Harpy high, p.18
Harpy High, page 18
part #2 of Tim Desmond Series
The ogre’s hand shot out and closed around Yang’s windpipe. All of us were treated to the sight of the redoubtable Mongol warrior disarmed, kicking helplessly in midair. He tried to dematerialize, but Danforth made a slight adjustment to his grip and Yang’s wavering outline solidified.
“Ah, ah, ah. I won’t hear of you going,” the ogre said. Coyness didn’t suit him. “Not until we clear up a few teensy details. You are ugly, creature, but you are hardly in our league. You’re one of those tacky little domestic spirits, aren’t you?” Through purpling lips, Yang affirmed this. “Well! Just because good domestics are so hard to find doesn’t give you carte blanche to attempt to bullyrag moi. Too arriviste for words. You won’t do that again, will you, dear boy?”
Yang gagged out his unqualified refusal to even think of doing that again. Still the monster kept him dangling.
This proved to be too much for T’ing. “Let him down, you creep!” She found the napkin holder that had missed Neil’s head and lobbed it at Danforth’s. Her aim was a hundred per cent better than her honored ancestor’s. The loaded dispenser made a sound like a large gong being dropped onto a large cement block and got the ogre’s attention.
“Young woman, this is a private conversation.”
“Listen to me, you affected twit, I remember you. I was the one who sneaked you into Ms. Alexinski’s Modern American Fiction class.”
“Just when she was starting the unit on John Cheever.” Danforth sighed in bliss at the memory. “Did I tell you it looks like I’ll get extra credit for my paper on the novels of Gore Vidal?”
“When I brought you out of Tim’s locker, you didn’t know the novels of Gore Vidal from toilet paper, and now you’re messing with my revered ancestor? After everything I’ve done for you?” She cast about for more missiles, but all she could find was the empty pizza pan. She prepared to use it in the style of an oversized shuriken, one of those nasty, sharp metal throwing stars no good ninja would be without.
Danforth dropped Yang, but only so that he could pluck the pan from T’ing’s hands and pinch it into a solid aluminum bow tie which he clipped to the front of his letter sweater. He patted her on the head with one huge finger the way he might patronize an endearing infant.
“That was then, darling.” He blew her a kiss. “This is now. None of us need any of you anymore. Oh, there may be one or two old stick-in-the-muds who claim there’s a trick or two you’ve yet to teach us about this outer world. Poppycock. Which was just the way we worded the consensus report we sent along to Baba Yaga. The old bag may be redder than borscht, but even Commies see the sense in cutting the deadwood from the payroll. You might as well face it, loves”—he tugged at his new tie until the metal groaned—“we’re through with you.” He went back to the team table, where Tiffany and Megan told him that aluminum was definitely his color.
The Coldest Cut of All
I sat down in the midst of our demolished table and covered my head with my arms. T’ing’s comforting presence by my side only made me curl up into a tighter ball. Her efforts to make me face her were useless, though she did get enough of a look at me to tell the others, “He’s crying.”
They all gathered around, speaking in hushed tones, while the Glenwood High victory bash went on without them. The only voice I missed hearing was Eleziane’s. Of course she’ll steer clear, I thought without rancor. It won’t help her masquerade as one of the Unseely if she shows any interest or sympathy for an afflicted mortal. I wished the rest of them would take a cue from her. I wanted to be left alone.
“Go away,” I mumbled.
“What?” Yang seized me by the hair and yanked my head up. “You say something?” His nose smacked mine as he stared at the tears streaking my face. “Son of a splay-legged bitch, he is crying! Hey! You stop that. I’m all right, see? You don’t need to cry.”
“I’m not crying about you.”
“No? Why not? I’m worth it.”
“I’m crying about my mother.”
My reason for tears made Yang stop and think. The smell of burning yak-chips was unmistakable. “Why you crying for her? She’s all right, too. A little cursed with the sleep of a thousand years, but the witch will take care of that once we do what she wants.”
“And how are we going to do that now? You don’t see, do you?” I flung my hand at the giants, who were paying us no further mind. “You heard what the ogre said: They don’t need us! They’ve told the witch so! Why should she release my mother from her curse? We’ve got nothing left to buy her waking with. The monsters can fend for themselves.” I tucked my head back down. “Baba Yaga will leave Mom enspelled forever because I failed her. I’ll never again be able to tell her I love her.”
I stayed like that for a while, nothing but my own sobs filling my ears. T’ing’s gentle touch withdrew and still I cried. I was tired and all hope was gone. Only once I paused, took a breath, and tried to summon my sword. Nothing happened, except that instead of my thoughts pulling the weapon to my hand, my hand felt as if the sword were calling to it from behind a wall of magic it could not pierce. The phantom of Baba Yaga’s laughter jangled in my ears until I drowned out the gloating sound of it with sobs.
My misery wrapped me so completely that I don’t know how long it was before I realized that I wasn’t the only one crying. The sobs were deeper than mine, and louder, more like a behemoth with the dry heaves than a human noise. I should’ve known right then who was doing it, but I had to look up anyway because sometimes theory is not enough.
I looked. I saw. I was right, but I still couldn’t believe it.
“Yang?”
What a sight. The Mongol’s moustaches dripped like pine branches in a tempest, his thick lips bobbling madly with every sob. He stopped his blubbering only long enough to wail, “/ had a mother too, y’know!”
Fresh waterworks surged from his eyes as if he had taps instead of tear ducts. I forgot my own sorrow as I watched the sluice gates open before the flow. Neil performed a little experiment, holding an empty soda glass under the Mongol’s left eye; ten seconds later, the glass was full.
“Look at this!” T’ing lifted her sodden sneakers from the puddled floor one at a time and regarded them with disgust. “Honored Grandfather, quit it!”
“I can’t!” Yang blubbed. “You never knew my mother. What a woman! Jadwiga the Implacable, they called her. She was a Russian princess before my noble father, Joti, carried her off; that’s the way the bard told it who lived to collect his commission from her, anyhow. She gave Father seventeen sons, four daughters, and a knife in the ribs—Well, she told him she had a headache!—then she founded her own squadron of raiders, with the blessings of our local khan.” The tears abated slightly as Yang gave himself over to dewy-eyed nostalgia. “I can still remember the day she came up with her recruitment motto: ‘Join the Cerise Horde and see the world! Then burn it.’ And now she’s gone, and I’ll never see her again, and I’ll never get the chance to tell her—to tell her that—”
T’ing hugged him. “That you loved her?”
“Nahhhh. That I finally found the way to make a man swallow his own nose while it’s still attached to his face. No one appreciated technological advances like my mother.” Yang’s filial grief redoubled in a genuine cataract of weeping.
“We’ve got to stop him,” I said, watching the pool of tears at our feet go snaking across the floor and out the door of the Pizzarama.
“No we don’t.” Eleziane was at my ear, her voice low and urgent. “Let him cry. Make him cry more, if you can. His tears may be our salvation. With them, he is the pathfinder we need.”
“Pathfinder? What path? Where to? What are you talking about?”
“Hush. This idea just came to me, and it’s a hope for us. Have we any other? Just do as I say,” the lady of the Fey insisted. “I’m going ahead. Let him weep at least five minutes longer, then follow. Five minutes, mind! And don’t watch me when I go; they mustn’t see us leave together.” She trotted out as fast as her size allowed, her eyes fixed on the fast-flowing streamlet of tears.
“What do you think she’s up to?” I asked Neil. “I mean, should we do like she says, or is she just nuts?”
“Nuts or not, can we afford to ignore her?” he countered. “You heard it yourself, the monsters are breaking free. They say they don’t need us for anything, but how much longer before they decide they do need us—as one of the four basic food groups. If Eleziane’s got a plan—any plan!—it’s one more than we’ve come up with. I say we chance it. Besides, this Mongol wiener tried to brain me with the napkin dispenser and now someone tells me I should make him cry? Think there’s any way I’m gonna pass this one up, think again, uh-huh, you bet-cha.”
So we waited. Neil spiced up the five minutes by reminding Yang of how many times he’d neglected his poor old grayhaired pillaging mother, of the countless nights Jadwiga had waited up for her wandering boy in vain, in the dark, in the yurt, alone. “And did you call? Could you trouble yourself to spend one lousy quarter on the woman who gave you birth? Did you even try to let her know you were okay? "
“How could I?” Yang spread his hands.
“He’s right, Neil,” T’ing put in. “The nearest telephone was, oh, five, six centuries away.”
“And who had change?” the Mongol sniveled.
“That’s no excuse.” Watching Neil’s expression, I sure hoped I never looked that prissy when I was in my own skin. “Some sons dispatch messengers who whip their ponies into a bloody lather across the steppes so they drop down dead at the threshold of the yurt and—Yurts do have thresholds, don’t they?”
“Right past the poles where we display the severed heads of our enemies and hang out the wet wash, yeah.”
“Okay, fine. So some sons find a way to drop their mothers an occasional note that doesn’t ask for money. I’ll bet your sixteen brothers managed.”
“I don’t think so.” Yang grew meditative. “I killed them all.” Suddenly dry-eyed and on the defensive he snarled, “They started it!”
Before Neil could try priming the guilt-pump any further, I proclaimed the five minutes to be over. I did it for T’ing’s sake. She was looking really queasy. Neil was too good, and I could almost see the specter of T’ing’s adoptive mother, Mrs. Kaplan, hovering over his head saying, Stand up straight. Make your bed. You want to wash your neck or are you planning on growing potatoes back there? Oh, you don’t have to listen to me; I’m only your mother, what do I know? Just wait. When I’m dead you ’ll be sorry, only then it’ll be too late. I hope you have children of your own some day. No wonder the girl was writhing.
“Let’s go.” I pointed to the salt-water rivulet Yang’s eyes had spawned. It was presently six inches wide and running strong, though it appeared to grow shallower the further we trailed it.
“How come we’re doing this?” Yang wanted to know as we hustled down the block. The stream was becoming more ghostly, the rushing tears fading to little more than a damp stain on the sidewalk.
“Eleziane said to try it,” I told him, jogging on. “Said you were our pathfinder, though I don’t know what—”
“I can tell you now, Tim.” Eleziane stepped out of a storefront to block our way. Beyond her, the tears were thinning to a dark trickle no broader than a pencil point. “What we’re after is a path to the Leeside.”
Judging by the way all the other people on the street moved away from us, they must’ve been seeing what looked like the start of a modest gang war. Yang alone, goaded to nail-spitting disbelief and waving his sword to the four points of the compass, could pass for an entire battalion of street-scum.
“Calm down, calm down,” Eleziane commanded, her royal bearing coming through in spite of her ungainly new body.
“Calm down my left nut and all his cousins!” Yang squawked. “You’re crazier than Kipchak-kissing a bear with the toothache. You want the Leeside?”
Neil and I leaned heavily on Yang’s shoulders until he stopped spraying foam. “Even if she’s got a sane reason for wanting to get back there, this doesn’t jibe,” I said. Leaving Neil and T’ing to monitor the Mongol’s pressure-gauge, I turned to Eleziane. “Why all this with the tears? Getting into the Leeside’s the easy part. You don’t need directions, just a psychological evaluation.”
“I don’t want to get into the Leeside,” she replied, making a big, insulting, unnecessary show of patience in the face of dumb questions. “I— We—have to find the spot in the Leeside barrier where things are getting out."
“Why?” T’ing asked. “So we can lock the bam door after the horses are out, gone for two years, turned into dog food? The damage is done; all the monsters are free.”
“Not all.” One look at Eleziane’s solemn face and you knew that what she said would admit no argument. “You’re strangers to the Leeside, compared to me. It’s where I was bom, where my mother was—” She choked on a word and left it unsaid. “What I mean is, you don’t know how many terrors the Leeside holds. I’ve been among the Unseely, I’ve taken count, and I can tell you that these who’re out now are only the frothing tip of the first great wave.”
I shook at the Faerie princess’ words. The clamoring crowd of unspeakable beasts in my locker had been too many for me, and now she said there were more where they came from? “How many more are there? Where are they?”
“Waiting.” Eleziane was grim. “I hope waiting in the Leeside, for word from their bolder brethren of how things are on the Outside. Monsters are basically cowards and bullies. They like to know beforehand that they’re going into a guaranteed winning situation. As soon as they receive the slightest encouragement, they’ll be along, and the hole in the great barrier is their point of exit from the Leeside. That’s why we have to find it and stop it up now, before the rest of them break through.”
“Also to make sure the monsters we’ve already got don’t get out again,” T’ing said.
“Again?”
“When we push them back into the Leeside.” When she put on a grin that wicked, I had no trouble accepting Yang the Homicidal Overachiever as her direct blood ancestor.
“Nice theory,” I said. “Got any practical ideas for seeing it through?”
Still looking like a cross between a kitten and a piranha, T’ing said, “First things first. It doesn’t pay to shove them back into a sack with a hole the size of Cleveland at the other end.”
“Right!” Neil seconded T’ing enthusiastically. Too enthusiastically for my taste. Yang’s words earlier about Neil’s unauthorized use of my body had me concerned. It takes two to play an R-rated game of spin-the-hormones. Just who had Neil asked to join him?
First things first, as T’ing said. Jealousy had to get in line behind higher priorities. While we debated, Yang’s tears were vanishing. Eleziane saw, and it threw her into a panic.
“Please come,” Eleziane begged. “The Leeside’s a greedy place, never willing to let us go entirely. If we shed tears in your world, they seek the Leeside level at last, and the only way in for them is the hole. We must follow!”
The lady had a point, but I had a question. “What’s the rush? If we lose the trail, you could just cry some and we follow that.”
She glowered at me. “T’ing’s ancestral spirit was mortal, once. I am Fey. Tears—true tears—are the birthright of humans alone.” Without more being said, she flung herself back onto the swiftly vanishing track.
“Hey! Who are you calling human?” Yang shouted, and took off after her, leaving the rest of us to sprint after him.
It wasn’t that long a race, or Eleziane never would have preserved her lead. I saw her hang a sharp right and duck into an open doorway, Yang on her heels. I stopped short to check out the name over the door: Feidelstein’s Kosher Delicatessen. Oh joy. I could hardly wait to see whether our entrance would get any kind of a rise out of the guy behind the counter. Last time I’d been in to pick up an order, it was like dealing with a tortoise on tranquilizers.
I bet Yang’s tears go all the way through this place and out the back way, I thought. If this is the spot where the monsters came out—and all the domestic sprites before them—you d think that Old Stoneface would’ve noticed. Yeah, maybe even opened his eyes more than halfway, for a change. No way could the hole be in here.
So I jogged blithely into Feidelstein’s deli, T’ing and Neil behind me. As I we shoved open the glass door, I thought I saw a “Sorry, We’re Closed!” sign out of the comer of my eye and what looked like a broken lock. My best friend, Larry Perlmutter, was an uninvited presence in my mind, a voice that reminded me, You want a corned beef sandwich today? You crazy? It’s Saturday, man. Feidelstein’s is never open on the Sabbath.
But the door was open. What can’t be, won’t be, right? We were well and truly inside the deli before I realized, in hindsight, that if Yang wanted to get in somewhere, in he’d get. A blade like his could crack a lock just fine. We were probably lucky the lock had given, or he’d have shattered the glass door itself. I glanced around the deli and saw no cold cuts in the display cases, no lights on, and all the chairs in the darkened dining room piled high atop the tables.
“Breaking and entering,” I said aloud, and hit the brakes. T’ing and Neil rear-ended me.
“Say what?” Neil rubbed his nose.
“I said, there’s no one here. The place is closed. Yang busted the lock, and if there’s a silent alarm system, we’d better get the heck out before the cops come.”
“No one’s here, huh?” Neil jerked his thumb in the direction Yang and Eleziane had had to take, the only other door in the place. It was closed, and the fast-disappearing thread of the Mongol’s tears slipped away under it. Closed or not, the sound of many voices raised in anger on the other side was perfectly audible. “ ‘No one’s’ being pretty damn loud.” As if to emphasize Neil’s observation, a heavy object smashed against the shut door. I could almost see the wood bulging under impact.
“Oh, Lord, what’s he broken now?” T’ing dashed past us and flung open the door, crying, “Revered Grandfather, whatever you’ve got, you put it down right this minute!” She was over the threshold before we could stop her.
