The light in the window grew visibly darker.
“Megan. Where is this Raven you were talking to?”
She pointed out the window. “He went over there.”
“Where?”
“Up the big hill.”
“Can you see him right now?”
“Sure. Can’t you?”
“I guess not, honey.” But Tim Kearns kept his eye on the hill she had pointed out.
It was less than an hour later, and the policeman had just come in to get Megan. Tim Kearns was still staring at the hill. The sky had turned all black, and fat drops of rain and hail were flying down from rumbling clouds. The wind was making a continuous roar.
The officer shouted over the wind, “You got to come too, sir. Sheriff said everybody!”
Tim was actually staring right at the exact spot where the lightningbolt struck the hilltop. The officer flinched, and Megan screamed.
Blinking in the purple afterimage, Tim could see, for the briefest moment, high on the hill above, ghostlike, wind-whipped, the huge, bearded man in a black cloak wrestling the lightning bolt to the ground, like a man strangling a snake of blue fire with his hands.
“Come on, sir!” said the police officer.
Kearns shouted back, “Get the little girl out into the car. I’ve got to lock up. Only take a sec!”
The policeman stepped out. The man who called himself Tim Kearns removed a circuit card from a compartment in his wallet, opened the electronic panel next to the phone, and plugged the card into the circuit board. Then he plugged the phone jack into the same panel.
“Calling Burbank! Calling Burbank! Tell Pendrake that Raven is here; he’s got the ring and is attempting to allay Hurricane Doris. I can’t stay in this position; must retreat to storm bunker. Will contact you when possible. Out.”
III
Raven sat upon the hill beneath a blasted oak tree, his face calm, his hands folded in his lap. Downhill, the sea was before him, black waves rearing and plunging. To his left, was forest; to his right, the little town.
His face was very calm. His eyes were half closed. He was breathing slowly and deeply. Up from his palms came a trickle of vapor, as if he had just grappled with some force of immense heat. But his palms were unscarred, unblistered.
Lightning passed across the town to his right, and all the lights went dark.
Despite the rain and driving hail, Raven’s garments were not wet.
A whine of bagpipes sounded from his left. The trees in the forest bowed like wheat in a planted field bowing in the wind. A dozen trees, two dozen, were uprooted and whirled through the air. A wall of devastation, like a continuous explosion, ripped through the forest, approaching.
When Raven put his palm on the root of the oak next to him, the tree stopped trembling.
Splinters from the whirlwind ripping through the forest, propelled by hundred-mile-an-hour winds, fell to the left and to the right of him, but did not touch him.
Raven, eyes half closed, did not look up. He wore the smile a man might wear who was listening to distant, soft music.
He touched two fingers to the ground. For three paces to each side of him, the grass ceased to bow to the wind. The grass there bowed once to Raven, then stood straight, and the hail and rain did not disturb them.
Raven drew a breath, closed his eyes, laid his palm flat upon the ground. The effect around him grew till it was four paces wide, six, then ten.
A noise louder than any other noise on Earth exploded from overhead, deafening. In the light from a lightning flash, the silhouette of a creature in Roman armor could be seen, hanging between two gnarled storm-clouds, shield raised.
“Murderer!” called a voice louder than a thunderbolt.
The corner of Raven’s mouth twitched. The circle became four paces wide, then three, shrinking. Stinging hail splattered his garments.
A creature in a kilt and cloak, breathing out a tornado from his bagpipes, cam striding across the crest of the hill; and where he stepped, thunders boomed. Behind was a path where everything had been flattened. He took the flute from his mouth to call out, “Your pretty wife is gone away! Your worthless life must end this day!”
The tree behind Raven began to shake again; his coat was yanked up, streaming, and his own hair pelted his face.
Lightning struck the tree. Standing tall amidst the flaming branches was a creature in black, wearing lace, his whole body crawling with sparks and darts of electricity. He shook his javelin. “Impotent now, I think you must be! Will you stay wed, when you cannot bed, nor do a bridegroom’s one duty? The ring was meant for a monk to wear, shy and pale, a porridge eater in a shirt of hair.”
Raven smiled, and spoke in a quiet voice, and the storm grew quiet to hear him. “Love has deep roots, Fulmenos. Love last long after tempest of infatuation blows by, you know? Love is both for fair weather and for foul. You like to think I must give up much to command you, eh? You are not so great, I am thinking. I give up nothing.”
Lighting spurted from the creature’s eyes and mouth as it shouted. Bolts fell to each side of Raven, but he did not flinch, and so they did not touch him.
“You think to tame your passions thus? It cannot be! Men cannot be men unless they let their souls run free! Join us! The strife of life is meant for life, not for cautious thinking-through! Forget the future! Do not reflect, but do! Shake these cobwebs from your strength! Let whatever impulse blows you now, now whirl you aloft! How else to fly? Reason is deceit! Your senses cheat! Logic is a lie! Morality is meant to chain the soft!”
Raven raised his hand, and a great unearthly hush came out from him. The rain diminished suddenly, as if the eye of the storm were overhead. “You say logic lies, eh? And so therefore I must be illogical? But that is argument you make. With logic, no? So you are lying, yes?”
He stood up. The tree behind him stopped trembling. The rain diminished to a drizzle.
“I am not a child,” said Raven. “I do not listen to children-fears. I do not act like child, first crying, then laughing, then crying again, changing as the wind changes. I am not a spoiled baby to do whatever I like without thinking. Now then, Tempestos! Attonitus! Come here and be quiet.”
Attonitus raised his shield and sword. “Murderer! You cannot control us, who cannot control yourself!”
Tempestos stepped forward reluctantly, but he squeezed on his bag with his elbow, producing a droning hiss, and the wind behind him began to rush through the trees, building. He said softly, “Aye, and what of your wife, mortal man? You bring Galen back to life; she dies. Does this not make fear blow through you?”
“No,” said Raven. “There was a storm in me, fear and anger, and I blew down Galen’s life. Now it has rained in me, and I have wept. Weeping done. Now I must have calm weather again. I can quiet myself; I can quiet the storm. Storm-Princes! Whirlwind, Thunderbolt, Lightning! Hail and welcome. Come and obey!”
The three figures gathered before him where he stood, and, kneeling, each one, in turn, kissed the white gold ring.
The clouds parted and a single beam of sunlight came streaming through the gentle rain to light on Raven where he stood, unmoving, beneath the blasted oak tree.
IV
“First,” said Raven, “I have parachute from army surplus store at last bus stop. Stole it, yes, but left some money librarian gave, so maybe is alright. I am thinking, Wendy flies, eh? So why not Raven?”
Tempestos picked up his pipes but said, “You think to unleash us, and then bottle us once more? If so, where do you wish to go? I can bear you where e’er winds will blow. Go ahead and try it. Icarus tried before.”
“We fly to Everness and maybe to the Moon,” said Raven.
“We cannot carry you to Luna’s sphere, wise master, for no winds blow from here to there.”
Raven said, “Be calm. I solve that problem later.
“Now then, second order: You, there, Thunder! Go make it rain on fires in Southwest. Put them out. Wherever Surtvitnir is, it rai
ns. And no more snow for Bergelmir, eh? He can make it cold, but if there is no moisture, then it is not snowing.”
“And if they are together, great Master? For even I, I cannot make it at once both wet and dry!”
“Be quiet there!” said Raven, shaking his finger. “Don’t get yourself worked up, eh? If they are together, make wet mist. Cold will turn mist to frost and nothing burns, you know?”
Raven turned to the last figure.
“For you, I have an idea. Do you think you can make a rainbow all across the sky here? A nice pretty one, lots of colors? I think the people in the town deserve it.”
“Your will, in all, for me, is law,” he said, standing. Somehow, his robe had changed from black to a gray-edged and fluffy white. His lace was now of many colors. But when he smiled, flickers of electricity ran across his teeth, and his inhuman eyes were like two sparks.
The rain stopped.
8
The Black Ship Sails
I
Raven approached Everness by sea so that the wind of his passage would not blow down houses and forests as he passed.
There were three black ships, a clipper and two galleons, moored to the cliffs below the ruins of the seawall. It was daylight, and no kelpie were in view. The giants, last he had seen on the news, were still in the midwest and west. Of the three dark supernatural beings whom Apollo had driven away, there was no sign.
But the grounds were crawling with gunmen in black uniforms and blue helmets. There were a few men in purple robes, and a group of seal-sailors camped out on the lawn. The south wing was under repair; and scaffolding surrounded damaged sections.
Raven dropped toward the ground, gray clouds streaming out to the right and left, and gale-force winds announced his coming.
His first realization that normal men could see him came when he heard the crack of a rifle shot, and saw a bullet hole appear in the canopy of his parachute.
Before he could restrain his momentary anger, lightning had destroyed the gunman who had shot at him and forked bolts played among the screaming crowd.
He landed amid the corpses. The grass was smoldering. He struggled with the buckles of his parachute, unfastened them. His ankles hurt.
“Calmly, now!” he told himself. “Thunder! Everyone in the house and grounds! Drive them unconscious! Have fog and cloud gather around me to make it hard to see. Ah, wait … Are there reenforcements coming from the ships? Whirlwind! Blow them far out to sea.”
Raven strode through the gathering fog toward the house. He only had to electrocute three more men. Less than ten minutes later, all the enemies in the house and grounds lay on their stomachs in the side yard, with their hands clasped over their necks, surrendered, except for those who were carrying the thunderstruck out into the yard.
Raven created a wall of lightning to circle and to guard them. Then he donned his parachute again and let himself be blown off the cliff. He overtook three ships. The one that struck her colors he spared; the other two he sank, and pods of seals swam away through the flotsam.
Raven landed on the poop deck of the remaining ship, and, after some negotiation, accepted the cutlass of the ship’s captain in token of surrender.
“I am thinking, you know,” he murmured to himself, “I could be getting to like this magic ring very much, yes?”
And he ordered the captain to set sail for the dark side of the Moon.
II
Raven realized he was in strange waters when constellations rose he did not recognize.
He came up from the captain’s cabin, stepping over the bodies unconscious on the stair, onto the deck.
The horizon of night was vast, and everywhere was wide, wild sea, with tall waves, like hills of water, gleaming in the starlight, restlessly passing back and forth across the rippling deep. The smell of salt had diminished, as they were far from shore.
In the gloom, Raven could see how the deck of the ship was littered with rubbish, and coils of unslung rope lay in heaps across the planks and rusted bits of brightwork.
Nothing on the ship showed a bit of polish or repair, except the flaying racks, which Raven had thrown overboard last night.
As he came amidships, some sailor in the rigging dropped a bag of filth and offal, which missed his head by inches, splattering across the deck and dotting his clothes with drops of fecal matter. “Sorry, Milord!” called a cheerful voice.
Raven saw two deckhands, seal-faced men in sailor suits with knotted neckerchiefs, clinging to the ropes high above.
They both pointed at each other. “He did it!” they cried in unison.
Raven sighed. The selkie had made the unfortunate discovery somehow that Raven’s control over the weather depended on his ability to keep his temper. He might not survive if the Storm-Princes turned on him.
He called, “Where is navigator, eh?”
The two deckhands pointed in opposite directions, one fore, the other, aft. Then they looked at each other and shrugged.
“Maybe he’s gone overboard, Milord!” offered one.
Thunder rolled through the air, and an angry gust rocked the boat. Raven took a deep, slow breath. The wind grew calm.
Another voice, a baritone, called, “Up here, so please you, Milord.”
Raven climbed to the poop deck, which was lit with many lanterns. A large selkie with a human face and a peg leg stood at the wheel. By the deckhouse compass stood two selkie with seal-faces, one was dressed in a long, blue coat with polished silver buttons; the other wore the captain’s bright red coat and plumed bicorn hat, but the long wig of white ringlets he wore was tilted askew.
The one in the long, blue coat said, “I be the navigator, Milord.”
“Ah? When is last time we spoke?” asked Raven.
The navigator’s nose twitched. He stroked his fine whiskers with a furry hand, looking at Raven sidelong. “Yesterday at eight bells ’twas, as I recall, Milord. Milord had asked me why we be sailing in a circle, it was, before I knew sure Milord knew something of sea lore, as it were.”
Then he leaned closer and showed his sharp, white teeth, “But Milord shouldn’t bother to ask. You know there be no way to get a body’s first true skin off except to kill him; and I don’t take kindly to the implication that there’s a man jack aboard this tub who could best me in any brawl-play, square or foul!”
Raven let that comment pass without reply. Instead, he asked, “What stars are these to our bow? These, they are not northern constellations, nor southern. The Great Bear, he is sunk, but is no Southern Cross rising, eh?”
“We be in the Third Hemisphere, Milord, having passed over the terminator when ye were below. They have two more seasons here, which ye hardly ever get on man’s Earth. The constellation just rising there we call Eurydice, the Lost Lady, and beside it, Peirithous, the Forsaken One. So called, on account of neither of them ever rises quite far enough get out of these here skies, if you catch the reference, ha har! The bright star between them is the planet we call Psychompompos; not many mariners of Earth have seen that wandering star, Milord, not and lived to tell the tale.”
“Then we are in dreaming-ocean, yes?”
“That be a matter of opinion and dispute, Milord. I would not say yes or no, if you take my meaning. But they be strange waters to be sure. Strange waters.”
At that point, someone threw a wet rag at the back of Raven’s head. It had been soaked in some sort of filth which stuck to his hair. Hoots of barking laughter sounded from behind. Raven brushed off the rag without turning.
“Captain,” said Raven to the selkie in the red coat and wig, “Three more deckhands I am finding lying thunderstruck outside my door when I get up just now. You understand you must send no more assassins, eh? My spirit protects the door. I have told everyone to leave door alone when it is closed.”
The captain looked nervous, blinking his big black eyes and twitching his whiskers.
The navigator spoke up. “Begging your pardon, Milord, but once the lads found out
how you were defending yourself like that whilst ye were sleeping, well, naturally, it became sort of a game with them to see how close they could get, and wrestle and push each other into your door, so as to get the thunderbolt to knock them senseless what lost the game, so to speak. Hope the noise weren’t keeping ye awake?”
Raven said to the captain, “And you said you would show me charts and maps of Moon, once daylight come. Dawn come soon. Where are charts?”
“Been meaning to talk to ye about that, Milord, privatelike, if ye see?” said the captain nervously, scratching at his dangling wig.
The captain drew Raven over to one side, near the railing, and he hissed, “I ain’t the captain!”
Raven groaned. “Must we go through this again?”
“No! For true! This time I really ain’t! The captain, he made me change garments with him last watch! He’s skulking among the men, ye know?”
“Tell him change back. He must obey you now, eh?”
“Nar! And I ain’t sure who he is anyhow!”
“What? You are saying what to me? He is in your face now, eh? Don’t know what your own face was looking like?”
“He’s planning some awful mischief, I tell ye that for true and certain, Milord! Don’t know what might be, but it’s awful mischief a-brewing!”
The pink light of dawn appeared off the bow with surprising suddenness, and the clouds all along the horizon were tinted with rose and tawny colors.
Raven stroked his beard, wondering at the captain’s words. He was puzzled as to why the Selkie did not simply jump overboard, turn to seals, and swim away.
At first he had thought that it was their avarice that held them. He had gathered all their trunks and chests and rolls of leather together in the captain’s cabin and locked them in the captain’s trunk. He assumed they would not be willing to leave without their wardrobes.
Perhaps this was a trap. But, if so, what else should he be doing?