luna. “Do you dance well, miss?”
“Excellently,” Luna said.
“No good.” The man focused on the other girl. “Do you dance well?”
“No,” the girl said shyly. “I’ve got two left feet. I only come to watch the others dance.”
“She’ll do,” the first man said.
“Do for what?” Luna asked, annoyed about being passed over for whatever it was.
“And you can be the judge,” the second man said to her.
Zane looked at his watch. The countdown timer showed two minutes. Who was going to die here, and how?
The first young man produced a nondescript guitar and pushed it into the hands of the tone-deaf lad. “When I give the signal, play.”
“But I told you I can’t—”
“Precisely. It’s an excellent test.”
The second man brought out a pair of dancing slippers. “Put these on and dance,” he said to the left-footed girl.
Suddenly Zane had an awful notion. “Luna!” he cried. “Get out of here! It may be
your
death we’re here for!” The watch showed ninety seconds.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You brought me here. That wouldn’t have been necessary if I were the client. You could simply have pushed me off the horse in mid-air. Anyway, I’m not in balance; I can make it to Hell without your assistance. I’m not on your calendar.”
Zane had to admit that was true. The death belonged to someone else. But to whom?
“Begin!” the first man ordered.
The youth put his fingers to the strings with a what-can
-I-lose smirk—and played an excellent chord. “See? Pure junk,” he said.
“Not so,” Luna told him. “That sounded nice.”
Astonished, he played again, watching his hands—and a fine melody commenced. His left fingers flew along the frets, while his right hand strummed out an authoritative tune. The hands seemed to possess lives of their own.
The left-footed girl stood up, wearing the slippers. “You’ll see,” she said. “I’m no good at all.” Her right leg did look slightly deformed, perhaps by some childhood injury; it was unlikely she could move it well.
She began to dance—and her feet flashed like those of a ballerina. Her mouth dropped open. “The slippers!” she cried. “Magic!”
Both young men turned to Luna. “Now you watch and listen, beautiful,” the first one said. “Tell us which is better—the music or the dancing.”
Luna smiled. “I shall. I’m in the arts myself; I can give an informed opinion, though these are two different forms of expression.”
The youth played the magic guitar and the girl danced in the magic slippers so well that soon the other dancers paused to listen and watch. Others started to dance to the new music. But none danced as well as the left-footed girl, who fairly flew about the floor, kicking her legs with pretty flourishes and throwing herself into dazzling spins. She had not been a really attractive girl when seated, but now her cleverness of foot lent her a special allure. Physical beauty, Zane realized as he watched, was not entirely in the body; it was in the way the body was moved.
The girl’s face became flushed. She panted. “Enough!” she cried breathlessly. “I’m not used to this!” But the newly formed audience was clapping, urging her on, and the guitar was sounding veritable panoramas of notes, almost visibly filling the dance hall. These were two excellent magic items!
Then Zane saw that the youth was no longer smiling. His fingers were raw and starting to bleed, for they were soft, not calloused in the manner of experienced players. But he could not stop playing. The magic compelled him. And the girl—
The watch touched zero on the countdown. The girl screamed and collapsed.
Now Zane understood. The magic articles did not consider human limitations. They did not care if a person flayed his fingers playing, or if an out-of-condition girl exercised herself into heart failure. They simply compelled performance.
Zane rose and went to the girl, experiencing a certain guilty relief that the client had not, after all, been Luna. Of course he should have realized what was about to happen and prevented the left-footed girl from donning the terrible slippers. He could have saved her life, instead of merely watching her die.
Regretfully, he took the girl’s soul and turned away from the body. The other dancers were standing aghast at the sudden tragedy. Luna, too, was horrified. “I should have realized—” she said, her eyes fixed on the now-still feet of the girl. “I’ve seen enough magic to know the peril inherent in second-class enchantment! You came here on business—”
“And if you had donned those slippers—” Zane began.
“That, too! I’m a Magician’s daughter; I know the type of—but I just wasn’t thinking.”
Mortis approached, and they mounted. No one else noticed. The contest between guitar and slippers had no victor, only a loser.
“On to Nature, Deathsteed,” Zane directed, stopping his timer again. “I guess you know the route.”
Mortis did. He leaped out of the dance hall and into the sky.
“I know death is a necessary part of life,” Luna said behind Zane. “I will experience it all too soon myself. But somehow it cuts more sharply when you see it personally—when you actually participate—”
“Yes.” How well he knew!
“I wish I hadn’t agreed to judge that contest. That girl might be alive now!”
“No, she was slated to die. You played no actual part. More correctly, you played a part that someone else would have; your action changed nothing.”
“She was so innocent!”
“She was fifty percent evil. It is not safe to assume that the handicapped are free of sin; they vary exactly the way unhandicapped people do. I don’t know what brought her to the point of equilibrium, but—”
“Oh, you know what I mean! She may have done evil in her life, as we all have, but she didn’t deserve to die so cruelly. Worked to death in one minute by enchanted slippers. Her heart must have burst.”
Zane did not answer. He agreed with her. He had increasing objections to the system of judgments and terminations that prevailed.
“I wish I knew the meaning of it all,” Luna said.
“Those two men must have known their artifacts were dangerous,” Zane muttered. “That’s why they tested them on ignorant bystanders. Magic in the hands of amateurs can be deadly.”
The horse drew up to the abode of Nature. It was a broad, green forest with a road entering it. A low, sleek, open car was parked at the tunnellike aperture.
Mortis halted. “You’re not invited?” Zane asked the horse. “Well, I suppose you can graze here.” The meadow before the forest was lush. “Luna and I can drive that car in; I presume that’s what it’s for.”
But the car turned out to be a single-seater; no room for Luna. “I think Nature wants a private meeting,” Luna said. “I’ll wait here, too.”
“If she’d given me time to take you home—” Zane said, irritated.
“Mother Nature has her own ways—as do we all.”
Zane wasn’t satisfied, but had to leave her. “Keep an eye on her, Mortis,” he called, and the pale horse neighed agreement. Zane doubted any natural force would threaten Luna while the Deathsteed watched.
“Now don’t go looking for trouble with that woman,” Luna cautioned him. “Remember, you are not dealing with an ordinary person.”
Did his ire show so clearly? Zane wrapped his cloak about him and climbed into the little car. He glanced back at Luna, standing there in the field, all slender and lovely, her jewels gleaming at head and toe, a dream of
a woman. Damn Nature, to take him away from her, even briefly!
The car controls were standard. He started the motor, put the vehicle in gear, and followed the asphalt road into the forest. The trees closed in overhead, forming a living canopy. It was a pleasant drive.
Ahead, he spied an intersection. The light was poor because of the shade, so he slowed. It was well he did so, for there was a pedestrian walking by the side of the road, wearing a dark cape that rendered him almost invisible. It would have been all too easy to hit that careless walker.
Just as Zane came up to the pedestrian, a cyclist shot out of the intersection and swerved to pass the walking man. This carried the cyclist directly into Zane’s path. He tromped on the brake pedal and screeched to a stop just in time. “You idiot!” he swore at the cyclist, who was blithely pedaling ahead, unconcerned by the close call. “You could have caused a fatal collision!” He was also not pleased with the pedestrian, who had not paid attention to his surroundings and had taken no evasive action. But he could not dally here; he had an appointment with Nature that he wanted to get out of the way so he could return to Luna. He drove on.
The road abruptly dead-ended at a bog contained by an embankment. Zane parked, got out, and leaned over the rim of the bog to touch its surface. Immediately a spot of mud boiled up, spitting out a gobbet of yellow goop that looked hot and smelled terrible. Zane jerked his hand away, though his Deathglove would have protected his fingers. The old instincts of life remained with him.
How was he to cross this morass? For he could see, now, the spire of a distant castle, directly across the bog. Nature guarded her residence well! It occurred to him that this was some sort of a test or challenge; no ordinary person could get through, but an Incarnation could. He had to prove which kind he was. After that, he might have something to say to the Green Mother. She had interrupted what had become an important date before it could become more important yet, and now was wasting his
time with the riddle of how to approach her. It might not be wise for the ordinary person to trifle with Nature—but neither was it healthy to tempt Death.
But first he had to reach her. She had neatly deprived him of his steed, who could readily have handled this obstruction. How could he cross without miring himself in hot mud?
He studied the near shore of the bog. Perched just beside the retaining wall was a small building, perhaps an outhouse. That would figure; naturally Nature would provide for a call of nature. He wasn’t laughing.
No, now he saw that it more closely resembled a storage shed. What would be stored therein? He strode over to it and flung open its door, expecting to find tools or gasoline or perhaps a telephone.
He was disappointed. It was empty, except for a single large red rubber bag hanging on a nail.
He lifted this down and discovered that it was filled with fluid, probably water, and it was warm. It was an old-fashioned hot-water bottle, used to warm the feet or body on cold nights. What was it doing here?
He set the thing down, pondering. It simply didn’t make sense to store a full, warm hot-water bottle in a shed in the middle of nowhere. It would be cold in half an hour, if it wasn’t magic.
Magic? Zane smiled. He doubted this one had any magic besides its self-heating spell, but it wouldn’t hurt to try a simple invocation on it, just in case. At least it could warm his feet, if the weather turned cold. “Red water bottle, show your power,” he told it.
The bottle abruptly floated upward, jerking from his hand.
Zane grabbed it before it got away. “Levitation!” he exclaimed. “You float!”
It certainly did. He had all he could do to hold it down, and the effort took both his hands. “Hey, take it easy!” he said. “Don’t go anywhere without me!”
But the bottle continued to tug upward, as if still warming to its task. He tried to drag it back to its shed, but couldn’t budge it. His arms were getting tired; soon it would escape and sail up above the level of the treetops.