-a singer's commentary on "The Ballad1 of Sam Bass," in A Treasury2 of American Folklore3.
None of this can actually be happening. If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as metaphor4. Religions are, by definition, metaphors5, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer6 in the desert, someone who loves you-even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial7 being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers8, and triumphs over all opposition9.
Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world.
So none of this is happening. Such things could not occur. Never a word of it is literally10 true. Even so, the next thing that happened, happened like this:
At the foot of Lookout11 Mountain men and women were gathered around a small bonfire in the rain. They were standing12 beneath the trees, which provided poor cover, and they were arguing.
The lady Kali, with her ink-black skin and her white, sharp teeth, said, "It is time."
Anansi, with lemon-yellow gloves and silvering hair, shook his head. "We can wait," he said. "While we can wait, we should wait."
There was a murmur13 of disagreement from the crowd.
"No, listen. He's right," said an old man with iron-gray hair: Czernobog. He was holding a small sledgehammer, resting the head of it on his shoulder. "They have the high ground. The weather is against us. This is madness, to begin this now."
Something that looked a little like a wolf and a little more like a man grunted14 and spat15 on the forest floor. "When better to attack them, dedushka? Shall we wait until the weather clears, when they expect it? I say we go now, I say we move."
"There are clouds between us and them," pointed16 out Isten of the Hungarians. He had a fine black mustache, a large, dusty black hat, and the grin of a man who makes his living selling aluminum17 siding and new roofs and gutters18 to senior citizens but who always leaves town the day after the checks clear whether the work is done or not.
A man in an elegant suit, who had until now said nothing, put his hands together, stepped into the firelight, and made his point succinctly19 and clearly. There were nods and mutters of agreement.
A voice came from one of three warrior-women who comprised the Morrigan, standing so close together in the shadows that they had become an arrangement of blue-tattooed limbs and dangling21 crow's wings. She said, "It doesn't matter whether this is a good time or a bad time. This is the time. They have been killing22 us. Better to die together, on the attack, like gods, than to die fleeing and singly, like rats in a cellar."
Another murmur, this time one of deep agreement. She had said it for all of them. Now was the time.
"The first head is mine," said a very tall Chinese man, with a rope of tiny skulls23 around his neck. He began to walk, slowly and intently, up the mountain, shouldering a staff with a curved blade at the end of it, like a silver moon.
***
Even Nothing cannot last forever.
He might have been there, been Nowhere, for ten minutes or for ten thousand years. It made no difference: time was an idea for which he no longer had any need.
He could no longer remember his real name. He felt empty and cleansed25, in that place that was not a place.
He was without form, and void.
He was nothing.
And into that nothing a voice said, "Ho-hoka, cousin. We got to talk."
And something that might once have been Shadow said, "Whiskey Jack26?"
"Yeah," said Whiskey Jack, in the darkness. "You are a hard man to hunt down, when you're dead. You didn't go to any of the places I figured. I had to look all over before I thought of checking here. Say, you ever find your tribe?"
Shadow remembered the man and the girl in the disco beneath the spinning mirror-ball. "I guess I found my family. But no, I never found my tribe."
"Sorry to have to disturb you."
"Let me be. I got what I wanted. I'm done."
"They are coming for you," said Whiskey Jack. "They are going to revive you."
"But I'm done," said Shadow. "It was all over and done."
"No such thing," said Whiskey Jack. "Never any such thing. We'll go to my place. You want a beer?"
He guessed he would like a beer, at that. "Sure."
"Get me one too. There's a cooler outside the door," said Whiskey Jack, and he pointed. They were in his shack27.
Shadow opened the door to the shack with hands he had not possessed28 moments before. There was a plastic cooler filled with chunks29 of river ice out there, and, in the ice, a dozen cans of Budweiser. He pulled out a couple of cans of beer and then sat in the doorway31 and looked out over the valley.
They were at the top of a hill, near a waterfall, swollen32 with melting snow and runoff. It fell in stages, maybe seventy feet below them, maybe a hundred. The sun reflected from the ice that sheathed33 the trees that overhung the waterfall basin.
"Where are we?" asked Shadow.
"Where you were last time," said Whiskey Jack. "My place. You planning on holding on to my Bud till it warms up?"
Shadow stood up and passed him the can of beer. "You didn't have a waterfall outside your place last time I was here," he said.
Whiskey Jack said nothing. He popped the top of the Bud, and drank half the can in one long slow swallow. Then he said, "You remember my nephew? Henry Bluejay? The poet? He traded his Buick for your Winnebago. Remember?"
"Sure. I didn't know he was a poet."
Whiskey Jack raised his chin and looked proud. "Best damn poet in America," he said.
He drained the rest of his can of beer, belched34, and got another can, while Shadow popped open his own can of beer, and the two men sat outside on a rock, by the pale green ferns, in the morning sun, and they watched the falling water and they drank their beer. There was still snow on the ground, in the places where the shadows never lifted.
The earth was muddy and wet.
"Henry was diabetic," continued Whiskey Jack. "It happens. Too much. You people came to America, you take our sugar cane35, potatoes, and corn, then you sell us potato chips and caramel popcorn37, and we're the ones who get sick." He sipped38 his beer, reflecting. "He'd won a couple of prizes for his poetry. There were people in Minnesota who wanted to put his poems into a book. He was driving to Minnesota in a sports car to talk to them. He had traded your 'Bago for a yellow Miata. The doctors said they think he went into a coma39 while he was driving, went off the road, ran the car into one of your road signs. Too lazy to look at where you are, to read the mountains and the clouds, you people need road signs everywhere. And so Henry Bluejay went away forever, went to live with brother Wolf. So I said, nothing keeping me there any longer. I came north. Good fishing up here."
"I'm sorry about your nephew."
"Me too. So now I'm living here in the north. Long way from white man's diseases. White man's roads. White man's road signs. White man's yellow Miatas. White man's caramel popcorn."
"White man's beer?"
Whiskey Jack looked at the can. "When you people finally give up and go home, you can leave us the Budweiser breweries," he said.
"Where are we?" asked Shadow. "Am I on the tree? Am I dead? Am I here? I thought everything was finished. What's real?"
"Yes," said Whiskey Jack.
" 'Yes'? What kind of an answer is 'Yes'?"
"It's a good answer. True answer, too."
Shadow said, "Are you a god as well?"
Whiskey Jack shook his head. "I'm a culture hero," he said. "We do the same shit gods do, we just screw up more and nobody worships us. They tell stories about us, but they tell the ones that make us look bad along with the ones where we came out fairly okay."
"I see," said Shadow. And he did see, more or less.
"Look," said Whiskey Jack. "This is not a good country for gods. My people figured that out early on. There are creator spirits who found the earth or made it or shit it out, but you think about it: who's going to worship Coyote? He made love to Porcupine40 Woman and got his dick shot through with more needles than a pincushion. He'd argue with rocks and the rocks would win.
"So, yeah, my people figured that maybe there's something at the back of it all, a creator, a great spirit, and so we say thank you to it, because it's always good to say thank you. But we never built churches. We didn't need to. The land was the church. The land was the religion. The land was older and wiser than the people who walked on it. It gave us salmon41 and corn and buffalo42 and passenger pigeons. It gave us wild rice and walleye. It gave us melon and squash and turkey. And we were the children of the land, just like the porcupine and the skunk43 and the blue jay."
He finished his second beer and gestured toward the river at the bottom of the waterfall. "You follow that river for a way, you'll get to the lakes where the wild rice grows. In wild rice time, you go out in your canoe with a friend, and you knock the wild rice into your canoe, and cook it, and store it, and it will keep you for a long time. Different places grow different foods. Go far enough south there are orange trees, lemon trees, and those squashy green guys, look like pears-"
"Avocados."
"Avocados," agreed Whiskey Jack. "That's them. They don't grow up this way. This is wild rice country. Moose country. What I'm trying to say is that America is like that. It's not good growing country for gods. They don't grow well here. They're like avocados trying to grow in wild rice country."
"They may not grow well," said Shadow, remembering, "but they're going to war."
That was the only time he ever saw Whiskey Jack laugh. It was almost a bark, and it had little humor in it. "Hey Shadow," said Whiskey Jack. "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump off too?"
"Maybe." Shadow felt good. He didn't think it was just the beer. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so alive, and so together.
"It's not going to be a war."
"Then what is it?"
Whiskey Jack crushed the beer can between his hands, pressing it until it was flat. "Look," he said, and pointed to the waterfall. The sun was high enough that it caught the waterfall spray: a rainbow nimbus hung in the air. Shadow thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
"It's going to be a bloodbath," said Whiskey Jack, flatly.
Shadow saw it then. He saw it all, stark44 in its simplicity45. He shook his head, then he began to chuckle46, and he shook his head some more, and the chuckle became a full-throated laugh.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine," said Shadow. "I just saw the hidden Indians. Not all of them. But I saw them anyhow."
"Probably Ho Chunk30, then. Those guys never could hide worth a damn." He looked up at the sun. "Time to go back," he said. He stood up.
"It's a two-man con," said Shadow. "It's not a war at all, is it?"
Whiskey Jack patted Shadow's arm. "You're not so dumb," he said.
They walked back to Whiskey Jack's shack. He opened the door. Shadow hesitated. "I wish I could stay here with you," he said. "This seems like a good place."
"There are a lot of good places," said Whiskey Jack. "That's kind of the point. Listen, gods die when they are forgotten. People too. But the land's still here. The good places, and the bad. The land isn't going anywhere. And neither am I."
Shadow closed the door. Something was pulling at him. He was alone in the darkness once more, but the darkness became brighter and brighter until it was burning like the sun.
And then the pain began.
***
Easter walked through the meadow, and spring flowers blossomed where she had passed.
She walked by a place where, long ago, a farmhouse47 had stood. Even today several walls were still standing, jutting48 out of the weeds and the meadow grass like rotten teeth. A thin rain was falling. The clouds were dark and low, and it was cold.
A little way beyond the place where the farmhouse had been there was a tree, a huge silver-gray tree, winter-dead to all appearances, and leafless, and in front of the tree, on the grass, were frayed49 clumps50 of colorless fabric51. The woman stopped at the fabric, and bent52 down, and picked up something brownish-white: it was a much-gnawed fragment of bone which might, once, have been a part of a human skull24. She tossed it back down onto the grass.
Then she looked at the man on the tree and she smiled wryly54. "They just aren't as interesting naked," she said. "It's the unwrapping that's half the fun. Like with gifts, and eggs."
The hawk55-headed man who walked beside her looked down at his penis and seemed, for the first time; to become aware of his own nakedness. He said, "I can look at the sun without even blinking."
"That's very clever of you," Easter told him, reassuringly56. "Now, let's get him down from there."
The wet ropes that held Shadow to the tree had long ago weathered and rotted, and they parted easily as the two people pulled on them. The body on the tree slipped and slid down toward the roots. They caught him as he fell, and they took him up, carrying him easily, although he was a very big man, and they put him down in the gray meadow.
The body on the grass was cold, and it did not breathe. There was a patch of dried black blood on its side, as if it had been stabbed with a spear.
"What now?"
"Now," she said, "we warm him. You know what you have to do."
"I know. I cannot."
"If you are not willing to help, then you should not have called me here."
She reached out a white hand to Horus, and she touched his black hair. He blinked at her, intently. Then he shimmered57, as if in a heat haze58.
The hawk eye that faced her glinted orange, as if a flame had just been kindled59 inside it; a flame that had been long extinguished.
The hawk took to the air, and it swung upward, circling and ascending60 in a rising gyre, circling the place in the gray clouds where the sun might conceivably be, and as the hawk rose it became first a dot and then a speck61, and then, to the naked eye, nothing at all, something that could only be imagined. The clouds began to thin and to evaporate, creating a patch of blue sky through which the sun glared. The single bright sunbeam penetrating63 the clouds and bathing the meadow was beautiful, but the image faded as more clouds vanished. Soon the morning sun was blazing down on that meadow like a summer sun at noon, burning the water vapor62 from the morning's rain into mists and burning the mist off into nothing at all.
The golden sun bathed the body on the floor of the meadow with its radiance and its heat. Shades of pink and of warm brown touched the dead thing.
The woman dragged the fingers of her right hand lightly across the body's chest. She imagined she could feel a shiver in his breast-something that was not a heartbeat, but still...She let her hand remain there, on his chest, just above his heart.
She lowered her lips to Shadow's lips, and she breathed into his lungs, a gentle in and out, and then the breath became a kiss. Her kiss was gentle, and it tasted of spring rains and meadow flowers. The wound in his side began to flow with liquid blood once more-a scarlet64 blood, which oozed65 like liquid rubies67 in the sunlight, and then the bleeding stopped.
She kissed his cheek and his forehead. "Come on," she said. "Time to get up. It's all happening. You don't want to miss it."
His eyes fluttered, and then they opened, two eyes the gray of evening, and he looked at her.
She smiled, and then she removed her hand from his chest.
He said, "You called me back." He said it slowly, as if he had forgotten how to speak English. There was hurt in his voice, and puzzlement.
"Yes."
"I was done. I was judged. It was over. You called me back. You dared."
"I'm sorry."
"Yes."
He sat up, slowly. He winced68, and touched his side. Then he looked puzzled: there was a beading of wet blood there, but there was no wound beneath it.
He reached out a hand, and she put her arm around him and helped him to his feet. He looked across the meadow as if he was trying to remember the names of the things he was looking at: the flowers in the long grass, the ruins of the farmhouse, the haze of green buds that fogged the branches of the huge silver tree.
"Do you remember?" she asked. "Do you remember what you learned?"
"I lost my name, and I lost my heart. And you brought me back."
"I'm sorry," she said. "They are going to fight, soon. The old gods and the new ones."
"You want me to fight for you? You wasted your time."
"I brought you back because that was what I had to do," she said. "What you do now is whatever you have to do. Your call. I did my part."
Suddenly, she became aware of his nakedness, and she blushed a burning scarlet flush, and she looked down and away.
***
In the rain and the cloud, shadows moved up the side of the mountain, up to the rock pathways.
White foxes padded up the hill in company with red-haired men in green jackets. There was a bull-headed minotaur walking beside an iron-fingered dactyl. A pig, a monkey and a sharp-toothed ghoul clambered up the hillside in company with a blue-skinned man holding a flaming bow, a bear with flowers twined into its fur, and a man in golden chain mail holding his sword of eyes.
Beautiful Antinous, who was the lover of Hadrian, walked up the hillside at the head of a company of leather queens, their arms and chests steroid-sculpted into perfect shapes.
A gray-skinned man, his one cyclopean eye a huge cabochon emerald, walked stiffly up the hill, ahead of several squat69 and swarthy men, their impassive faces as regular as Aztec carvings70: they knew the secrets that the jungles had swallowed.
A sniper at the top of the hill took careful aim at a white fox, and fired. There was an explosion, and a puff71 of cordite, gunpowder72 scent73 on the wet air. The corpse74 was a young Japanese woman with her stomach blown away, and her face all bloody75. Slowly, the corpse began to fade.
The people continued up the hill, on two legs, on four legs, on no legs at all.
***
The drive through the Tennessee mountain country had been startlingly beautiful whenever the storm had eased, and nerve-wracking whenever the rain had pelted76 down. Town and Laura had talked and talked and talked the whole way. He was so glad he had met her. It was like meeting an old friend, a really good old friend you'd simply never met before. They talked history and movies and music, and she turned out to be the only person, the only other person he had ever met who had seen a foreign film (Mr. Town was sure it was Spanish, while Laura was just as certain it was Polish) from the sixties called The Manuscript Found in Saragassa, a film he had been starting to believe he had hallucinated.
When Laura pointed out the first SEE ROCK CITY barn to him he chuckled77 and admitted that that was where he was headed. She said that was so cool. She always wanted to visit those kinds of places, but she never made the time, and always regretted it later. That was why she was on the road right now. She was having an adventure.
She was a travel agent, she told him. Separated from her husband. She admitted that she didn't think they could ever get back together, and said it was her fault.
"I can't believe that."
She sighed. "It's true, Mack. I'm just not the woman he married anymore."
Well, he told her, people change, and before he could think he was telling her everything he could tell her about his life, he was even telling her about Woody and Stoner, how the three of them were the three musketeers, and the two of them were killed, you think you'd get hardened to that kind of thing in government work, but you never did.
And she reached out one hand-it was cold enough that he turned up the car's heating-and squeezed his hand tightly in hers.
Lunchtime, they ate bad Japanese food while a thunderstorm lowered on Knoxville, and Town didn't care that the food was late, that the miso soup was cold, or that the sushi was warm.
He loved the fact that she was out, with him, having an adventure.
"Well," confided78 Laura, "I hated the idea of getting stale. I was just rotting away where I was. So I set off without my car and without my credit cards. I'm just relying on the kindness of strangers."
"Aren't you scared?" he asked. "I mean, you could be stranded79, you could be mugged, you could starve."
She shook her head. Then she said, with a hesitant smile, "I met you, didn't I?" and he couldn't find anything to say.
When the meal was over they ran through the storm to his car holding Japanese-language newspapers to cover their heads, and they laughed as they ran, like schoolchildren in the rain.
"How far can I take you?" he asked, when they made it back into the car.
"I'll go as far as you're going, Mack," she told him, shyly.
He was glad he hadn't used the Big Mack line. This woman wasn't a barroom one-nighter, Mr. Town knew that in his soul. It might have taken him fifty years to find her, but this was finally it, this was the one, this wild, magical woman with the long dark hair.
This was love.
"Look," he said, as they approached Chattanooga. The wipers slooshed the rain across the windshield, blurring80 the gray of the city. "How about I find a motel for you tonight? I'll pay for it. And once I make my delivery, we can. Well, we can take a hot bath together, for a start. Warm you up."
"That sounds wonderful," said Laura. "What are you delivering?"
"That stick," he told her, and chuckled. "The one on the backseat."
"Okay," she said, humoring him. "Then don't tell me, Mister Mysterious."
He told her it would be best if she waited in the car in the Rock City parking lot while he made his delivery. He drove up the side of Lookout Mountain in the driving rain, never breaking thirty miles per hour, with his headlights burning. They parked at the back of the parking lot. He turned off the engine.
"Hey, Mack. Before you get out of the car, don't I get a hug?" asked Laura with a smile.
"You surely do," said Mr. Town, and he put his arms around her, and she snuggled close to him while the rain pattered a tattoo20 on the roof of the Ford81 Explorer. He could smell her hair. There was a faintly unpleasant scent beneath the smell of the perfume. Travel would do it, every time. That bath, he decided82, was a real must for both of them. He wondered if there was anyplace in Chattanooga where he could get those lavender bath-bombs his first wife had loved so much. Laura raised her head against his, and her hand stroked the line of his neck, absently.
"Mack...I keep thinking. You must really want to know what happened to those friends of yours?" she asked. "Woody and Stone. Do you?"
"Yeah," he said, moving his lips down to hers, for their first kiss. "Sure I do."
So she showed him.
***
Shadow walked the meadow, making his own slew83 circles around the trunk of the tree, gradually widening his circle. Sometimes he would stop and pick something up: a flower, or a leaf, or a pebble84, or a twig85, or a blade of grass. He would examine it minutely, as if concentrating entirely86 on the twigness of the twig, the leafness of the leaf.
Easter found herself reminded of the gaze of a baby, at the point where it learns to focus.
She did not dare to talk to him. At that moment, it would have been sacrilegious. She watched him, exhausted87 as she was, and she wondered.
About twenty feet out from the base of the tree, half-overgrown with long meadow grass and dead creepers, he found a canvas bag. Shadow picked it up, untied88 the knots at the top of the bag, loosened the drawstring. The clothes he pulled out were his own. They were old, but still serviceable. He turned the shoes over in his hands. He stroked the fabric of the shirt, the wool of the sweater, stared at them as if he were looking at them across a million years.
One by one, he put them on.
He put his hands into his pockets, and looked puzzled as he pulled one hand out, holding what looked to Easter like a white-and-gray marble.
He said, "No coins." It was the first thing he had said in several hours.
"No coins?" echoed Easter.
He shook his head. "They gave me something to do with my hands." He bent down to pull on his shoes.
Once he was dressed, he looked more normal. Grave, though. She wondered how far he had traveled, and what it had cost him to return. He was not the first whose return she had initiated89; and she knew that, soon enough, the million-year stare would fade, and the memories and the dreams that he had brought back from the tree would be elided by the world of things you could touch. That was the way it always went.
She led their way to the rear of the meadow. Her mount waited in the trees.
"It can't carry both of us," she told him. "I'll make my own way home."
Shadow nodded. He seemed to be trying to remember something. Then he opened his mouth, and he screeched91 a cry of welcome and of joy.
The thunderbird opened its cruel beak92, and it screeched a welcome back at him.
Superficially, at least, it resembled a condor93. Its feathers were black, with a purplish sheen, and its neck was banded with white. Its beak was black and cruel: a raptor's beak, made for tearing. At rest, on the ground, with its wings folded away, it was the size of a black bear, and its head was on a level with Shadow's own.
Horus said, proudly, "I brought him. They live in the mountains."
Shadow nodded. "I had a dream of thunderbirds once," he said. "Damnest dream I ever had."
The thunderbird opened its beak and made a surprisingly gentle noise, crawroo? "You heard my dream too?" asked Shadow.
He reached out a hand and rubbed it gently against the bird's head. The thunderbird pushed up against him like an affectionate pony94. He scratched it from the nape of its neck up to the crown.
Shadow turned to Easter. "You rode him here?"
"Yes," she said. "You can ride him back, if he lets you."
"How do you ride him?"
"It's easy," she said. "If you don't fall. Like riding the lightning."
"Will I see you back there?"
She shook her head. "I'm done, honey," she told him. "You go do what you need to do. I'm tired. Good luck."
Shadow nodded. "Whiskey Jack. I saw him. After I passed on. He came and found me. We drank beer together."
"Yes," she said. "I'm sure you did."
"Will I ever see you again?" asked Shadow.
She looked at him with eyes the green of ripening95 corn. She said nothing. Then, abruptly96, she shook her head. "I doubt it," she said.
Shadow clambered awkwardly onto the thunderbird's back. He felt like a mouse on the back of a hawk. There was an ozone97 taste in his mouth, metallic98 and blue. Something crackled. The thunderbird extended its wings, and began to flap them, hard.
As the ground fell away beneath them, Shadow clung on, his heart pounding in his chest like a wild thing.
It was exactly like riding the lightning.
***
Laura took the stick from the backseat of the car. She left Mr. Town in the front seat of the Ford Explorer, climbed out of the car, and walked through the rain to Rock City. The ticket office was closed. The door to the gift shop was not locked and she walked through it, past the rock candy and the display of SEE ROCK CITY birdhouses, into the Eighth Wonder of the World.
Nobody challenged her, although she passed several men and women on the path, in the rain. Many of them looked faintly artificial; several of them were translucent99. She walked across a swinging rope bridge. She passed the white deer gardens, and pushed herself through the Fat Man's Squeeze, where the path ran between two rock walls.
And, in the end, she stepped over a chain, with a sign on it telling her that this part of the attraction was closed, she went into a cavern100, and she saw a man sitting on a plastic chair, in front of a diorama of drunken gnomes101. He was reading the Washington Post by the light of a small electric lantern. When he saw her he folded the paper and placed it beneath his chair. He stood up, a tall man with close-cropped orange hair in an expensive raincoat, and he gave her a small bow.
"I shall assume that Mister Town is dead," he said. "Welcome, spear-carrier."
"Thank you. I'm sorry about Mack," she said. "Were you friends?"
"Not at all. He should have kept himself alive, if he wanted to keep his job. But you brought his stick." He looked her up and down with eyes that glimmered102 like the orange embers of a dying fire. "I am afraid you have the advantage of me. They call me Mister World, here at the top of the hill."
"I'm Shadow's wife."
"Of course. The lovely Laura," he said. "I should have recognized you. He had several photographs of you up above his bed, in the cell that once we shared. And, if you don't mind my saying so, you are looking lovelier than you have any right to look. Shouldn't you be further along on the whole road-to-rot-and-ruin business by now?"
"I was," she said simply. "But those women, in the farm, they gave me water from their well."
An eyebrow103 raised. "Urd's Well? Surely not."
She pointed to herself. Her skin was pale, and her eye sockets104 were dark, but she was manifestly whole: if she was indeed a walking corpse, she was freshly dead.
"It won't last," said Mr. World. "The Norns gave you a little taste of the past. It will dissolve into the present soon enough, and then those pretty blue eyes will roll out of their sockets and ooze66 down those pretty cheeks, which will, by then, of course, no longer be so pretty. By the way, you have my stick. Can I have it, please?"
He pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes, took a cigarette, lit it with a disposable black Bic.
She said, "Can I have one of those?"
"Sure. I'll give you a cigarette if you give me my stick."
"If you want it, it's worth more than just a cigarette."
He said nothing.
She said, "I want answers. I want to know things."
He lit a cigarette and passed it to her. She took it and inhaled105. Then she blinked. "I can almost taste this one," she said. "I think maybe I can." She smiled. "Mm. Nicotine106."
"Yes," he said. "Why did you go to the women in the farmhouse?"
"Shadow told me to go to them," she said. "He said to ask them for water."
"I wonder if he knew what it would do. Probably not. Still, that's the good thing about having him dead on his tree. I know where he is at all times, now. He's off the board."
"You set up my husband," she said. "You set him up all the way, you people. He has a good heart, you know that?"
"Yes," said Mr. World. "I know. When this is all done with, I guess I'll sharpen a stick of mistletoe and go down to the ash tree, and ram36 it through his eye. Now. My stick, please."
"Why do you want it?"
"It's a souvenir of this whole sorry mess," said Mr. World. "Don't worry, it's not mistletoe." He flashed a grin. "It symbolizes107 a spear, and in this sorry world, the symbol is the thing."
The noises from outside grew louder.
"Which side are you on?" she asked.
"It's not about sides," he told her. "But since you asked, I'm on the winning side. Always."
She nodded, and she did not let go of the stick.
She turned away from him, and looked out of the cavern door. Far below her, in the rocks, she could see something that glowed and pulsed. It wrapped itself around a thin, mauve-faced bearded man, who was beating at it with a squeegee stick, the kind of squeegee that people like him use to smear108 across car windshields at traffic lights. There was a scream, and they both disappeared from view.
"Okay. I'll give you the stick," she said.
Mr. World's voice came from behind her. "Good girl," he said reassuringly, in a way that struck her as being both patronizing and indefinably male. It made her skin crawl.
She waited in the rock doorway until she could hear his breath in her ear. She had to wait until he got close enough. She had that much figured out.
***
The ride was more than exhilarating; it was electric.
They swept through the storm like jagged bolts of lightning, flashing from cloud to cloud; they moved like the thunder's roar, like the swell109 and rip of the hurricane. It was a crackling, impossible journey. There was no fear: only the power of the storm, unstoppable and all-consuming, and the joy of the flight.
Shadow dug his fingers into the thunderbird's feathers, feeling the static prickle on his skin. Blue sparks writhed111 across his hands like tiny snakes. Rain washed his face.
"This is the best," he shouted, over the roar of the storm.
As if it understood him, the bird began to rise higher, every wing-beat a clap of thunder, and it swooped112 and dove and tumbled through the dark clouds.
"In my dream, I was hunting you," said Shadow, his words ripped away by the wind. "In my dream, I had to bring back a feather."
Yes. The word was a static crackle in the radio of his mind. They came to us for feathers, to prove that they were men; and they came to us to cut the stones from our heads, to gift their dead with our lives.
An image filled his mind then: of a thunderbird-a female, he assumed, for her plumage was brown, not black-lying freshly dead on the side of a mountain. Beside it was a woman. She was breaking open its skull with a knob of flint. She picked through the wet shards113 of bone and the brains until she found a smooth clear stone the tawny114 color of garnet, opalescent115 fires flickering116 in its depths. Eagle stones, thought Shadow. She was going to take up her infant son, dead these last three nights, and she would lay it on his cold breast. By the next sunrise the boy would be alive and laughing, and the jewel would be gray and clouded and as dead as the bird it had been stolen from.
"I understand," he said to the bird.
The bird threw back its head and crowed, and its cry was the thunder.
The world beneath them flashed past in one strange dream.
***
Laura adjusted her grip on the stick, and she waited for the man she knew as Mr. World to come to her. She was facing away from him, looking out at the storm, and the dark green hills below.
In this sorry world, she thought, the symbol is the thing. Yes.
She felt his hand close softly onto her right shoulder.
Good, she thought. He does not want to alarm me. He is scared that I will throw his stick out into the storm, that it will tumble down the mountainside, and he will lose it.
She leaned back, just a little, until she was touching117 his chest with her back. His left arm curved around her. It was an intimate gesture. His left hand was open in front of her. She closed both of her hands around the top of the stick, exhaled118, concentrated.
"Please. My stick," he said, in her ears.
"Yes," she said. "It's yours." And then, not knowing if it would mean anything, she said, "I dedicate this death to Shadow," and she stabbed the stick into her chest, just below the breastbone, felt it writhe110 and change in her hands as the stick became a spear.
The boundary between sensation and pain had diffused119 since she had died. She felt the spearhead penetrate120 her chest, felt it push out through her back. A moment's resistance-she pushed harder-and the spear pushed into Mr. World. She could feel the warm breath of him on the cool skin of her neck, as he wailed121 in hurt and surprise, impaled122 on the spear.
She did not recognize the words he spoke123, nor the language he said them in. She pushed the shaft124 of the spear farther in, forcing it through her body, into and through his.
She could feel his hot blood spurting125 onto her back.
"Bitch," he said, in English. "You fucking bitch." There was a wet gurgling quality to his voice. She guessed that the blade of the spear must have sliced a lung. Mr. World was moving now, or trying to move, and every move he made rocked her too: they were joined by the pole, impaled together like two fish on a single spear. He now had a knife in one hand, she saw, and he stabbed her chest and breasts randomly126 and wildly with the knife, unable to see what he was doing. She did not care. What are knife cuts to a corpse?
She brought her fist down, hard, on his waving wrist, and the knife went flying to the floor of the cavern. She kicked it away.
And now he was crying and wailing127. She could feel him pushing against her, his hands fumbling128 at her back, his hot tears on her neck. His blood was soaking her back, spurting down the back of her legs.
"This must look so undignified," she said, in a dead whisper, not without a certain dark amusement.
She felt Mr. World stumble behind her, and she stumbled too, and then she slipped in the blood-all of it his-that was puddling on the floor of the cave, and they both went down.
***
The thunderbird landed in the Rock City parking lot. Rain was falling in sheets. Shadow could barely see a dozen feet in front of his face. He let go of the thunderbird's feathers and half slipped, half tumbled to the wet asphalt.
Lightning flashed, and the bird was gone.
Shadow climbed to his feet.
The parking lot was three-quarters empty. Shadow started toward the entrance. He passed a brown Ford Explorer, parked against a rock wall. There was something deeply familiar about the car, and he glanced up at it curiously129, noticing the man inside the car, slumped130 over the steering131 wheel as if asleep.
Shadow pulled open the driver's-side door.
He had last seen Mr. Town standing outside the motel in the center of America. The expression on his face was one of surprise. His neck had been expertly broken. Shadow touched the man's face. Still warm.
Shadow could smell a scent on the air in the car; it was faint, like the perfume of someone who left a room years before, but Shadow would have known it anywhere. He slammed the door of the Explorer and made his way across the parking lot. As he walked he felt a twinge in his side, a sharp, jabbing pain that lasted for only a second, or less, and then it was gone.
There was nobody selling tickets. He walked through the building and out into the gardens of Rock City.
Thunder rumbled133, and it rattled134 the branches of the trees and shook deep inside the huge rocks, and the rain fell with cold violence. It was late afternoon, but it was dark as night.
A trail of lightning speared across the clouds, and Shadow wondered if that was the thunderbird returning to its high crags, or just an atmospheric135 discharge, or whether the two ideas were, on some level, the same thing.
And of course they were. That was the point, after all.
Somewhere a man's voice called out. Shadow heard it. The only words he recognized or thought he recognized were "...to Odin!"
Shadow hurried across Seven States Flag Court, the flagstones now running fast with rainwater. Once he slipped on the slick stone. There was a thick layer of cloud surrounding the mountain, and in the gloom and the storm beyond the courtyard he could see no states at all.
There was no sound. The place seemed utterly136 abandoned.
He called out, and imagined he heard something answering. He walked toward the place from which he thought the sound had come.
Nobody. Nothing. Just a chain marking the entrance to a cave as off-limits to guests.
Shadow stepped over the chain.
He looked around, peering into the darkness.
His skin prickled.
A voice from behind him, in the shadows, said, very quietly, "You have never disappointed me."
Shadow did not turn. "That's weird," he said. "I disappointed myself all the way. Every time."
"Not at all," said the voice. "You did everything you were intended to do, and more. You took everybody's attention, so they never looked at the hand with the coin in it. It's called misdirection. And there's power in the sacrifice of a son-power enough, and more than enough, to get the whole ball rolling. To tell the truth, I'm proud of you."
"It was crooked137," said Shadow. "All of it. None of it was for real. It was just a setup for a massacre138."
"Exactly," said Wednesday's voice from the shadows. "It was crooked. But it was the only game in town."
"I want Laura," said Shadow. "I want Loki. Where are they?"
There was only silence. A spray of rain gusted139 at him. Thunder rumbled somewhere close at hand.
He walked farther in.
Loki Lie-Smith sat on the ground with his back to a metal cage. Inside the cage, drunken pixies tended their still. He was covered with a blanket. Only his face showed, and his hands, white and long, came around the blanket. An electric lantern sat on a chair beside him. The lantern's batteries were close to failing, and the light it cast was faint and yellow.
He looked pale, and he looked rough.
His eyes, though. His eyes were still fiery140, and they glared at Shadow as he walked through the cavern.
When Shadow was several paces from Loki, he stopped.
"You are too late," said Loki. His voice was raspy and wet. "I have thrown the spear. I have dedicated141 the battle. It has begun."
"No shit," said Shadow.
"No shit," said Loki. "So it does not matter what you do anymore."
Shadow stopped and thought. Then he said, "The spear you had to throw to kick off the battle. Like the whole Uppsala thing. This is the battle you'll be feeding on. Am I right?"
Silence. He could hear Loki breathing, a ghastly rattling142 inhalation.
"I figured it out," said Shadow. "Kind of. I'm not sure when I figured it out. Maybe when I was hanging on the tree. Maybe before. It was from something Wednesday said to me, at Christmas."
Loki just stared at him from the floor, saying nothing.
"It's just a two-man con," said Shadow. "Like the bishop143 with the diamond necklace and the cop who arrests him. Like the guy with the fiddle144, and the guy who wants to buy the fiddle. Two men, who appear to be on opposite sides, playing the same game."
Loki whispered, "You are ridiculous."
"Why? I liked what you did at the motel. That was smart. You needed to be there, to make sure that everything went according to plan. I saw you. I even realized who you were. And I still never twigged145 that you were their Mister World."
Shadow raised his voice. "You can come out," he said, to the cavern. "Wherever you are. Show yourself."
The wind howled in the opening of the cavern, and it drove a spray of rainwater in toward them. Shadow shivered.
"I'm tired of being played for a sucker," said Shadow. "Just show yourself. Let me see you."
There was a change in the shadows at the back of the cave. Something became more solid; something shifted. "You know too damned much, m'boy," said Wednesday's familiar rumble132.
"So they didn't kill you."
"They killed me," said Wednesday, from the shadows. "None of this would have worked if they hadn't." His voice was faint-not actually quiet, but there was a quality to it that made Shadow think of an old radio not quite tuned146 in to a distant station. "If I hadn't died for real, we could never have got them here," said Wednesday. "Kali and the Morrigan and the fucking Albanians and-well, you've seen them all. It was my death that drew them all together. I was the sacrificial lamb."
"No," said Shadow. "You were the Judas Goat."
The wraith-shape in the shadows swirled147 and shifted. "Not at all. That implies that I was betraying the old gods for the new. Which was not what we were doing."
"Not at all," whispered Loki.
"I can see that," said Shadow. "You two weren't betraying either side. You were betraying both sides."
"I guess we were at that," said Wednesday. He sounded pleased with himself.
"You wanted a massacre. You needed a blood sacrifice. A sacrifice of gods."
The wind grew stronger; the howl across the cave door became a screech90, as if of something immeasurably huge in pain.
"And why the hell not? I've been trapped in this damned land for almost twelve hundred years. My blood is thin. I'm hungry."
"And you two feed on death," said Shadow.
He thought he could see Wednesday, now. He was a shape made of darkness, who became more real only when Shadow looked away from him, taking shape in his peripheral148 vision. "I feed on death that is dedicated to me," said Wednesday.
"Like my death on the tree," said Shadow.
"That," said Wednesday, "was special."
"And do you also feed on death?" asked Shadow, looking at Loki.
Loki shook his head, wearily.
"No, of course not," said Shadow. "You feed on chaos149."
Loki smiled at that, a brief pained smile, and orange flames danced in his eyes, and flickered150 like burning lace beneath his pale skin.
"We couldn't have done it without you," said Wednesday, from the corner of Shadow's eye. "I'd been with so many women..."
"You needed a son," said Shadow.
Wednesday's ghost-voice echoed. "I needed you, my boy. Yes. My own boy. I knew that you had been conceived, but your mother left the country. It took us so long to find you. And when we did find you, you were in prison. We needed to find out what made you tick. What buttons we could press to make you move. Who you were." Loki looked, momentarily, pleased with himself. "And you had a wife to go back home to. It was unfortunate, but not insurmountable."
"She was no good for you," whispered Loki. "You were better off without her."
"If it could have been any other way," said Wednesday, and this time Shadow knew what he meant.
"And if she'd had-the grace-to stay dead," panted Loki. "Wood and Stone-were good men. You were going-to be allowed to escape-when the train crossed the Dakotas..."
"Where is she?" asked Shadow.
Loki reached a pale arm, and pointed to the back of the cavern.
"She went that-a-way," he said. Then, without warning, he tipped forward, his body collapsing151 onto the rock floor.
Shadow saw what the blanket had hidden from him; the pool of blood, the hole through Loki's back, the fawn152 raincoat soaked black with blood. "What happened?" he said.
Loki said nothing.
Shadow did not think he would be saying anything anymore.
"Your wife happened to him, m'boy," said Wednesday's distant voice. He had become harder to see, as if he was fading back into the ether. "But the battle will bring him back. As the battle will bring me back for good. I'm a ghost, and he's a corpse, but we've still won. The game was rigged."
"Rigged games," said Shadow, remembering, "are the easiest to beat."
There was no answer. Nothing moved in the shadows.
Shadow said, "Goodbye," and then he said, "Father." But by then there was no trace of anybody else in the cavern. Nobody at all.
Shadow walked back up to the Seven States Flag Court, but saw nobody, and heard nothing but the crack and whip of the flags in the storm-wind. There were no people with swords at the Thousand-Ton Balanced Rock, no defenders153 of the Swing-A-Long bridge. He was alone.
There was nothing to see. The place was deserted154. It was an empty battlefield.
No. Not deserted. Not exactly.
This was Rock City. It had been a place of awe53 and worship for thousands of years; today the millions of tourists who walked through the gardens and swung their way across the Swing-A-Long bridge had the same effect as water turning a million prayer wheels. Reality was thin here. And Shadow knew where the battle must be taking place.
With that, he began to walk. He remembered how he had felt on the carousel155, tried to feel like that...
He remembered turning the Winnebago, shifting it at right angles to everything. He tried to capture that sensation-
And then, easily and perfectly156, it happened:
It was like pushing through a membrane157, like plunging158 up from deep water into air. With one step he had moved from the tourist path on the mountain to...
To somewhere real. He was Backstage.
He was still on the top of a mountain, that much remained the same. But it was so much more than that. This mountaintop was the quintessence of place, the heart of things as they were. Compared to it, the Lookout Mountain he had left was a painting on a backdrop, or a papier-m?ché model seen on a TV screen-merely a representation of the thing, not the thing itself.
This was the true place.
The rock walls formed a natural amphitheater. Paths of stone that wound around and across it, forming twisty natural bridges that Eschered through and across the rock walls.
And the sky...
The sky was dark. It was lit, and the world beneath it was illuminated159 by a burning greenish-white streak160, brighter than the sun, which forked crazily across the sky from, end to end, like a white rip in the darkened sky.
It was lightning, Shadow realized. Lightning held in one frozen moment that stretched into forever. The light it cast was harsh and unforgiving: it washed out faces, hollowed eyes into dark pits.
This was the moment of the storm.
The paradigms161 were shifting. He could feel it. The old world, a world of infinite vastness and illimitable resources and future, was being confronted by something else-a web of energy, of opinions, of gulfs.
People believe, thought Shadow. It's what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure162 things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen.
The mountaintop was an arena163; he saw that immediately. And on each side of the arena he could see them arrayed.
They were too big. Everything was too big in that place.
There were old gods in that place: gods with skins the brown of old mushrooms, the pink of chicken flesh, the yellow of autumn leaves. Some were crazy and some were sane164. Shadow recognized the old gods. He'd met them already, or he'd met others like them. There were ifrits and piskies, giants and dwarfs165. He saw the woman he had met in the darkened bedroom in Rhode Island, saw the writhing166 green snake-coils of her hair. He saw Mama-ji, from the carousel, and there was blood on her hands and a smile on her face. He knew them all. He recognized the new ones, too.
There was somebody who had to be a railroad baron167, in an antique suit, his watch chain stretched across his vest. He had the air of one who had seen better days. His forehead twitched168.
There were the great gray gods of the airplanes, heirs to all the dreams of heavier-than-air travel.
There were car gods, there: a powerful, serious-faced contingent169, with blood on their black gloves and on their chrome teeth: recipients170 of human sacrifice on a scale undreamed-of since the Aztecs. Even they looked uncomfortable. Worlds change.
Others had faces of smudged phosphors; they glowed gently, as if they existed in their own light.
Shadow felt sorry for them all.
There was an arrogance171 to the new ones. Shadow could see that. But there was also a fear.
They were afraid that unless they kept pace with a changing world, unless they remade and redrew and rebuilt the world in their image, their time would already be over.
Each side faced the other with bravery. To each side, the opposition were the demons172, the monsters, the damned.
Shadow could see an initial skirmish had taken place. There was already blood on the rocks.
They were readying themselves for the real battle; for the real war. It was now or never, he thought. If he did not move now, it would be too late.
In America everything goes on forever, said a voice in the back of his head. The 1950s lasted for a thousand years. You have all the time in the world.
Shadow walked in something that was half stroll, half controlled stumble, into the center of the arena.
He could feel eyes on him, eyes and things that were not eyes. He shivered.
The buffalo voice said, You are doing just fine.
Shadow thought, Damn right. I came back from the dead this morning. After that, everything else should be a piece of cake.
"You know," said Shadow, to the air, in a conversational173 voice, "this is not a war. This was never intended to be a war. And if any of you think this is a war, you are deluding174 yourselves." He heard grumbling175 noises from both sides. He had impressed nobody.
"We are fighting for our survival," lowed a minotaur from one side of the arena.
"We are fighting for our existence," shouted a mouth in a pillar of glittering smoke, from the other.
"This is a bad land for gods," said Shadow. As an opening statement it wasn't Friends, Romans, countrymen, but it would do. "You've probably all learned that, in your own way. The old gods are ignored. The new gods are as quickly taken up as they are abandoned, cast aside for the next big thing. Either you've been forgotten, or you're scared you're going to be rendered obsolete176, or maybe you're just getting tired of existing on the whim177 of people."
The grumbles178 were fewer now. He had said something they agreed with. Now, while they were listening, he had to tell them the story.
"There was a god who came here from a far land, and whose power and influence waned179 as belief in him faded. He was a god who took his power from sacrifice, and from death, and especially from war. The deaths of those who fell in war were dedicated to him-whole battlefields that had given him in the Old Country power and sustenance180.
"Now he was old. He made his living as a grifter, working with another god from his pantheon, a god of chaos and deceit. Together they rooked the gullible181. Together they took people for all they'd got.
"Somewhere in there-maybe fifty years ago, maybe a hundred, they put a plan into motion, a plan to create a reserve of power they could both tap into. Something that would make them stronger than they had ever been. After all, what could be more powerful than a battlefield covered with dead gods? The game they played was called 'Let's You and Him Fight.'
"Do you see?
"The battle you came here for isn't something that any of you can win or lose. The winning and the losing are unimportant to him, to them. What matters is that enough of you die. Each of you that falls in battle gives him power. Every one of you that dies, feeds him. Do you understand?"
The roaring, whoomping sound of something catching182 fire echoed across the arena. Shadow looked to the place the noise came from. An enormous man, his skin the deep brown of mahogany, his chest naked, wearing a top hat, cigar sticking rakishly from his mouth, spoke in a voice as deep as the grave. Baron Samedi said, "Okay. But Odin. He died. At the peace talks. Motherfuckers killed him. He died. I know death. Nobody going to fool me about death."
Shadow said, "Obviously. He had to die for real. He sacrificed his physical body to make this war happen. After the battle he would have been more powerful than he had ever been."
Somebody called, "Who are you?"
"I am-I was-I am his son."
One of the new gods-Shadow suspected it was a drug from the way it smiled and spangled, said, "But Mister World said..."
"There was no Mister World. There never was any such person. He was just another one of you bastards183 trying to feed on the chaos he created."
They believed him, and he could see the hurt in their eyes.
Shadow shook his head. "You know," he said, "I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don't need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It's what we do."
There was silence, in the high place.
And then, with a shocking crack, the lightning bolt frozen in the sky crashed to the mountaintop, and the arena went entirely dark.
They glowed, many of those presences, in the darkness.
Shadow wondered if they were going to argue with him, to attack him, to try to kill him. He waited for some kind of response.
And then Shadow realized that the lights were going out. The gods were leaving that place, first in handfuls, and then by scores, and finally in the hundreds.
A spider the size of a rottweiler scuttled184 heavily toward him, on seven legs; its cluster of eyes glowed faintly.
Shadow held his ground, although he felt slightly sick.
When the spider got close enough, it said, in Mr. Nancy's voice, "That was a good job. Proud of you. You done good, kid."
"Thank you," said Shadow.
"We should get you back. Too long in this place is goin' to mess you up." It rested one brown-haired spider leg on Shadow's shoulder...
***
...and, back on Seven States Flag Court, Mr. Nancy coughed. His right hand rested on Shadow's shoulder. The rain had stopped. Mr. Nancy held his left hand across his side, as if it hurt. Shadow asked if he was okay.
"I'm tough as old nails," said Mr. Nancy. "Tougher." He did not sound happy. He sounded like an old man in pain.
There were dozens of them, standing or sitting on the ground or on the benches. Some of them looked badly injured.
Shadow could hear a rattling noise in the sky, approaching from the south. He looked at Mr. Nancy. "Helicopters?"
Mr. Nancy nodded. "Don't you worry about them. Not anymore. They'll just clean up the mess, and leave."
"Got it."
Shadow knew that there was one part of the mess he wanted to see for himself, before it was cleaned up. He borrowed a flashlight from a gray-haired man who looked like a retired185 news anchor and began to hunt.
He found Laura stretched out on the ground in a side cavern, beside a diorama of mining gnomes straight out of Snow White. The floor beneath her was sticky with blood. She was on her side, where Loki must have dropped her after he had pulled the spear out of them both.
One of Laura's hands clutched her chest. She looked dreadfully vulnerable. She looked dead, but then, Shadow was almost used to that by now.
Shadow squatted186 beside her, and he touched her cheek with his hand, and he said her name. Her eyes opened, and she lifted her head and turned it until she was looking at him.
"Hello, puppy," she said. Her voice was thin.
"Hi, Laura. What happened here?"
"Nothing," she said. "Just stuff. Did they win?"
"I stopped the battle they were trying to start."
"My clever puppy," she said. "That man, Mister World, he said he was going to put a stick through your eye. I didn't like him at all."
"He's dead. You killed him, hon."
She nodded. She said, "That's good."
Her eyes closed. Shadow's hand found her cold hand, and he held it in his. In time she opened her eyes again.
"Did you ever figure out how to bring me back from the dead?" she asked.
"I guess," he said. "I know one way, anyway."
"That's good," she said. She squeezed his hand with her cold hand. And then she said, "And the opposite? What about that?"
"The opposite?"
"Yes," she whispered. "I think I must have earned it."
"I don't want to do that."
She said nothing. She simply waited.
Shadow said, "Okay." Then he took his hand from hers and put it to her neck.
She said, "That's my husband." She said it proudly.
"I love you, babes," said Shadow.
"Love you, puppy," she whispered.
He closed his hand around the golden coin that hung around her neck. He tugged187, hard, at the chain, which snapped easily. Then he took the gold coin between his finger and thumb, and blew on it, and opened his hand wide.
The coin was gone.
Her eyes were still open, but they did not move.
He bent down then, and kissed her, gently, on her cold cheek, but she did not respond. He did not expect her to. Then he got up and walked out of the cavern, to stare into the night.
The storms had cleared. The air felt fresh and clean and new once more.
Tomorrow, he had no doubt, would be one hell of a beautiful day.
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ballad
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| n.歌谣，民谣，流行爱情歌曲 | |
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treasury
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| n.宝库；国库，金库；文库 | |
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folklore
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| n.民间信仰，民间传说，民俗 | |
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metaphor
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| n.隐喻，暗喻 | |
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metaphors
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| 隐喻( metaphor的名词复数 ) | |
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chronometer
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| n.精密的计时器 | |
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celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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prospers
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| v.成功，兴旺( prosper的第三人称单数 ) | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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lookout
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| n.注意，前途，瞭望台 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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18
gutters
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| （路边）排水沟( gutter的名词复数 )； 阴沟； （屋顶的）天沟； 贫贱的境地 | |
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19
succinctly
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| adv.简洁地；简洁地，简便地 | |
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20
tattoo
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| n.纹身，(皮肤上的)刺花纹；vt.刺花纹于 | |
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21
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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22
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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23
skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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24
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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25
cleansed
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| 弄干净，清洗( cleanse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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26
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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27
shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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28
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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29
chunks
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| 厚厚的一块( chunk的名词复数 )； （某物）相当大的数量或部分 | |
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30
chunk
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| n.厚片，大块，相当大的部分（数量） | |
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31
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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32
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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33
sheathed
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| adj.雕塑像下半身包在鞘中的；覆盖的；铠装的；装鞘了的v.将（刀、剑等）插入鞘( sheathe的过去式和过去分词 )；包，覆盖 | |
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34
belched
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| v.打嗝( belch的过去式和过去分词 )；喷出，吐出；打（嗝）；嗳（气） | |
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35
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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36
ram
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| (random access memory)随机存取存储器 | |
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37
popcorn
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| n.爆米花 | |
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38
sipped
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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39
coma
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| n.昏迷，昏迷状态 | |
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40
porcupine
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| n.豪猪， 箭猪 | |
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41
salmon
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| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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42
buffalo
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| n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛 | |
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43
skunk
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| n.臭鼬，黄鼠狼；v.使惨败，使得零分；烂醉如泥 | |
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44
stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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45
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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46
chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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47
farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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48
jutting
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| v.（使）突出( jut的现在分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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49
frayed
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| adj.磨损的v.（使布、绳等）磨损，磨破( fray的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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50
clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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51
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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52
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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53
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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54
wryly
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| adv. 挖苦地，嘲弄地 | |
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55
hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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56
reassuringly
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| ad.安心，可靠 | |
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57
shimmered
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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58
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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59
kindled
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| （使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的过去式和过去分词 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光 | |
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60
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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61
speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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62
vapor
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| n.蒸汽，雾气 | |
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63
penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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64
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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65
oozed
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| v.（浓液等）慢慢地冒出，渗出( ooze的过去式和过去分词 )；使（液体）缓缓流出；（浓液）渗出，慢慢流出 | |
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66
ooze
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| n.软泥，渗出物；vi.渗出，泄漏；vt.慢慢渗出，流露 | |
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67
rubies
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| 红宝石( ruby的名词复数 )； 红宝石色，深红色 | |
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68
winced
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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69
squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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70
carvings
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| n.雕刻( carving的名词复数 )；雕刻术；雕刻品；雕刻物 | |
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71
puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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72
gunpowder
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| n.火药 | |
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73
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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74
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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75
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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76
pelted
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| （连续地）投掷( pelt的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续抨击； 攻击； 剥去…的皮 | |
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77
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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78
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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79
stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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80
blurring
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| n.模糊，斑点甚多，（图像的）混乱v.（使）变模糊( blur的现在分词 )；（使）难以区分 | |
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81
Ford
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| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
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82
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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83
slew
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| v.（使）旋转；n.大量，许多 | |
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84
pebble
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| n.卵石，小圆石 | |
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85
twig
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| n.小树枝，嫩枝；v.理解 | |
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86
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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87
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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88
untied
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| 松开，解开( untie的过去式和过去分词 )； 解除，使自由； 解决 | |
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89
initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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90
screech
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| n./v.尖叫；(发出)刺耳的声音 | |
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91
screeched
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| v.发出尖叫声( screech的过去式和过去分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫 | |
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92
beak
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| n.鸟嘴，茶壶嘴，钩形鼻 | |
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93
condor
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| n.秃鹰；秃鹰金币 | |
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94
pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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95
ripening
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| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的现在分词 )；熟化；熟成 | |
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96
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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97
ozone
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| n.臭氧，新鲜空气 | |
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98
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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99
translucent
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| adj.半透明的；透明的 | |
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100
cavern
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| n.洞穴，大山洞 | |
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101
gnomes
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| n.矮子( gnome的名词复数 )；侏儒；（尤指金融市场上搞投机的）银行家；守护神 | |
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102
glimmered
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| v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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103
eyebrow
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| n.眉毛，眉 | |
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104
sockets
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| n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴 | |
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105
inhaled
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| v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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106
nicotine
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| n.(化)尼古丁，烟碱 | |
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107
symbolizes
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| v.象征，作为…的象征( symbolize的第三人称单数 ) | |
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108
smear
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| v.涂抹；诽谤，玷污；n.污点；诽谤，污蔑 | |
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109
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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110
writhe
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| vt.挣扎，痛苦地扭曲；vi.扭曲，翻腾，受苦；n.翻腾，苦恼 | |
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111
writhed
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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112
swooped
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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113
shards
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| n.（玻璃、金属或其他硬物的）尖利的碎片( shard的名词复数 ) | |
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114
tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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115
opalescent
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| adj.乳色的，乳白的 | |
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116
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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117
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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118
exhaled
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| v.呼出，发散出( exhale的过去式和过去分词 )；吐出（肺中的空气、烟等），呼气 | |
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119
diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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120
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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121
wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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122
impaled
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| 钉在尖桩上( impale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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123
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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124
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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125
spurting
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| （液体，火焰等）喷出，（使）涌出( spurt的现在分词 )； （短暂地）加速前进，冲刺； 溅射 | |
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126
randomly
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| adv.随便地，未加计划地 | |
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127
wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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128
fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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129
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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130
slumped
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| 大幅度下降，暴跌( slump的过去式和过去分词 )； 沉重或突然地落下[倒下] | |
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131
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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132
rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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133
rumbled
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| 发出隆隆声，发出辘辘声( rumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 轰鸣着缓慢行进； 发现…的真相； 看穿（阴谋） | |
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134
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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135
atmospheric
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| adj.大气的，空气的；大气层的；大气所引起的 | |
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136
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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137
crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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138
massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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139
gusted
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| n. 突然一阵 n. 风味 vi. 猛吹 | |
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140
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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141
dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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142
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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143
bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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144
fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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145
twigged
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| 有细枝的，有嫩枝的 | |
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146
tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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147
swirled
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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148
peripheral
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| adj.周边的，外围的 | |
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149
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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150
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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151
collapsing
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| 压扁[平]，毁坏，断裂 | |
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152
fawn
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| n.未满周岁的小鹿；v.巴结，奉承 | |
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153
defenders
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| n.防御者( defender的名词复数 )；守卫者；保护者；辩护者 | |
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154
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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155
carousel
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| n.旋转式行李输送带 | |
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156
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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157
membrane
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| n.薄膜，膜皮，羊皮纸 | |
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158
plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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159
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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160
streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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161
paradigms
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| n.（一词的）词形变化表( paradigm的名词复数 )；范例；样式；模范 | |
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162
conjure
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| v.恳求，祈求；变魔术，变戏法 | |
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163
arena
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| n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台 | |
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164
sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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165
dwarfs
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| n.侏儒，矮子（dwarf的复数形式）vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的第三人称单数形式） | |
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166
writhing
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 ) | |
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167
baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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168
twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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169
contingent
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| adj.视条件而定的；n.一组，代表团，分遣队 | |
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170
recipients
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| adj.接受的；受领的；容纳的；愿意接受的n.收件人；接受者；受领者；接受器 | |
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171
arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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172
demons
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| n.恶人( demon的名词复数 )；恶魔；精力过人的人；邪念 | |
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173
conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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174
deluding
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| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的现在分词 ) | |
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175
grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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176
obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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177
whim
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| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
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178
grumbles
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| 抱怨( grumble的第三人称单数 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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179
waned
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| v.衰落( wane的过去式和过去分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡 | |
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180
sustenance
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| n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计 | |
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181
gullible
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| adj.易受骗的；轻信的 | |
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182
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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183
bastards
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| 私生子( bastard的名词复数 )； 坏蛋； 讨厌的事物； 麻烦事 （认为别人走运或不幸时说）家伙 | |
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184
scuttled
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| v.使船沉没( scuttle的过去式和过去分词 )；快跑，急走 | |
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185
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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186
squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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187
tugged
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| v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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