Swan Song

"You can talk, cain't youi I heard you say somethin' to my mama."



"I can speak," she answered. "I have to talk slowly, though, or you won't be able to understand me."



"Oh. Your haid looks kinda like a big ol' gourd."



Swan smiled, her facial flesh pulling so tight it felt about to tear. She knew the youngster was being honest, not cruel. "I guess it does. and yes, I have a head inside here. It's just covered up."



"I seen some people looked like you. Mama says it's a real bad sickness. Says you get that thing and you got it your whole life. Is that soi"



"I don't know."



"She says it ain't catchin', though. Says if it was, everybody in town would have it by now. What kinda stick is thati"



"It's a dowsing rod."



"What's thati"



She explained how a dowsing rod was supposed to find water if you held the forked ends of it just right, but she'd never found any water with it. She recalled Leona Skelton's gentle voice, as if drifting through time to whisper: "Crybaby's work isn't done yet - not by a far sight!"



"Maybe you ain't holding it right, then," aaron said.



"I just use it like a walking stick. I don't see too well."



"I reckon not. You ain't got no eyeballs!"



Swan laughed and felt muscles in her face unfreeze. The wind brought a new whiff of a sickening odor of decay that Swan had noticed as soon as they'd entered Mary's Rest. "aaroni" she asked. "What's that smelli"



"What smelli"



He was used to it, she realized. Human waste and garbage lay everywhere, but this was a fouler odor. "It comes and goes," she said. "The wind's carrying it."



"Oh, I reckon that's the pond. What's left of it, I mean. It ain't too far. Want to seei"



No, Swan thought. She didn't want to get near anything so awful. But aaron sounded eager to please, and she was curious. "all right, but we'll have to walk real slow. and don't run off and leave me, okayi"



"Okay," he answered, and he promptly ran about thirty feet up a muddy alley before he turned and waited for her to catch up.



Swan followed him through the narrow, filthy alleys. Many of the shacks had been burned down, people still digging shelters in the ruins. She probed ahead with Crybaby and was frightened by a skinny yellow dog that lunged out of an intersecting alley; aaron kicked at it and ran it off. Behind a closed door, an infant wailed with hunger. Further on, Swan almost stumbled over a man lying curled up in the mud. She started to reach down and touch his shoulder, but aaron said, "He's a dead'un! Come on, it ain't too far!"



They passed between the miserable clapboard shacks and came upon a wide field covered with gray snow. Here and there the frozen body of a human being or an animal lay contorted on the ground. "Come on!" aaron called, jumping up and down impatiently. He'd been born amid death, had seen so much of it that it was a commonplace sight. He stepped over a woman's corpse and continued down a gently sloping hill to the large pond that over the years had drawn hundreds of wanderers to the settlement of Mary's Rest.



"There 'tis," aaron said when Swan reached him. He pointed.



about a hundred feet away was what had indeed been a very large pond, nestled in the midst of dead trees. Swan saw that maybe an inch of yellow-green water remained right at its center, and all around was cracked, nasty-looking yellow mud.



and in that mud were dozens of half-buried human and animal skeletons, as if they'd been sucked down as they tried to get the last of that contaminated water. Crows perched on the bones, waiting. Heaps of frozen human excrement and garbage lay in the mud as well, and the smell that wafted from that mess where a pond used to be turned Swan's stomach. It was as rank as an open sore or an unwashed bathroom bucket.



"This is 'bout as close as you can stand without gettin' sick," aaron said, "but I wanted you to see it. ain't it a peculiar colori"



"My God!" Swan was fighting the urge to throw up. "Why doesn't somebody clean that upi"



"Clean what upi" aaron asked.



"The pond! It wasn't always like that, was iti"



"Oh, no! I 'member when the pond had water in it. Real drinkin' water. But Mama says it just gave out. Says it couldn't last forever, anyway."



Swan had to turn away from the sight. She looked back the way they'd come and could make out a solitary figure on the hill, scooping dirty snow into a bucket. Melting the gray snow for water was a slow death, but it was far better than the poisonous pond. "I'm ready to go back now," she told him, and she started walking slowly up the hill, probing before her with Crybaby.



Once over the hill, Swan almost tripped over a body in her path. She stopped, looking down at the small form of a child. Whether it had been a boy or girl she couldn't tell, but the child had died lying on its stomach, one hand clawing at the earth and the other frozen into a fist. She stared at those little hands, pallid and waxy against the snow. "Why are these bodies out herei" she asked.



"'Cause this is where they died," he told her, as if she was the dumbest old gourdhead in the whole world.



"This one was trying to dig something up."



"Roots, prob'ly. Sometimes you can dig roots up out of the ground, sometimes you cain't. When we can find 'em, Mama makes a soup out of 'em."



"Rootsi What kind of rootsi"



"You sure ask a lot of questions," he said, exasperated, and he started to walk on ahead.



"What kind of rootsi" Swan repeated, slowly but firmly.



"Corn roots, I reckon!" aaron shrugged. "Mama says there used to be a big ol' cornfield out here, but everythin' died. ain't nothin' left but a few roots - if a body's lucky enough to find 'em. Come on, now! I'm cold!"



Swan looked out across the barren field that lay between the shacks and the pond. Bodies lay like strange punctuation marks scrawled on a gray tablet. The vision in her eye faded in and out, and whatever was under all the thick crust of growths burned and seethed. The child's white, frozen hands took her attention again. Something about those hands, she thought. Something... but she didn't know what.



The smell of the pond sickened her, and she followed aaron toward the shacks again.



"Used to be a big ol' cornfield out here," aaron had said. "But everythin' died."



She pushed snow away from the ground with Crybaby. The earth was dark and hard. If any roots remained out here, they were far beneath the crust.



They were still winding their way through the alleys when Swan heard Mule neigh; it was a cry of alarm. She quickened her pace, stabbing ahead of her with the dowsing rod.



When they came out of the alley next to Glory Bowen's shack, Swan heard Mule make a shrill whickering sound that conveyed anger and fear. She tilted her head to see what was happening and finally made it out: people in rags were swarming all over the wagon, tearing it apart. They were shredding the canvas tent to pieces and fighting over the remnants, grabbing up blankets, canned food, clothes and rifles from the rear of the wagon and running with them. "Stop!" she told them, but of course they paid no attention. One of them tried to untie Mule from his harness, but the horse bucked and kicked so powerfully the scavenger was driven off. They were even trying to take the wheels off the wagon. "Stop it!" Swan shouted, stumbling forward. Someone collided against her, knocked her into the cold mud and almost stepped on her. Nearby, two men were fighting in the mud over one of the blankets, and the fight ended when a third man grabbed it and scuttled away.



The cabin's door opened. Josh had heard Swan's shout, and now he saw the Travelin' Show wagon being ripped apart. Panic shook him. That was all they had in the world! a man was running with a bundle of sweaters and socks in his arms, and Josh went after him but slipped in the mud. The scavengers scattered in all directions, taking away the last of the canvas, all the food, the weapons, blankets, everything. a woman with an orange keloid covering most of her face and neck tried to strip the coat off Swan, but Swan doubled up and the woman struck at her, screaming in frustration. When Josh got to his feet, the woman ran down one of the alleys.



Then they were all gone, and so were the contents of the Travelin' Show wagon - including most of the wagon itself.



"Damn it!" Josh raged. There was nothing left but the frame of the wagon and Mule, who was still snorting and bucking. We're up shit creek now, he thought. Nothing to eat, not even a damned sock left! "You okayi" he asked Swan, going over to help her up. aaron was standing beside her, and he reached out to touch her gourd of a head but drew his hand back at the last second.



"Yes." Her shoulder was just a little sore where she'd been struck. "I think I'm all right."



Josh gently helped Swan up and steadied her. "They took just about everything we had!" he fretted. In the mud lay a few items that had been left behind: a dented tin cup, a tattered shawl, a worn-out boot that Rusty had planned to mend and never got around to.



"You leave things sittin' out 'round here, they gonna get stole for sure!" aaron said sagely. "any fool knows that!"



"Well," Swan said, "maybe they need those things more than we do."



Josh's first impulse was an incredulous laugh, but he held it in check. She was right. at least they had good heavy coats and gloves, and they were wearing thick socks and sturdy boots. Some of those scavengers had been a few threads away from their Genesis suits - except this was surely as far from the Garden of Eden as a human could fall.



Swan walked around the wagon to Mule and settled the old horse down by calmly rubbing his nose. Still, he continued to make an ominous, worried rumbling.



"Better get inside," Josh told her. "Wind's picking up again."



She came toward him, then stopped when Crybaby touched something hard in the mud. She bent down carefully, groped in the mud and came up with the dark oval mirror that somebody had dropped. The magic mirror, she thought as she straightened up again. It had been a long time since she'd peered into it. But now she wiped the mud off on the leg of her jeans and held it up before her, grasping it by the handle with the two carved masks that stared in different directions.



"What's that thingi" aaron asked. "Can you see y'self in therei"



She could only see the faintest outline of her head, and thought that indeed it did look like a swollen old gourd. She dropped her arm to her side - and as she did something flashed in the glass. She held it up again and turned so the mirror was facing in another direction; she hunted for the flash of light but couldn't find it. Then she shifted, turning a foot or so to the right, and caught her breath.



Seemingly less than ten feet behind her was the figure holding the glowing circle of light - close now, very close. Swan was still not quite able to make out the features. She sensed, however, that something was wrong with the face; it was distorted and deformed, but not nearly like her own. She thought that the figure might be a woman, just from the way whoever it was carried herself. So close, so close - yet Swan knew that if she turned around there would be nothing behind her but the shanties and alleys.



"What direction is the mirror facingi" she asked Josh.



"North," he answered. "We came in from the south. That way." He motioned in the opposite direction. "Whyi" He could never understand what she saw when she looked into that thing. Whenever he asked, she would shrug her shoulders and put the mirror away. But the mirror had always reminded him of a verse his mother liked to read from the Bible: "For now we see in a glass darkly, but then face to face."



The figure with the glowing ring of light had never been so close before. Sometimes it had been so far away that the light was barely a spark in the glass. She didn't know who the figure was, or what the ring of light was supposed to be, but she knew it was someone and something very important. and now the woman was close, and Swan thought that she must be somewhere to the north of Mary's Rest.



She was about to tell Josh when the face with the leprous, parchment-like flesh rose up over her left shoulder. The monstrous face filled up the whole glass, its gray-lipped mouth cracking open in a grin, one scarlet eye with an ebony pupil emerging from its forehead. a second mouth full of sharp-edged teeth opened like a slash across its cheek, and the teeth strained forward as if to bite Swan on the back of the neck.



She turned so fast that the weight of her head almost spun her like a top.



Behind her, the road was deserted.



She lowered the mirror; she had seen enough for one day. If what the magic mirror showed her was true, the figure bearing the ring of light was very near.



But nearer still was the thing that reminded her of the Devil on Leona Skelton's tarot card.



Josh watched Swan as she went up the cinder block steps into Glory Bowen's shack, then looked north along the road. There was no movement but chimney smoke scattering before the wind. He regarded the wagon again and shook his head. He figured that Mule would kick the sauce out of anybody who tried to steal him, and there was nothing left to take. "That's all our food," he said, mostly to himself. "Every damned bit of it!"



"Oh, I know a place you can catch some big 'uns," aaron offered. "You just gotta know where they are, and be quick to catch 'em."



"Quick to catch whati"



"Rats," the boy said, as if any fool knew that was what most of the people in Mary's Rest had been surviving on for the last few years. "That's what we'll be eatin' tonight, if you're stayin'."



Josh swallowed thickly, but he was no stranger to the gamy taste of rat meat. "I hope you've got salt," he said as he followed aaron up the steps. "I like mine real salty."



Just before he reached the door, he felt the flesh at the back of his neck tighten. He heard Mule snort and whinny, and he looked toward the road again. He had the unnerving sensation of being watched - no, more than that. Of being dissected.



But there was no one. No one at all.



The wind whirled around him, and in it he thought he heard a squeaking sound - like the noise of wheels in need of grease. The sound was gone in an instant.



The light was quickly fading, and Josh knew this was one place he wouldn't walk the alleys at night even for a T-bone steak. He went into the shack and shut the door.  



TEN



Seeds



Fifty-nine



Swan awakened from a dream. She'd been running through a field of human bodies that moved like stalks of wheat before the wind, and behind her advanced the thing with the single scarlet eye, its scythe lopping off heads, arms and legs as it sought her out. Only her head was too heavy, her feet weighted down by yellow mud, and she couldn't run fast enough. The monster was getting nearer, its scythe whistling through the air like a shriek, and suddenly she'd fallen over a child's corpse and she was looking at its white hands, one clawing the earth and the other clenched into a fist.



She lay on the floor of Glory Bowen's shack. Embers behind the stove's grate still cast a little light and a breath of heat. She slowly sat up and leaned against the wall, the image of the child's hands fixed in her mind. Nearby, Josh lay curled up on the floor, breathing heavily and deeply asleep. Closer to the stove, Rusty lay sleeping under a thin blanket, his head on the patchwork pillow. Glory had done a fine job of cleaning and stitching the wounds, but she'd said the next couple of days would be rough for him. It had been very kind of her to let them spend the night and share her water and a little stew. aaron had asked Swan dozens of questions about her condition, what the land was like beyond Mary's Rest, and what all she'd seen. Glory had told aaron to stop pestering her, but Swan wasn't bothered; the boy had a curious mind, and that was a rare thing worth encouraging.



Glory told them her husband had been a Baptist minister back in Wynne, arkansas, when the bombs hit. The radiation of Little Rock had killed a lot of people in the town, and Glory, her husband and their infant son had joined a caravan of wanderers looking for a safe place to settle. But there were no safe places. Four years later, they'd settled in Mary's Rest, which at that time was a thriving settlement built around the pond. There'd been no minister or church in Mary's Rest, and Glory's husband had started building a house of worship with his own hands.



But then the typhoid epidemic came, Glory told them. People died by the score, and wild animals skulked in from the woods to gut the corpses. When the last of the community's stockpile of canned food gave out, people started eating rats, boiling bark, roots, leather - even the dirt itself - into "soup." One night the church had caught fire, and Glory's husband had died trying to save it. The blackened ruins were still standing, because nobody had the energy or will to build it back. She and her son had stayed alive because she was a good seamstress, and people paid her with extra food, coffee and such to patch their clothes. That was the story of her life, Glory had said; that was how she'd gotten to be an old woman when she was barely thirty-five.



Swan listened to the sound of the roving wind. Was it bringing the answer to the magic mirror's riddle closeri she wondered. Or was it blowing it further awayi



and quite suddenly, as the wind faltered to draw another breath, Swan heard the urgent noise of a dog barking.



Her heart thudded in her chest. The barking ebbed away, was gone - then began to swell again, from somewhere very near.



Swan would know that bark anywhere.



She started to reach over and rouse Josh to tell him that Killer had found his way, but he snorted and muttered in his sleep. She let him alone, stood up with the aid of the dowsing rod and walked to the door.



The barking faded as the wind took a different turn. But she understood what it said: "Hurry! Come see what I've got to show you!"



She put on her coat, buttoned it up to her neck and slipped out of the shack into the tumultuous dark.



She couldn't see the terrier. Josh had unbridled Mule to let the horse fend for himself, and he'd wandered off to find shelter.



The wind came back, and with it the barking. Where was it coming fromi The left, she thought. No, the right! She walked down the steps. There was no sign of Killer, and now the barking was gone, too. But she was sure it had come from the right, maybe from that alley over there, the same alley aaron had taken her along to show her the pond.



She hesitated. It was cold out here, and dark except for the glow of a bonfire a few alleys away. Had she heard Killer's barking or noti she asked herself. It wasn't there now, just the wind shrilling through the alleys and around the shacks.



The image of the child's frozen hands came to her. What was it about those hands that haunted heri she wondered. It was more than the fact that they belonged to a dead child - much, much more.



She didn't know exactly when she made the decision, or when she took the first step. But suddenly she was entering the alley, questing with Crybaby before her, and she was walking toward the field.



Her vision blurred, her eye stinging with pain. She went blind, but she didn't panic; she just waited it out, hoping that this wasn't the time when her sight would go and not return. It came back, and Swan kept going.



She fell once over another corpse in the alley and heard an animal growling somewhere nearby, but she made it through. and then there was the field stretched before her, only faintly illuminated in the reflection of the distant bonfire. She began to walk across it, the odor of the poisonous pond thick in her nostrils, and hoped she remembered the way.



The barking returned, from off to her left. She changed her direction to follow it, and she called, "Killer! Where are youi" but the wind snatched her voice away.



Step by step, Swan crossed the field. In some places the snow was four or five inches thick, but in others the wind had blown it away to expose the bare ground. The barking ebbed and faded, returned from a slightly different direction. Swan altered her course by a few degrees, but she couldn't see the terrier anywhere on the field.



The barking stopped.



So did Swan.



"Where are youi" she called. The wind shoved at her, almost knocked her down. She looked back at Mary's Rest, could see the bonfire and a few lanterns burning in windows. It seemed a long way off. But she took one more step in the direction of the pond.



Crybaby touched something on the ground right in front of her, and Swan made out the shape of the child's body.



The wind shifted. The barking came again - just a whisper now, from an unknown distance. It continued to fade, and just before it was gone Swan had a strange impression: that the sound no longer belonged to an old, weary dog. It had a note of youth in it, and strength, and roads yet to be traveled.



The sound was gone, and Swan was alone with the corpse of the child.



She bent down and looked at the hands. One clawing the earth, the other clenched into a fist. What was so familiar about thati



and then she knew: It was the way she herself had planted seeds when she was a little girl. One hand digging the hole, the other -



She grasped the bony fist and tried to pry it open. It resisted her, but she worked at it patiently and thought of opening a flower's petals. The hand slowly revealed what was locked in its palm.



There were six wrinkled kernels of corn.



One hand digging the hole, she thought, and the other nestling the seeds.



Seeds.



The child had not died digging for roots. The child had died trying to plant shriveled seeds.



She held the kernels in her own palm. Was there untapped life in them, or were they only cold bits of nothingi



"Used to be a big ol' cornfield out here," aaron had told her. "But everythin' died."



She thought of the apple tree bursting into new life. Thought of the green seedlings in the shape of her body. Thought of the flowers she had grown in dry, dusty earth a long time ago.



"Used to be a big ol' cornfield out here."



Swan looked at the body again. The child had died in a strange posture. Why was the child lying on its stomach on the cold ground instead of curling up to save the last bit of warmthi She gently grasped the shoulder and tried to turn it over; there was a faint crackling noise as the ragged clothes unstuck from the ground, but the body itself was as light as a husk.



and underneath the body was a small leather pouch.



She picked it up with a trembling hand, opened it and reached in with two fingers - but she already knew what she'd find.



In the pouch were more dried kernels of corn. The child had been protecting them with body heat. She realized she would have done the same thing, and that she and the child might have had a lot in common.



Here were the seeds. It was up to her to finish the job the dead child had begun.



She scraped away snow and thrust her fingers into the dirt. It was hard and clayey, full of ice and sharp pebbles. She brought up a handful and worked warmth into it; then she put one kernel into it and did what she had done when she planted seeds in the dust of Kansas - she gathered saliva in her mouth and spat into her handful of dirt. She rolled it into a ball, kept rolling it until she felt the tingling running up through her backbone, through her arm and fingers. Then she returned the dirt to the ground, pressing it into the hole she'd scooped it from.



and that was the first seed planted, but whether it would grow in this tormented earth or not, Swan didn't know.



She picked up Crybaby, crawled a few feet away from the body and clawed up another handful of dirt. Either sharp ice or a stone cut her fingers, but she hardly noticed the pain; her mind was concentrated on the task. The pins-and-needles sensation was strengthening, starting to flow through her body in waves like power through humming wires.



Swan crawled ahead and planted a third seed. The cold was chewing down through her clothes, stiffening her bones, but she kept on going, scraping up a handful of dirt every two or three feet and planting a single seed. In some places the earth was frozen solid and as unyielding as granite, so she crawled on to another place, finding that the dirt cushioned beneath the snow was softer than the dirt where the covering snow had blown away. Still, her hands quickly became raw, and blood began to seep from cuts. Drops of blood mingled with the seeds and dirt as Swan continued to work, slowly and methodically, without pause.



She didn't plant any seeds near the pond, but instead turned back toward Mary's Rest to lay down another row. an animal wailed off in the distant woods - a high, shrill, lonely cry. She kept her mind on her work, her bloody hands searching through the snow to find pliable dirt. The cold finally pierced her, and she had to stop and huddle up. Ice was clogging her nostrils, her eye with its fragile vision almost frozen shut. She lay shivering, and it occurred to her that she'd feel stronger if she could sleep for a while. Just a short rest. Just a few minutes, and then she'd get back to work again.



Something nudged her side. She was dazed and weak, and she didn't care to lift her head to see what it was. She was nudged again, much harder this time.



Swan rolled over, angled her head and looked up.



a warm breath hit her face. Mule was standing over her, as motionless as if carved from gray-dappled stone. She started to lie back down again, but Mule nudged her in the shoulder with his nose. He made a deep rumbling sound, and the breath floated from his nostrils like steam from a boiler.



He was not going to let her sleep. and the warm air that came from his lungs reminded her of how very cold it was, and how close she'd been to giving up. If she lay there much longer, she would freeze. She had to get moving again, get her circulation going.



Mule nudged her more firmly, and Swan sat up and said, "Okay, okay." She lifted a blood-and-dirt-caked hand toward his muzzle, and Mule's tongue came out to lick the tortured flesh.



She started planting seeds from the leather pouch again as Mule followed along a few paces behind her, his ears pricking up and quivering at the approaching cries of animals in the woods.



as the cold closed in and Swan forced herself to keep working everything became dreamlike and hazy, as if she were laboring underwater. Every once in a while Mule's steamy breath would warm her, and then she began to sense furtive movement in the dark all around them, drawing closer. She heard the shriek of an animal nearby, and Mule answered with a husky grumble of warning. Swan kept pushing herself on, kept scraping through the snow to grip handfuls of dirt and replace them in the earth with seeds at their centers. Every movement of her fingers was an exercise in agony, and she knew the animals were being lured from the woods by the scent of her blood.



But she had to finish the job. There were still perhaps thirty or forty kernels left in the leather pouch, and Swan was determined to get them planted. The tingling currents coursed through her bones, continuing to grow stronger, almost painful now, and as she worked in the dark she imagined that she saw an occasional, tiny burst of sparks fly from the bloody mass of her fingers. She smelled a faint burned odor, like an electric plug beginning to overheat and short-circuit. Her face beneath the masklike crust of growths seethed with pain; when her vision would fade out, she would work for a few minutes in absolute blindness until her sight returned. She pushed herself onward - three or four feet, and one seed at a time.



an animal - a bobcat, she thought it was - growled somewhere off to the left, dangerously near, She tensed for its attack, heard Mule whinny and felt the pounding of his hooves against the earth as he galloped past her. Then the bobcat shrieked; there was the noise of turbulence in the snow - and, a minute or so later, Mule's breath wanned her face again. another animal growled a challenge, off to the right this time, and Mule whirled toward it as the bobcat leapt. Swan heard a high squeal of pain, heard Mule grunt as he was struck; then there was the jarring of Mule's hooves against the ground - once, twice and again. He returned to her side, and she planted another seed.



She didn't know how long the attacks went on. She concentrated only on her work, and soon she came to the last five seeds.



at the first smear of light in the east, Josh sat up in the front room of Glory Bowen's shack and realized that Swan was gone. He called the woman and her son, and together they searched the alleys of Mary's Rest. It was aaron who ran out to the field to look, and he came back yelling for Josh and his mama to come quick.



They saw a figure lying on the ground, huddled up on its side. Pressed close to it was Mule, who lifted his head and whinnied weakly as Josh ran toward them. He almost stepped on the crushed carcass of a bobcat with an extra clawed foot growing from its side, saw another thing that might have once been a bobcat lying nearby, but it was too mangled to tell for sure.



Mule's flanks and legs were crisscrossed with gashes. and in a circle around Swan were three more animal carcasses, all crushed.



"Swan!" Josh shouted as he reached her and dropped to his knees at her side. She didn't stir, and he took her frail body into his arms. "Wake up, honey!" he said, shaking her. "Come on now, wake up!" The air was bitterly cold, but Josh could feel the warmth that radiated from Mule. He shook her harder. "Swan! Wake up!"



"Oh, my Lawd Jesus," Glory whispered, standing just behind Josh. "Her... hands."



Josh saw them too, and he winced. They were swollen, covered with dried black blood and dirt, the raw fingers contorted into claws. In the palm of her right hand was a leather pouch, and in her left palm was a single, withered kernel of corn mired in the dirt and blood. "Oh, God... Swan..."



"Is she dead, Mamai" aaron asked, but Glory didn't answer. aaron took a step forward. "She ain't dead, mister! Pinch her and wake her up!"



Josh touched her wrist. There was a weak pulse, but it wasn't much. a tear fell from the corner of his eye onto her face.



Swan drew a sharp breath and slowly released it in a moan. Her body trembled as she began to come up from a place that was very dark and cold.



"Swani Can you hear mei"



a voice - muffled and far away - was speaking to her. She thought she recognized it. Her hands were hurting... oh, they were hurting so much. "Joshi"



The voice had been barely a whisper, but Josh's heart leapt. "Yes, honey. It's Josh. You just be still now, we're going to get you to where it's warm." He stood up with the girl in his arms and turned to the clawed-up, exhausted horse. "I'm going to find you a warm place, too. Come on, Mule." The horse struggled to his feet and began to follow.



aaron saw Swan's dowsing rod lying in the snow and retrieved it. He prodded curiously at a dead bobcat with a second neck and head growing out of its belly, then he ran on after Josh and his mama.



Up ahead, Swan tried to open her eye. The lid was sealed shut. a viscous fluid leaked from the corner, and her eye burned so fiercely she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. The other eye, long sealed, throbbed in its socket. She lifted a hand to touch her face, but her fingers wouldn't work.



Josh heard her whisper something. "We're almost there, honey. Just a few minutes more. You hang on, now." He knew she'd been very close to death out there in the open - and might still be. She spoke again, and this time he understood her, but he said, "Whati"



"My eye," Swan said. She was trying to speak calmly, but her voice shook. "Josh... I've gone blind."  



Sixty



Lying on her bed of leaves, Sister sensed movement beside her. She came up from sleep and clamped her hand like a manacle on somebody's wrist.



Robin Oakes was kneeling, his long brown hair full of feathers and bones and his eyes full of light. The colors of the glass circle pulsated on his sharp-boned face. He'd opened the satchel and was trying to slip the ring out of it. They stared at each other for a few seconds, and Sister said, "No." She put her other hand on the ring, and he let her have it.



"Don't get bent out of shape," he said tersely. "I didn't hurt it."



"Thank God. Who said you could go rummaging around in my bagi"



"I wasn't rummaging. I was looking. No big deal."



Sister's bones creaked as she sat up. Murky daylight was showing through the cave's entrance. Most of the young highwaymen were still asleep, but two of the boys were skinning a couple of small carcasses - rabbitsi squirrelsi - and another was arranging sticks to build the breakfast fire. at the rear of the cave, Hugh was sleeping near his patient, and Paul was asleep on a pallet of leaves. "This is important to me," she told Robin. "You don't know how important. Just leave it atone, okayi"



"Screw it," he said, and he stood up. "I was putting that weird thing back, and I was going to tell you about Swan and the big dude. But forget it, deadhead." He started to walk over and check on Bucky.



It took a few seconds for what the boy had said to register: "Swan. Swan and the big dude."



She hadn't told any of them about her dreamwalking. Hadn't said anything about the word "swan" and the hand prints burned into the trunk of a blossoming tree. How, then, could Robin Oakes know - unless he had gone dream-walking, tooi



"Wait!" she cried out. Her voice echoed like a bell within the cavern. Both Paul and Hugh were jolted from their sleep. Most of the boys awakened at once, already reaching for their guns and spears. Robin stopped in mid-stride.



She started to speak, couldn't find the words. She stood up and approached him, holding the glass circle up. "What did you see in thisi"



Robin glanced over at the other boys, then back to Sister, and shrugged.



"You did see something, didn't youi" Her heart was pounding. The colors of the ring pulsated faster as well. "You did! You went dreamwalking, didn't youi"



"Dreamwhati"



"Swan," Sister said. "You saw that word written on the tree, didn't youi The tree that was covered with blossoms. and you saw the hand prints burned into the wood." She held the glass in front of his face. "You did, didn't youi"



"Uh-uh." He shook his head. "Not any of that stuff."



She froze, because she could see that he was telling the truth. "Please," she said. "Tell me what you saw."



"I... slipped it out of your bag about an hour ago, when I woke up," he said in a quiet, respectful voice. "I just wanted to hold it. Just wanted to look at it. I've never seen anything like it before, and after what happened with Bucky... I knew it was special." He trailed off, was silent for a few seconds as if mesmerized again. "I don't know what that thing is, but... it makes you want to hold it and look down inside it where all those lights and colors shine. I took it out of your bag, and I went over and sat down." He motioned toward his own bed of leaves on the far side of the cave. "I wasn't going to keep it very long, but... the colors started changing. They started making a picture - I don't know, I guess it sounds kind of crazy, righti"



"Go on." Both Paul and Hugh were listening, and the others were paying close attention as well.



"I just held it and kept watching the picture form, kind of like one of those mosaics they used to have on the walls of the orphanage chapel: If you looked at them long enough, you could almost swear they came alive and started moving. That's what this was like - only it suddenly wasn't just a picture anymore. It was real, and I was standing on a field covered with snow. The wind was blowing, and everything was kind of hazy - but damn, it was cold out there! I saw something lying on the ground; at first I thought it was a bundle of rags, but then I realized it was a person. and right next to it was a horse, lying down in the snow, too." He looked sheepishly over at the listening boys, then returned his gaze to Sister. "Weird, huhi"



"What else did you seei"



"The big dude came running across the field. He was wearing a black mask, and he passed about six or seven feet right in front of me. Scared the hell out of me, and I wanted to jump back, but then he'd gone on. I swear I could even see his footprints in the snow. and I heard him yell 'Swan.' I heard that as sure as I hear my own voice right now. He sounded scared. Then he knelt down beside that person, and it looked like he was trying to wake her up."



"Heri What do you mean, heri"



"a girl. I think he was calling her name: Swan."



a girl, Sister thought. a girl named Swan - that's who the glass ring was leading them to! Sister's mind was reeling. She felt faint, had to close her eyes for a moment to keep her balance; when she opened them again, the colors of the glass circle were pulsating wildly.



Paul had stood up. Though he'd ceased to believe in the power of the ring before Hugh had saved the young boy, he was now almost trembling with excitement. It didn't matter anymore that he couldn't see anything in the glass; maybe that was because he was blind and would not look deeply enough. Maybe it was because he had refused to believe in anything much beyond himself, or his mind was locked to a bitter wavelength. But if this boy had seen a vision in the glass, if he'd experienced the sensation of "dreamwalking" that Sister talked about, then might they be searching for someone who really was out there somewherei "What elsei" he asked Robin. "Could you see anything elsei"



"When I was going to jump back from that big dude in the black mask, I saw something on the ground almost in front of me. Some kind of animal, all crushed and bloody. I don't know what it was, but somebody had done a number on it."



"The man in the mask," Sister said anxiously. "Did you see where he came fromi"



"No. Like I say, it was kind of hazy. Smoky, I guess. I could smell a lot of smoke in the air; and there was another smell - a sick kind of smell. I think there might have been a couple of other people there, too, but I'm not sure. The picture started fading and drifting apart. I didn't like that sick smell, and I wanted to be back here again. Then I was sitting over there with that thing in my hands, and that was all."



"Swan," Sister whispered. She looked at Paul. His eyes were wide and amazed. "We're looking for a girl named Swan."



"But where do we looki My God, a field could be anywhere - one mile away or a hundred miles!"



"Did you see anything elsei" Sister asked the boy. "any landmarks - a barni a housei anythingi"



"Just a field. Covered with snow in some places, and in others the snow had blown away. Like I said, it was so real I could feel the cold. It was so real it was spooky... and I guess that's why I let you catch me putting that thing back in your bag. I guess I wanted to tell somebody about it."



"How are we supposed to find a field without landmarksi" Paul asked. "There's no way!"



"Uh... excuse me."



They looked over at Hugh, who was getting up with the aid of his crutch. "I'm really in the dark about all this," he said, once he'd gotten himself steadied. "But I know that what you believe you see in that glass you take to be a place that truly exists. I imagine I'm the last person in the world to understand such things - but it seems to me that if you're looking for that particular place, you might start with Mary's Rest."



"Why therei" Paul asked him.



"Because back in Moberly I had the opportunity to meet travelers," he replied. "Just as I met you and Sister. I assumed travelers might show some pity for a one-legged beggar - unfortunately, I was usually incorrect. But I remember one man who'd come through Mary's Rest; he was the one who told me the pond there had gone dry. and I remember... he said the air in Mary's Rest smelled unclean." He turned his attention to Robin. "You said you smelled a 'sick' odor - and you also smelled smoke. Is that righti"



"Yeah. There was smoke in the air."



Hugh nodded. "Smoke. Chimneys. Fires for people trying to keep warm. I think the field you're searching for - if there is such a place - may be near Mary's Rest."



"How far is Mary's Rest from herei" Sister asked Robin.



"Seven or eight miles, I guess. Maybe more. I've never been there, but we've sure robbed a lot of people who were going in and out. That was a while back, though. Not so many travel this way anymore."



"There's not enough gas in the Jeep to make that distance," Paul reminded Sister. "I doubt if we'd make a mile."



"I don't mean seven or eight miles by road," Robin corrected. "I mean that far overland. It's southwest of here, through the woods, and the going's rough. Six of my men scouted a trail over there about a year ago. Two of them made it back, and they said there wasn't anything worth stealing in Mary's Rest. They'd probably rob us if they could."



"If we can't drive, we'll have to walk." Sister picked up her satchel and slipped the glass ring into it. Her hands were shaking.



Robin grunted. "Sister," he said, "I don't mean any disrespect, but you're crazy. Seven miles on foot wouldn't be what I'd call a real fun thing to do. You know, we probably saved your lives stopping your Jeep like we did. You'd be frozen to death by now if we hadn't."



"We have to get to Mary's Rest - or at least I do. Paul and Hugh can decide for themselves. I've come a hell of a lot further than seven miles to get here, and a little cold's not going to stop me now."



"It's not just the distance, or the cold. It's what's out there in the deep woods."



"Whati" Hugh asked uneasily, hobbling forward on his crutch.



"Oh, some real interesting wildlife. Things that look like they were hatched in some mad doctor's zoo. Hungry things. You don't want one of those things to catch you out in the woods at night."



"I should say not," Hugh agreed.



"I have to get to Mary's Rest," Sister said firmly, and her set expression told Robin her mind was made up. "all I need is some food, warm clothes and my shotgun. I'll make out okay."



"Sister, you won't make a mile before you get lost - or eaten."



She looked at Paul Thorson. "Pauli" she asked. "are you still with mei"



He hesitated, glanced toward the gloomy light at the cave's entrance and then at the fire the boys were starting by rubbing two sticks together. Damn! he thought. I never could do that when I was a Cub Scout! It might not be too late to learn, though. Still, they'd come so far, and they might be so close to finding the answer they sought. He watched the fire spark and catch, but he'd already decided. "I'm with you."



"Hughi" she prompted.



"I want to go with you," he said, "I really do. But I have a patient." He glanced at the sleeping boy. "I want to know what - and who - you find when you get to Mary's Rest, but... I think I'm needed here, Sister. It's been a long time since I've felt useful. Do you understandi"



"Yes." She'd already decided to talk Hugh out of going, anyway; there was no way he could make the distance on one leg, and he'd only slow them down. "I do understand." She looked at Robin. "We'll want to be leaving as soon as we can get our gear together. I'll be needing my shotgun and the shells - if that's all right with you."



"You'll need more than that to make it."



"Then I'm sure you'll want to return Paul's gun and bullets to him, too. and we can use whatever food and clothes you can spare."



Robin laughed, but his eyes remained hard. "We're supposed to be the robbers, Sister!"



"Just give us back what you stole from us, then. We'll call it even."



"anybody ever tell you you were crazyi" he asked.



"Yes. Tougher punks than you."



a faint smile spread slowly across his face, and his eyes softened. "Okay," he said, "you'll get your stuff back. I guess you'll need it more than us." He paused thoughtfully, then said, "Hold on," and he went over to his bed of leaves. He bent down and started going through a cardboard box full of tin cans, knives, watches, shoelaces, and other items. He found what he was looking for and returned to Sister. "Here," he said, placing something in her hand. "You'll need this, too."



It was a small metal compass that looked like it might have come from a CrackerJack box.



"It works, too," he told her. "at least, it worked when I took it off a dead man a couple of weeks ago."



"Thanks. I hope it's luckier for me than it was for him."



"Yeah. Well... you can have this, too, if you want it." Robin unbuttoned the brown coat from around his throat. against his pallid skin he was wearing a tarnished little crucifix on a silver chain. He started to take it off, but Sister touched his hand to restrain him.



"That's all right." and she pulled her woolen muffler away from her neck to show him the crucifix-shaped scar that had been burned there in the Forty-second Street theater long before. "I've got my own."



"Yeah." Robin nodded. "I guess you do."



Their coats, sweaters and gloves were returned to Paul and Sister, along with their guns, bullets for Paul's Magnum and shells for Sister's shotgun. a can of baked beans and some dried squirrel meat wrapped up in leaves found their way into a duffel bag that was returned to Sister, along with an all-purpose knife and a bright orange woolen cap. Robin gave both of them wristwatches, and a search of another cardboard box of booty yielded three kitchen matches.



Paul siphoned the last of the gasoline from the Jeep's tank into a small plastic milk jug, and it barely wet the bottom. But the jug was securely sealed with tape and put down into the duffel bag, to be used to strengthen a fire.



It was as light as it was going to get outside. The sky was dingy, and there was no way to tell where the sun was. Sister's watch said ten twenty-two; Paul's said three thirteen.



It was time to go.



"Readyi" Sister asked Paul.



He looked longingly at the fire for a moment and then said, "Yeah."



"Good luck!" Hugh called, hobbling to the mouth of the cave as they started out. Sister lifted a gloved hand, then pulled her collar up around the muffler at her throat. She checked the compass, and Paul followed her toward the woods.  



Sixty-one



"There it is." Glory pointed to the hulk of a gray-boarded barn half hidden within a grove of trees. Two other structures had collapsed, and from one of them protruded a crumbling red brick chimney. "aaron found this place a while back," she said as Josh walked with her toward the barn and Mule tagged along. "Nobody lives out here, though." She motioned toward a well-worn trail that went past the decayed structures and deeper into the forest. "The Pit's not too far."



The Pit, as Josh understood it, was the community's burial ground - a trench into which hundreds of bodies had been lowered over the years. "Jackson used to say a few words over the dead," Glory said. "Now that he's gone, they just toss 'em in and forget 'em." She glanced at him. "Swan came mighty close to joinin' 'em last night. What'd she think she was doin' out therei"



"I don't know." Swan had lapsed into unconsciousness when they'd gotten her to the shack. Josh and Glory had cleaned her hands and bandaged them with strips of cloth, and they could feel the fever radiating from her. They'd left aaron and Rusty to watch over her while Josh fulfilled his promise to find shelter for Mule, but he was half crazy with worry; without medicine, proper food or even decent drinking water, what hope did she havei Her body was so broken down with exhaustion that the fever might kill her. He remembered her last words to him before she'd faded away: "Josh, I've gone blind."



His hands gripped into fists at his sides. Protect the child, he thought. Sure. You've done a real fine job of that, haven't youi



He didn't know why she'd slipped out of the shack last night, but it was obvious she'd been digging in the hard earth. Thank God Mule had had the sense to know she was in trouble, or today they'd be taking Swan's body to the -



No. He refused to think about that. She'd get better. He knew she would.



They passed the rusted remains of a car - minus doors, wheels, engine and hood - and Glory pulled the barn's door open. It was dark and chilly inside, but at least the wind was blunted. Soon Josh's vision grew accustomed to the gloom. There were two stalls with a little straw on the floor and a trough in which Josh could melt some snow for Mule to drink. On the walls hung ropes and harness gear, but there were no windows an animal might crawl through. It seemed a safe enough place to leave him, and at least he'd be sheltered.



Josh saw what looked like a pile of junk on the other side of the barn and walked over to examine it. He found some broken-up chairs, a lamp without bulb or wiring, a small lawn mower and a coil of barbed wire. a mouse-eaten blue blanket covered more junk, and Josh lifted it away to see what was underneath.



"Glory," he said softly. "Come take a look."



She walked over beside him, and he ran his fingers across the cracked glass screen of a television set. "I haven't seen one of these in a while," he said wistfully, "I guess the ratings are pretty low these days, huhi" He punched the on-off button and started to turn through the channels, but the knob came off in his hand.



"Not worth a damn," Glory said. "Just like everything else."



The TV was supported on some sort of desk with rollers on it, and Josh picked up the set, turned it around and pulled the pressboard off to reveal the tube and the jungle of wires within. He felt about as dumb as a caveman, peering into a magic box that had once been a commonplace luxury - no, necessity - for millions of american homes. Without power, it was as useless as a stone - probably less so, really, because a stone could be used to kill rodents for the stewpot.



He set the TV aside, along with the other junk. It was going to take a smarter man than he to make juice run through wires and boxes show pictures that moved and spoke again, he mused. He bent down to the floor and found a box full of what looked like old wooden candlesticks. another box held dusty bottles. He saw some pieces of paper scattered on the floor and picked up one. It was an announcement, and the faded red letters said antique auction! Jefferson City Flea Market! Saturday, June 5! Come Early, Stay Late! He opened his hand and let the announcement drift back to the floor and settle with a noise like a sigh amid the other pieces of yesterday's news.



"Joshi What's this thingi"



Glory was touching the desk with the rollers on it. Her hand found a small crank, and as she turned it there was the rattling noise of a chain moving over rusted gears. The rollers turned as achingly as old men revolving in their sleep. a number of rubber-cushioned pads were activated by the hand crank, coming down to press briefly against the rollers and then return to their original positions. Josh saw a small metal tray affixed to the other end of the desk; he picked up a few of the flea market announcements and put them in the tray. "Keep turning the crank," he said, and they watched as the rollers and pads grasped one piece of paper at a time, fed them through a slot into the depths of the machine and delivered them to another tray at the opposite end. Josh found a sliding panel, pushed it back and looked into an arrangement of more rollers, trays of metal type and a dried-up series of spongy surfaces that Josh realized must have once been ink pads.



"We've got us a printing press," he said. "How about thati Must be an old knocker, but it's in pretty good shape." He touched the close-grained oak of the press's cabinet. "This was somebody's labor of love. Sure is a shame to let it sit out here and rot."



"Might as well rot here as anywhere else." She grunted. "That's the damnedest thing!"



"What isi"