Summerland

  "I need a sharper knife," Ethan said, stabbing the little giant's knife into a rotting log beside him. As if to belie his words, it sank into the wood all the way up to its haft.

  "It ain't a question of the blade," Grim said. "It's the one that's doing the wielding. And that Knot ain't going away till you're ready, like what I told you a hunnert times already. And I guess you ain't ready."

  "But I'll wager he's ready for supper." Pettipaw beat on a pot with a metal spoon, and the thin sound of it carried far up into the hills above them. One by one the scattered Shadowtails gathered around the fire and took their steaming bowls of chow. All except for Taffy.

  "I'm worried," Jennifer T. said. "She's never wandered off before."

  "And I made her a fine poke salad," Pettipaw sulked. "Don't know why I bother."

  From far off there was low rumble, and they all looked up. It might have been thunder, or the sound of the little mountain men playing at ninepins, or the bellowing of some distant moose or bull elk. It was nearly night. The sky was a deep, rich color like the heart of a gas flame. Bats swooped and wheeled and stitched their crooked way across the blue, embroidering the night. The moon rose, gibbous and huge, far bigger and brighter than the moon of the Middling. Somewhere off in the woods an owl hooted. And, away down beyond the road, the stream in which she and Spider-Rose had bathed that afternoon bubbled and muttered and spilled down the mountainside. It was beautiful—the Summerlands were beautiful—but at night sometimes it got a little strange. There were things in the woods, all kinds of night-things, both familiar—owls, bats, wolves, foxes—and creepy.

  "Ah, now," Cinquefoil said, returning his attention to the burgoo. "Sasquatches love ta wander. 'S just their way."

  "Not the girls," Jennifer T. insisted. "They like to stay close to home."

  The stew was rich and brothy, spiced heavily with bay laurel, and since eating little chickeny chunks of cut-up ground squirrel was no stranger than anything else that had happened to her since the day she threw her first fastball on the little field at Clam Island Middle School and a werefox had appeared, she ate it. Then she, Ethan, and Thor went down to the stream with the clay ferisher bowls and drinking gourds. They did not say much as they passed the dirty bowls and drinking gourds through the chattering cold water of the creek.

  "I want to get a hit," Ethan said.

  "You will," said Jennifer T. "Tell him, Thor."

  "Absolutely," Thor said. "I think you should try a different bat."

  "Maybe one that doesn't, oh, make your hand bleed, for example," suggested Jennifer T.

  "No," Ethan said. "You heard what Grim said. It isn't the bat. It's me." He blew on his hands. The water of the stream was so cold it made your fingers hum. "Maybe I'm just supposed to learn to hit around the Knot. You know, like that ancient Greek guy who taught himself to talk with stones in his mouth."

  "Demosthenes," said a lugubrious voice behind them.

  "Taffy!" Jennifer T. stood up and ran to the Sasquatch, and put her arms around her. "I was so worried about you! Where were you?"

  Taffy didn't answer right away. Jennifer T. looked up. The daylight was failing and the firelight dim, but nonetheless Jennifer T. could see that the Sasquatch's tiny bright eyes were red from crying.

  "I went for a walk," she said at last. "That's all. I'm fine."

  Even though she knew that they had been dead for hundreds of years, Jennifer T. could not shake the thought that Taffy, like La Llorona, had been out looking for her lost children.

  "Were you—" she began.

  "In a way, dear," the Sasquatch said softly. "In a way, I suppose."

  They heard the deep rumbling again, nearer this time. It was a rumbling, Jennifer T. decided, in the ground. It caused the soles of her sneakers to buzz. Something big was coming their way. They heard a cry from up toward the camp. It was the sharp little voice of Dick Pettipaw. He sounded as if he might be excited, or afraid.

  "What did he say?" said Jennifer T.

  "He said, 'Big Liar coming!'" said Thor.

  "Big Liar coming," Taffy said. "How about that? They're still around. One of them is, at any rate." She smoothed down the spray of black fur at the top of her head. "Come on. I want to see this."

  She gathered up all the dishes and gourds in a single armful and started up the hill, picking her way on her experienced feet. There was another rumbling in the earth. The children followed the Sasquatch up to camp. They kept behind her, not sure what to expect. They knew that the Lost Camps were Big Liar country, because it said so on Thor's map. And their teammates had told them some of the old lies. Lies about shooting contests in which hairs were shot from the hind legs of houseflies. Lies about grinning contests between men and raccoons. Lies about knife fights, poker games, fishing trips, and mosquitoes. Lies about women who rode alligators and carried razors in their boots, and about working men who outworked the Devil and the Machine. Some of them were lies that Jennifer T. had heard before.

  "Which one is it?" Ethan said, struggling up the hill behind her. "Can you see?"

  She reached the camp. All of the other Shadowtails were standing with their backs to the campfire, watching as a tall man came out of the woods. Jennifer T. had, naturally, been expecting someone big. She was somewhat disappointed to see an ordinarily large man come striding from the trees. He was not quite as tall as Taffy, broad chested, thick necked, with a full, black beard. He wore a plaid flannel shirt, red as a flag, black dungarees, and black boots. The boots were so large and so thick-soled that for a moment Jennifer T. thought that they must have been causing all the rumbling. But he was walking now, the Tall Man, coming toward them, and there was no rumbling. Then she saw the great redheaded Axe. It was as long as an oar and the edge of its blade glowed like halogen.

  "Wal," said the Tall Man with the Axe. "Lookit this. Visitors."

  He grinned, and even though he was not a giant anymore, there was something about the smile that made you feel very small.

  "Howdy, cuz," said Grim the Giant. "Nice to see you."

  "Visitors!" said the Man. "Heard there was Visitors, and so there are. Ain't had no Visitors in a terrible long time!"

  "We're the Traveling Shadowtails," said Cinquefoil. "We're on a little tour o' these parts. Only, as it turns out, the team bus done run out o' gas."

  "We need to get to Applelawn," Ethan said. He went over to the Man, sticking out his left arm. "Ragged Rock is coming."

  The Man squinted down at Ethan's watch.

  "Do you?" he said. "Is it?"

  All at once the joy of Visitors seemed to drain from his face.

  "You really purpose to get to Applelawn, then. It warn't just some rot the crows and weresquirrels was handing us."

  "Is there a problem with that?" Cinquefoil said.

  "Not a bit," the Tall Man said. "Not a bit. Only that I cain't let ya pass."

  "You don't own this road," Cinquefoil said. Jennifer T. admired him for standing up to the Tall Man. Like his grin, his manner had something giant about it.

  "Oh, but I do." Then went over to the nearest tree, a stout fir, and raised his axe to one side. He turned the handle until the blade lay horizontal and then took a sweeping hack at the trunk of the tree. That was when Jennifer T. figured out what the rumbling was. The tree shuddered, and its leaves all seemed to sigh. It hung for a moment, motionless, teetering on the point of the huge notch the Man had gouged into its trunk. Then, silently, it fell. When it hit, the earth shook so hard that Jennifer T. lost her balance, and fell down. Her ears were still ringing when the Man spoke again. "Ya don't wanna mess with me."

  There was silence. Cinquefoil looked at the tumbled ruin of the fir tree, then up at the Man's giant grin.

  "Fine," he said. "We'll turn and find another road across the river." He gestured toward the children. "Come on, rubes."

  He went over to Taffy and took a gourd from her. He stuffed it into the canvas sack they carried their mess stuff in. It really looked like he was planning t
o leave. Jennifer T. couldn't tell if he was bluffing.

  "Wait just a minute, there. Hold on."

  The Tall Man reached down and snatched the sack from Cinquefoil.

  "I think ya might have misunderstood me, there. No need ta be hotheaded, eh?"

  "You said you won't let us pass!" Pettipaw said.

  "Did I?" He looked genuinely shocked. "Well, I meant, not without a proper hello. Down by the Landing. Me and all the old Liars, we're all staying down by there these days. I know they're all gonna want ta meet ya."

  "How far is it, by foot, then?"

  "Three days fer the likes of you, I reckon, more or less."

  Jennifer T. heard the breath go hissing out of Ethan. In three days it might already be the Ninth Inning.

  "We need to get there sooner!" Jennifer T. said. "Have you got anything we could use for fuel?"

  The Man grinned, and reached into the hip pocket of his dungarees. He pulled out a silver flask.

  "What is that stuff, cuz?" Grim said.

  "Put it this way, little giant," the Man said. "Friend of mine makes this stuff. Takes the shining edge of my axe, the crash of timber ya just heard, and puts them in a bottle. Calls it prunejack."

  "Prunejack!" Grim said. "You can't run a engine on prunejack!"

  "With grammer, ya could," Cinquefoil said.

  "Prunejack!" said Pettipaw, taking a deep appreciative whiff of the Man's flask. "You can't waste a fine flask of good jackass liquor on a carl"

  IT TOOK THE BETTER PART OF THE DAY TO MAKE THEIR BURBLING way down to Old Cat Landing. The character of the land changed, as they descended into the grassy foothills of the Lost Camps beyond the Raucous Mountains. There were fewer ferisher knolls, and the caves of Bowling Men were left far behind. The road widened out again to a kind of highway. It ran, mostly straight, occasionally dodging around a piney hill or barren knob of black oak, through a country of Indian camps and hunters' lodges, of miners' flats, of farms and ranches, of lean-tos and lonely cottages with a pale watching face from the kitchen window. To Ethan's surprise, the dwellers in these habitations were, for the most part, of women and men. There were gold-panners, wolf-trackers and bear-hunters, farmhands and cowboys, freed slaves and Buffalo soldiers, pig-tailed Chinese laborers whose bats and gloves were stamped with the words PROPERTY OF BIG JIM HILL. But though the form of these creatures was human, they were not reubens, not at all. They were solid, living creatures, and yet they were not human beings so much as the compounded memories, preserved in the Summerlands like mayflies in amber, of human beings. They were ghosts, shades and reflections. They were lies and legends made flesh. And the greatest of these ghost people were the Big Liars. At one time they had ranged all across this part of the Summerlands, striding a quarter mile in a single step. Now they hung around Old Cat Landing, haunting its bars and brothels. When the Shadowtails showed up on the main street, right by the Jersey Lily saloon, the Liars all came out to laugh.

  The street was paved in a mixture of chalk, oystershells, and broken whiskey bottles. You had to watch where you walked.

  "So, here they are, then. The saviors of the Summerlands."

  It was a large man who said this, bearded, in a vast blue pea coat, with a stocking cap on his head and the stub of a pipe jammed into the corner of his mouth. He carried, slung over his shoulder, a long harpoon, tipped with a glinting barb. The Tall Man with the Harpoon threw back his head and laughed, very carefully, somehow, as if the laughter would not be as humiliating, nor the laugher himself quite so big and imposing, if he did not stop first to throw back his bearded head. They were all large, the men and women who crowded around Skid and the Shadowtails, and one of them was wearing a cowboy hat, with an enormous live rattlesnake twined around his throat like a living necktie. Together with the Man with the Axe, they numbered nine, the seven men as tall as Taffy, the two women nearly so, broad-shouldered and thick-legged and strong. Two of the men and both of the women were dark-skinned, with hands as big as the family Bible that Jennifer T.'s gran Billy Ann kept on the television. One of the black men carried an immense black iron hammer, and his smile though more kindly was no less mocking than that of the man with the pipe.

  "Old Ringfinger done said you was a motiey crew," said the Tall Man with the Hammer, peering down at the Shadowtails, "but didn't nobody said you was this motley."

  With that all nine of the giant people burst into laughter, slapping each other on the back, and spitting foul juices into the street, and exchanging high fives with the man holding the great big Hammer.

  "You might be laughing now," Jennifer T. said, and Ethan loved her for it before she even got the rest of the sentence out of her mouth, "but you're going to be crying when we get through whupping your fat butts!"

  That brought out an even greater explosion of laughter. One of the big white men, a little smaller and fatter than the others, with close-cropped red hair, laughed so hard that he dropped his long pole, fell over, and had to be righted by one of his fellows, a huge ox of a man with a snub nose, beady red eyes, and skin that glinted like polished bronze who carried a huge hammerlike tool, spiked on one side, that they afterward learned was a steelworker's maul.

  "Chiron Brown?" Ethan said. "Is he here? Has he been around?"

  The Tall Man with the Axe pointed—his index finger as thick and long as one of Cinquefoil's legs—and they turned back to see the old white Cadillac coming down the main street. It was Ringfinger Brown behind the wheel. He was dressed in a green-and-gold suit—green overlaid with a kind of diagonal yellow grid. He eased his old body out of the car and walked right up to Ethan and Jennifer T.

  "Well, now," he said. "Well, well, well. Look like old Ringfinger wasn't entirely wrong about you two." He chuckled, clearly delighted with himself, as though his failure in scouting Ethan and Jennifer T. had been rankling for a long time. "You done come far, come a long way. Been playin' halfway good baseball, too, what I hear."

  "Been playin all-the-way losin' baseball, what we hears," said another of the Tall Men. He was a very dark, very handsome man dressed in a gray-and-white pinstripe suit, with a purple brocade vest, that made Ringfinger's look dull and conservative. From the top of his tooled-leather, Cuban-heeled boot, protruded the horn handle of a very big knife. "Come a long way to get they hineys tanned."

  "We aren't here to play any stupid baseball," said Spider-Rose.

  "We're on our way to Applelawn, so that we can get through to find the Coyote"—she thrust forward the scrunched little ragdoll husk of Nubakaduba—"and get him to turn my brother back into a baby!"

  The Shadowtails all turned to her, mouths open, eyebrows knit. It sounded like a preposterous idea to Ethan, who had seen Nubakaduba only as a gross little hank of chamois and yarn, and never as a cute, plump, burbling little ferishet whose face lit up every time his sister walked into the room. But more surprising still was the wildly powerful blast of hopefulness that seemed to be behind this strange idea. Spider-Rose had long since won for herself the Shadowtails tide of Most Negative Player.

  "And stuff," she finished, blushing a deep peach-flesh gold.

  Jennifer T. put her arm around Spider-Rose's shoulder. "You bet we will," she said.

  "I'm acutely sorry to disappoint you travelers," said one of the Tall Women, "because you done come so powerful far." She was a wide-built lady with beautiful green eyes and freckled skin, dressed in a pair of vast denim overalls, with a long-barreled rifle slung over her shoulder. "But we are not here to engage in no diamond antics with you, neither. We are here, in fact, to see that you never get across that there river"

  "And who, I'd like to know," Grim the Giant said, "is fixing to stop us?"

  "Annie Christmas," said the woman in the overalls. "And her friends."

  They all stepped forward now, the Tall Man with the Axe, the Tall Man with the Hammer, the Tall Man with the Big Maul, the Tall Man with the Harpoon, the Tall Man with the Rattlesnake Necktie, the Tall Man with the Knife in His Boot, The Tall Man wit
h the Pole, and the other Tall Woman, who wore a tight red dress so shiny that it put to shame the slick gray suit of the Man with the Knife in His Boot, and a pair of red shoes whose heels were nearly as high as Spider-Rose herself. Around her neck hung a straight razor on a silver chain.

  "These here are my friends," Annie Christmas said. "The Big Liars of Old Cat Landing."

  "Yeah? Well, if you're so big and all, why are you so short?" said Jennifer T. She went right up to the Tall Man with the Axe and looked him up and down as critically as she examined opposing pitchers before the start of a game. "I've been wanting to ask you that all day. I thought you were supposed to be, like, a giant lumberjack? Supposed to, I don't know, supposed to use a whole redwood tree for a toothpick? And Lake Superior for an ice rink? And stuff like that. So, where's the blue ox?"

  The Tall Man with the Axe rubbed at his gray-blond beard, peering down at Jennifer T. Ethan was astonished to see tears in his eyes. The other Big Liars gathered around him, and the Tall Man with the Hammer put an arm across the Man with the Axe's shoulders. And then the Man with the Axe buried his face in his hands, and sobbed.

  "I'm sorry," he said, after a moment, wiping his nose on his sleeve. He tried to gain control of himself, but every time the tears abated somewhat he would let out a heartrending cry of "Babe!" and then start crying all over again. Finally the Man with the Hammer had to lead him away, into the Jersey Lily saloon, with a backward look of reproach over his shoulder at Jennifer T.