Discover the Destroyer Read online

  Gradually we moved up on the wagonload beets. But just as we were looking to pass, we ran into oncoming traffic. A file of dwarfs, a dozen of them carrying huge sacks on their back.

  The loads would have crushed a human. Dwarfs were sweating profusely and straining, I heard no grumbling as they passed by.

  It was my second view of dwarfs. The first time had been in Hel's harem city. They were tacit creatures. A hair taller than Idalia definitely, built as broad as they were tall. They might have been carved out of live oak. Despite the heat and their burden, each wore a chain mail shirt that went down to his knees and some sort of weapon short sword, ax, nailed club.

  The dwarfs seemed to have no interest in. We decided to show none in them. I had the feeling that dwarfs liked to be left alone. I also have the feeling that if they weren't left alone the person who hassled them would be sorry.

  We walked for another two hours, keeping as quick a pace as we could manage. The peaches had helped but not much. We'd had about a two day food deficit. Water was plentiful but the food situation was becoming critical. I was thinking about dropping back to the beet wagon we'd passed and seeing if I could bargain for some. Had no idea what raw beets tasted like, or even if they could be eaten. But the hungrier I got the more open-minded I became.

  The countryside was becoming prettier all the time. It had been nice to begin with: rolling hills, bands of trees broken up by flower-filled meadows. But now it was going beyond anything nature could manage unaided. We were walking through land that was more and more like a tended garden.

  A low stone wall now lined the road on both sides. The shade trees lined up on both sides of the road, spaced far enough apart to al ow for lush range a hedges, orange daylilies, rosebushes bearing fat, full roses in white, pink, and red.

  The grass was trimmed, edged, and as green and fresh as a golf course.

  "Hey, I think my grandfather lives here," Christopher said. "This is exactly like his country down in Florida. Less humid here. Not as many people driving with the turn signal on."

  The only thing that marred the trimmed, artificial perfection was the sight of the satyr's legs bounding along.

  "Man, what is going on with that?" Christopher wondered.

  "It must feel some affinity for us. Maybe some inchoate attraction," Jalil suggested.

  "It has no eyes," April pointed out. "How does it follow us? I mean, it has no head. No nothing."

  "You know, I think on the scale of mysteries how it follows us is maybe less mysterious the the mere fact that it can move at all,"

  Jalil pointed out

  "Jalil, you talk so purty when you want to," Christopher said.

  "When you do that I feel an inchoate attraction for you."

  The road turned around a willow so huge seemed to be a small grove rather than a sing tree. The road turned and we found ourselves looking at a gate.

  It was very pretty. An arch formed out of rose bushes rose very high over the road. It would t just high enough for the beet wagon to squeeze under when it caught up to us. The arch was a chored on either side of the road by a stout stone wall. The wall extended maybe a hundred feet to the left and right and ended in a round stone tower two dozen feet tal , give or take. More roses adorned the top of the wall.

  "That's pretty with all the roses," April said "Kind of looks like what you'd expect the entrance to Fairy Land to be, huh?"

  "It's not about the roses," I said. "Its about the thorns. Try going over that wall — it'd be like barbed wire. And see on either side, out past the towers, more bushes of different types. I'm betting on more thorns. See the way the ground rises sharply? Someone wants to avoid this gate, they're going up a steep hill into dense thorn-rushes and with that tower looking down at them the whole time."

  We approached the gate cautiously but withobut looking guilty or like we were worried.

  Senna's warning about little people who survived in a land of giants was fresh in my memory. And I had forgotten it, this beautiful-yet-serious gate would have reminded me.

  A small person lounged beside the gate, tipped back on a chair. He was smoking a long pipe. He wore a bright red cap, a bright green tunic, and soft shoes that ended in curled, pointed toes. He was approximately the same size as a dwarf but built in more nearly human proportions. His legs were perhaps a bit short for his body, but other than that he could have been a seven-year-old an old man's wrinkled, good-natured face. As he spotted us he lifted his cap in greeting, smiled around his pipe.

  Winked a blue eye.

  "It's like right out of a fairy story," April marveled.

  "My, great-grandmother, may she rest in peace, she was from Ireland, she'd tell stories about the leprechauns. They were just like that. Exactly. It's exactly the image I had in my mind from when I was little."

  "Top o' the afternoon to ye, then, good folk," the leprechaun said. "And ladies, sure your loveliness pales the most beautiful rose on the bush. It does. It does, an' no mistake."

  "Hel o," I said. "We're looking for Fairy Land. I guess we're there, huh?" It was hard to feel very worried under the circumstances.

  "You've found it, then, so ye have. Aye, you'v found us out. How is it we can help you, go sir?"

  "Well, we're traveling minstrels. We're looking to find a place to put on a show."

  The leprechaun smiled. "Minstrels, ate ye? Ah, then that's something, eh? Minstrels. Have you happened to notice as you walked along the road I say have you happened to notice that from tin to time you came upon, perhaps even stepped in a steaming great pile of manure?"

  I nodded, grinning, couldn't help myself. He was cute. And I don't use the word cute.

  "Did you notice that, then?" The leprechaun grinned right back at me. Suddenly the smile evaporated. "Then you know what I think of you story of being minstrels. It's a steaming great pile of manure."

  The little man rested in his chair and took a drag on his pipe.

  "Did he just say bull product?" Christopher said.

  "Bull If ye will. But horse, pig, sheep, ox, cow, and goat manure will do just as well. If you're minstrels, then I'm bleedin'

  Cuchulalnn."

  "Well, that's your opinion," I said. "Anyway, we'd like to get going."

  "Would you? Would you, then? And how about the entrance tax?"

  "The entrance tax?" I glanced back and saw that the beet wagon was slowly catching up to us. It was a stupid thing to be worrying about but I didn't want to hold up the line.

  "Aye, the entrance tax. Who do you think pays for all the loveliness you see around you, eh? Who do you suppose pays me my salary to sit here al the long day playing the part? Me in my bright red cap and stockings and pointy shoes, do you suppose it's all free? Do you think I sit here choking on this damned pipe and dressed like some Old World pixie for my health? And what the bloody hell is that?"

  He stood up and pointed to the half-a-satyr Sandy's lower half had just plowed into the wall on our right.

  "What is that mad thing?" he demanded. "It's following you, and it with no eyes, nor face to put eyes in, nor even a head, nor shoulders to put a head on."

  My mouth was dry. This wasn't going as planned. He'd dismissed our cover story. And the happy fairy act had definitely been dropped.

  April answered for us. "It's the bottom half of a satyr."

  The leprechaun jerked visibly. He stared at April. Stared at me.

  "The bottom half of a satyr? What are you doing with the bottom half of a satyr?"

  I started to answer but Christopher jumped in smoothly. "You like it? Maybe we could make a deal."

  The leprechaun got a car-dealer look in his blue eyes. "I've seen better half-a-satyrs."

  "No you haven't," Christopher said firmly. "This is top-of-the-line half-a-satyr."

  The fairy bit his lower lip and muttered to himself. "I've no place to keep it. I could stick it in the shed for a while, maybe, but it'd be running into the wal s keeping me awake al night. I'd have to trade it away soon as coul
d be."

  "We'll trade you the half-a-satyr for the entrance tax,"

  Christopher said.

  "Done," the leprechaun said. He still looked worried, like he was trying to figure out where to stick the running goat legs. "Still, it won't eat much, eh?"

  "So we can go on in?" Jalil asked.

  "Are you heading to the city or just as far as the market?"

  "The city," I said for no special reason. "Can we go now?"

  "That you may, though how you'll pay your way in the city without your half-a-satyr I'm sure can't say." He reverted to his act.

  "Be off wi' ye, then, good lords and ladies, and the blessings o' The fairy folk upon your lovely heads."

  Then, as we walked through the gate he yelled in a very different voice, "Sergeant! Send some of your boys out to grab my half-a-satyr. No more than two, I'm not paying extra!"

  There was a guardhouse just past the gate. Two fairies zipped past. They moved swiftly, though not quite at Idalia's breakneck pace.

  They wore leather tunics and tight-fitting steel helmets. They carried bows and arrows and small swords.

  They weren't large. Their weapons were child-sized. They looked almost comical. But I reminded myself not to underestimate these people.

  It wasn't rosebush hedges that kept Nidhoggr at bay.

  Inside the gate the grounds became even more carefully tended. Every bush perfectly shaped. Not a yellow blade of grass to be seen. Not a shaggy border, not a diseased tree.

  The dirt and shell road was paved with yellowish bricks set in a herringbone pattern.

  "Yellow bricks."

  I said, "All right, Christopher, just get it over with."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "Uh-huh."

  "You think I would stoop to some obvious Wizard of Oz joke at a time like this? That's kind of insulting, really. You think what? I'm going to say, 'Follow the yellow brick road' in a Munchkin voice?"

  "It occurred to me."

  "Yeah, well, give me some credit."

  "Sorry."

  "So. Senna. This must feel like home to you, huh? Where do you keep the flying monkeys?"

  Christopher laughed, vastly amused by himself. To his amazement and mine. Senna actually answered.

  "That was always my favorite movie when I was little."

  "You were probably the only kid who ever thought the Wicked Witch of the West was the hero."

  "It was the color shift. That's what I liked. The beginning of the movie is all in black and white. Gray, really. Then the tornado, and she wakes up in Oz. And suddenly it's all in color." Senna cast a cool, sidelong look at her half sister. "Some people see that and they're Toto, off and running, ready to go. Other people are Dorothy. They go to a fantastic new world and can't stop whining about Kansas."

  April laughed. She'd been stung but not as badly as Senna had hoped. "I see, so we should be grateful to you for al this? I hadn't realize you were doing it all to be nice. I didn't realize you just wanted us to have a good time. See, I thought you were just dragging us into your little psychodrama so you could use us whenever it suited your purpose. Use us to distract and delay Loki.

  Use us to fight dragons for you. Sell us out to your girlfriend Hel —"

  "Shut up, you silly cow," Senna snapped in a voice like a knife.

  We stopped walking. The blood drained out of April's face.

  Her lower lip was trembling but not in preparation for crying. Her teeth were bared, her eyes slits.

  I'd never seen April mad. Not like this. I backed up a couple of steps without thinking.

  Senna's face was all cold contempt. She was not afraid of April.

  She stepped right up to her sister, stepped up like some guy getting ready to throw down.

  "You were there for hours. I was there for days," Senna said in a low, grating voice. "She hung me there, hung me there tied to a stake, facedown over that pit, sister, facedown looking at all those men down there in the shaft, hundreds, thousands of them, screaming night and day, crying, moaning, begging."

  April said nothing, just stared, all the rage leaking away, replaced by amazement, incomprehension.

  "I was there when they would drag the new ones down, that's when it's worst," Senna said. "The new ones, still fouling themselves from terror of Hel, and then her creatures drag them down to the pit, down along the serpent's coils and they see what awaits them.

  They see the corpses that are still moving. They see the living men little more than skeletons but dusty with cobwebs that took a hundred years to form. They see all that and they cry for their mothers, April. They scream, 'Mother, mother, mother, help me!' for hours and hours and scream and scream and —"

  "Shut up!" Christopher yelled. "Just shut up. Shut up."

  "It's so neat and easy for you, isn't it, April? It always has been.

  Good and evil. The good ascend to heaven, the evil burn in hell.

  Isn't that it, April? Isn't that the formula? And what am I, April? Evil?

  Surely you don't think I'm good. So as I hung there, I cried, yes, I cried. Yes, I screamed and begged. Yes, I wished I could die. And all the while I'm remembering my smug half sister and knowing that you thought I deserved it all."

  Senna was panting, shaking. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

  I wanted to hold her, take her in my arms. But she was past that.

  Untouchable. Exalted.

  Christopher was holding his head like he could squeeze out all the memories.

  It was frightening how easily it could all be uncovered. When would those memories ever be watered down and lose their power? Never. No trick of mind would ever clean my memory.

  I slowly unclenched my fist. Forced myself to take a breath. Of course Senna had been terrified. I should have seen that. She was human, after all, not some monster. She was like us, different, but still one of us.

  "Nicely done. Senna," Jalil said.

  I didn't believe my ears. I looked at him. Yes, he was unmoved.

  He was slowly shaking his head in, what, ironic admiration?

  "Well done all the way. Senna," Jalil said. "Perfect timing, just when no one is expecting it. Perfect opening. You set us up with happy girlhood memories of going off to see the wizard, and then wham, down comes the hammer. Or should I say, in goes the wedge?"

  Senna shook her head, too tired, too emotional to answer, to defend herself.

  "Leave her alone, Jalil, you don't know what you're talking about," I said.

  "You peeled off April as the poor old stick-in-the-mud who didn't understand how cool it was to be in this Technicolor world, then you bang the wedge in with some sob stories. You make April look like an insensitive, self-righteous jerk, and you? You're poor pitiful Senna with David as your protector."

  "Damn it, Jalil, knock it off!" I yelled.

  He smirked. "Perfect, isn't it? See, we were getting along too well. Now April's been demonized, David has stepped back into his role as Senna's boy, I look like a coldhearted creep, and Christopher's been punished for giving the witch grief. She's so good she should be teaching this stuff."

  Was that a shadow of a smile on Senna's lips? No, surely not.

  No. There were real tears in her eyes. She was one of us, in the end.

  And yet, a nagging voice reminded me as I unconsciously pressed my hand to my silent chest, there were four rubies. Not five.

  Chapter

  XIII

  Too pretty. That's what I kept thinking. Too neat, too orderly, too well kept. The yellow bricks had even been cleaned of manure.

  They sparkled, wet with a recent washing.

  Fairy Land. It looked like Fairy Land. It looked like a gardener's heaven. There weren't five or six different types of flowers, there were hundreds. Tall, short, thin, plush, red, yellow, orange, green, white, pink, purple, even blue.

  It reminded me of the Chicago Botanical Gardens where we'd gone in ninth grade on a field trip.

  In fact the only dirty, sha
bby, disreputable-looking things were the travelers on the road, coming and going. And we looked as skanky as the rest. I became increasingly self-conscious about the fact that we were filthy and smelled as bad as any of the flocks of sheep. No part of me was clean. Hadn't been since long before our hike through Hel's world. I stank of stale fear-sweat.

  No one was talking. Not since the blowup. And we were walking differently. April and Jalil close. Christopher out in front, like he was trying to outrun the rest of us, trying not to notice us and be reminded. Me and Senna.

  Me and Senna, walking in silence, not close enough to be close, not far enough apart for the others to avoid seeing that we were together.

  I was a damned idiot. That's what was so sad: I knew it. The witch didn't even have a word of kindness for me. No thanks. No

  "David, thanks for standing up for me."

  She could have smiled. Could have reached for me, touched my hand, could have . . . didn't. Didn't need to, the cynical part of me said. She owned me. She knew she owned me.

  If I was a leader I was doing a piss-poor job. We were fragmented, disunited. And I was just one of the fragments. We seemed incapable of working together. Each of us was a unit, none of us part of a team.

  "Yeah, well, it isn't a football game, is it?" I muttered under my breath.

  We topped a gentle hill and saw that the road ahead forked.

  One road left, one right. The end of neither could be seen as the fork was at the bottom of a dell.

  "A sign," Christopher said, pointing. "There's an actual sign.

  Screw it, man, I'm staying here in Fairy Land; these are the first people yet who have the sense to put up a sign."

  "What's it say?" I asked.

  "Says, I swear, 'Yon City,' and an arrow pointing left, and 'Ye Marketplace,' and an arrow pointing right." He stopped and grinned. "Yon City is three miles, dude. Ye Marketplace is half a mile. Mileage. They put up the mileage. I love these guys. They have signs, they keep stuff clean, they do deals. I am prepared to convert to fairy."