Summerland. Michael Chabon
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all this expanse of waste and wreckage nothing was moving but the twisting curls of steam. Except—
“Hey,” Ethan said.” What’s that?”
Down on the beach, where the ferishers had gone to consult Johnny Speakwater, one final skirmish was taking place. A ferisher stood on top of the great driftwood log, while around him crowded half a dozen winged creatures that Ethan recognised, even from a distance, as the same one that had grinned at him through his bedroom window.
Cutbelly cried out. “That’s Cinquefoil! The skrikers are on him!”
“Skrikers,” Ethan said. “What are they?”
“Ferishers changed by the Changer,” Cutbelly said. “They hate what they are and even worse what they once were. Help him, piglet!”
“What should I do?” Ethan said. “Just tell me.”
Cutbelly turned to him, his black-tipped snout quivering, his eyes wide and lit with what looked to Ethan like a surprising glimmer of hope.
“Search your heart, piglet!” he said. “You were dug up by old Chiron himself! The wight that scouted up Achilles! Arthur! Toussaint and Crazy Horse! You’ve got to have the stuff in you somewhere, piglet or no!”
Ethan felt something catch inside him at Cutbelly’s words, like the scrape of a match against the rough black stripe of a matchbook. He looked around, something bright and dense and hot kindling inside him. He started, trotting at first, towards the beach.
“Ethan!” Jennifer T. said.
He looked back at her. She was standing behind Cutbelly. Her gaze was as blank and strange as before, but now the crooked half-smile was gone.
“What are you going to do?”
Ethan shrugged.” I guess I’m supposed to save him,” he said. He didn’t really believe that he could do it, in spite of Cutbelly’s words. But he felt he ought to try. After all, it was just a question of saving one ferisher, not a whole tribe. Maybe he could do something to draw them off, and give the ferisher a chance to recoup his strength. He was clearly an excellent fighter, much better than Ethan could ever hope to be.
Ethan ran towards the driftwood log. Cinquefoil leapt and ducked, thrust and slashed, hacking at a swarm of the bat-things with a long, wicked knife. His hair blew back from his head and his knife arm lashed and flailed and held steady. The sight was inspiring. That was a hero. That was how you did it. Ethan ran up, yelling and screaming, hoping to distract the skrikers for a moment. Cinquefoil turned, and smiled faintly, and then three of the skrikers looked Ethan’s way. They grinned yellow grins, and the bridges of their sharp little noses wrinkled with a rank pleasure that snuffed out the little flame of purpose which Cutbelly’s words had kindled in Ethan. They flew at Ethan, scattering themselves around him, their wings jerking and spasming. Ethan saw that the wings were not a part of them but queer machines, affixed to their backs by means of brass-red screws. Ethan ran past them, ducking underneath their spindly legs, and then when he turned they were on him.
He looked around for something to use to defend himself, but all he could see were the spiky stumps of broken limbs that jutted from the driftwood log. Most of them were much too short to be of any use, but there was one that was longer, and nearly perfectly straight. He clambered up onto the log and grabbed hold of the limb, and pulled. It made a dry, cracking sound, but held firm.
“Glad you could make it,” Cinquefoil said, and then there was a muffled explosion, and the ferisher cried out and tumbled from the log. One of the skrikers, Ethan noticed, seemed to have lost its head, and was wheeling crazily around in the air. Cinquefoil must have decapitated it just before he himself fell. The skrikers hovered over his motionless body, now, poking and prodding it with their steel-tipped toes. Ethan threw his weight against the limb, putting his whole shoulder into it. With a great crunching snap it broke loose, and came away free in his hand.
It was about the size and length of a baseball bat, more or less straight, but knotty and weathered grey. He lifted it, and hefted it, and gripped it at one end in both hands. It felt good and solid. He swung it over his shoulder and came after the skrikers that were molesting the dead ferisher. One of them reached up and took hold of its own ears, one in each hand. Its grin grew wider and yellower. Ethan saw that its teeth were made from jagged shards of what looked like quartz. There was a series of ratcheting clicks, a nasty wet sound of ripping. And then the face with the dirty crystal grin was no longer atop the neck at all. It perched on the skriker’s left hand like an old grey mouldy peach. The skriker had removed its own head, and was cackling at him now from this weird vantage. The severed neck was tipped with a black ball that gleamed like a bead of wet ink. Ethan recoiled, and then the bat-thing reared back and tossed its head at him. Without thinking he swung his big stick at the head as it spun towards him.
“Breathe!” he heard Jennifer T. call.
He kept his eyes open, too: and connected. There was a burst of white flame, a whoomp shot through with a crackle, and a sweet, unpleasant smell like burnt cheese. Another head came spinning at him, and he swung, and there was another sharp blazing whoomp. He fought off three more of the head-bombs, swinging wild and hard, and then, it seemed, there was a power failure in Ethan’s head somewhere.
RED AND BLACK. Blood and sky. Jennifer T. was looking down at him, with the heavy sky spread out behind her, a nasty cut on her cheek. Then a gamy, butcher-shop smell: Cutbelly. And finally, something jabbing at his cheek: Cutbelly, again, poking him and poking him with one of his sharp little fingers.
“Wake up, piglet!”
Ethan lay on his back, in the doomed green grass of the Summerlands.
“I’m awake,” he declared, sitting up.
“Come,” Cutbelly said. “The Rade has carried away the Boar Tooth mob. They have felled all the trees on either side of the gall. We have only a short while to leap through or be forced to find another route back. That could take a while. Come! Failed or not, we must get out of here.”
Failed. The word resounded in his mind. He had struck out, swinging. Some kind of marvellous opportunity had been granted to him, and before he could even begin to understand what was happening to him, he had blown his chance. He could already taste the regret of the lost moment, how it would haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Will they—are they all dead?” he said. “What about Cinquefoil?”
“I’m all right,” said a gruff voice behind him. “You get back to the Middling now. No telling what Coyote’s up to there.”
Ethan rolled over and saw the little chief crouching on the ground beside him. He was filthy, and his hair dripped pale streaks down his grimy cheeks. The coat of rough mail he wore over his buckskin had been slashed through and through. It hung in tinkling strips from his shoulders. His tan leggings sagged, his feathered cap sat askew, its savage green feather snapped in two. And his quiver of arrows was empty.
“I’m in yer debt,” the ferisher said, sounding unhappy about it. “Nice work with that stick o’ yers.”
“You were amazing.”
“I weren’t nothing. I done nothing. I saved nothing and no one and all was lost.”
“Did he get your… your family?”
“Those in the mob what aren’t my sister or my brother are my child, my mother, or my aunt,” he said. His voice broke with sorrow. “ And all o’them ta be changed. Twisted inta the things ya saw, them skrikers.”
“Greylings, too,” the werefox pointed out, in a morose tone. That must be the name of those horrible little grey children whose bodies littered the field.
“And greylings.” Cinquefoil shuddered. “And then sent back, no doubt, ta take their revenge on the chief that failed ta keep ’em whole.”
There was that word again: failed.
“I wish I could have done more,”