Marc Zicree - Angelfire

Magritte touches his hand. “You go on back to the Lodge, Enid. Get some sleep. I’ll stay with Goldie.”

He starts to open his mouth, then just nods and levers himself away from the tree trunk. We watch him make his way back up the hill, walking like a man three times his age.

“Is he sick?” I ask.

Magritte is silent. When I look at her, her violet-blue aura is dancing with darker hues. “He… It takes a lot out of him, all he does.”

She seems about to say more when someone pops out of a nearby cabin and waves us down.

“You’re wanted up to the Lodge, Maggie,” she says. “Pronto.”

We go up, pronto, and I’m introduced to Kevin Elk Sings. This might have been a pleasant event, except that he brings chilling news from the West Virginia portal: Cal, Colleen, and Doc are under attack.

COLLEEN

I’ve seen Goldman do some pretty surprising shit, but this took the biscuit. I had time to shout “Sonofabitch! Goldman !” (as if it helped) and make a grab at his coat. I grazed my knuckles on solid rock. The raw pain was enough to push me over the edge of a line I hadn’t even known I was hugging. I let out a roar and threw myself at the wall, beating my fists against it.

Cal broke into my raging, grabbing my shoulder and shaking me, hard. “Colleen! Come on. This isn’t accomplishing anything.”

“What d’you propose I do, Cal?” I asked sarcastically. “Say ‘Open sesame’?” I gave the wall a vicious kick. “Sure. Why not? Open-fucking-sesame! Oh, look-nothing happened. Now what? Now what, Cal? You’re the college grad. Got any bright ideas?”

Running off at the mouth, Mom called it. I did it whenever I got thrown for a loop. Whatever I was feeling went straight to my mouth without passing through my brain. Right now I was furious and scared and, dammit, I wanted Cal to be as furious and scared as I was. Now I bit my tongue-way too late.

Cal had closed his eyes. Counting to ten, no doubt. Now he opened them and asked, “Did the kick help?”

“No, damn it! It didn’t do shit! Stupid question.”

“Here is another: What has happened that you two are shouting at each other?” Doc had come over to hover outside the cave.

I straightened. “Oh, nothing much. Our friend Goldman just pulled the ultimate disappearing act, is all. He walked through that wall.” I pointed.

Doc shot me a sharp glance, then edged into the little space. Cal stepped outside and I followed him.

“Look,” I said. “I’m … I’m sorry I lost it. It’s just … I feel so helpless when stuff like this happens. I hate feeling helpless.”

He turned to look at me, his eyes already forgiving me for the ridiculous outburst. “No shit.”

I took a deep breath of the moist, chill air. Cleared my head a little. “So, what do we do now?”

Cal glanced back into the dark little doorway. “What goes in must come out. And when it does, we get in.”

“So we just sit out here and wait ? What if he never comes out? What if there are a thousand ways into the Preserve, each as… picky about who gets in as this one?”

“And what if the sky falls, Chicken Little?” He was laughing at me, but gently-giving me the space to pull on a wry grin and turn my anger inside out.

“News flash, smartass-it already has.”

“That doorway could open again at any moment, Colleen. I think the best thing we can do is make sure we’re ready to go through when it does. Let’s saddle the horses and pack up.” He was digging around in his pockets.

“What’re you looking for?

“Map.”

“A map? What the hell good is a map?”

He cast me a glance out of the corner of his eye. “You forget, I don’t read maps like the average guy.”

Something hopelike stirred in my chest.

“Intiryesneh,” said Doc.

“Huh?” I swiveled my head to peer back into the dark recess where Doc was on his knees, checking out the wall.

He gestured at it. “Interesting. It seems … blurry to the eye and …” He pressed the palm of his hand against the rock. “… it feels very strange, too. Almost, em … fuzzy.”

He glanced up at Cal, who left off looking for the map and got down next to him on all fours. “I’ll be damned. You’re right. This does seem less than solid, doesn’t it?”

Looked perfectly solid to me.

Doc nodded. “Yes, exactly. It seems like real earth and stone, but…” He pushed at the rock. “Less than solid, as you say. Goldie went through here?”

Cal nodded. “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“Then I suppose we must wait until he comes out again. There is breakfast to be eaten.” His eyes grazed mine as he rose. “Patience, like most virtues, is easier on a full stomach.”

We saddled the horses and packed first, then ate quickly, our eyes on the little cave. I suspect each of us was rehearsing what we were going to say to Herman Goldman when he came back up from the underworld. (Jeez, who names their kid Herman, anyway?) Of course, the longer we waited, the louder and nastier the rehearsals got. Damn Goldman. By the time he got here we’d have all run out of mad.

As it happened, we didn’t so much run out of mad as had it scared out of us.

Cal had gone back to the cave. I could hear him tapping at the wall with something heavy and metallic. (That’s no way to treat a good sword.) Doc and I were sandwiched between a couple of horses, packing up the last of the kitchen items, when Doc yelped and leapt back, bumping me and knocking me face first into a bag of drying mushrooms that was dangling from a pack saddle.

“Bozhyeh moy!” he said, and I sneezed and came back with “Sonofabitch!”

I turned to see what he was bozhyeh moy ing about. Over the rear end of the packhorse I saw a guy peering at us from the trees at the edge of the camp, about twenty-five feet away. At least, it looked like a guy at first glance. Young.

I stepped out from between the horses, hand on my knife. “Hey! Either get lost or come out here where I can see you.”

He smiled. That’s when I realized this was not a normal guy. If you were to mix everything you’d ever seen that was dangerous, dizzying, vile, putrid, and charming into a smile, this would be it.

Smiling Jack chose option number one, leaving nothing but a bobbing tree branch to mark where he’d been. He didn’t reappear. Imagine my relief.

We moved the horses up to the cave and gave the camp and clearing a thorough last look. Then Doc and I went to hover outside the cave, where we watched Cal in silence for a while.

“Anything?” I asked finally.

He made a negative noise and shook his head.

I gave the area around the mouth of the cave a nervous once-over. Tree limbs shivered in a chill breeze and a mist was caught like cotton wadding in the branches.

Great. Another soggy day.

I beckoned to Doc and we moved to secure the horses on their grazing line, strung out along the perimeter of the mound.

“So what does that mean,” I asked as we worked our way back toward the cave from the end of the line of horses. “Boshuh … bozeh…”

“ Bozhyeh moy? It means ‘my God.’ ”

At the end of the line I squatted down, my back against the steep berm of the mound. “You a religious man, Doc?”

He seemed surprised by the question and answered slowly as if he had to look at each word as it came out. “Yes. Yes, I am a religious man. An anomaly, yes?”

“An anomaly,” I repeated. “I’m not quite sure how to answer that.” In fact, I didn’t have a clue what the word meant, but I wasn’t about to admit it.