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in the rain like that. A damn fool.
 Maybe so, David said absently, and then hung up the phone.
The air suddenly felt empty. David frowned and went over to the refrigerator
in search of something to quiet his growling stomach. Once full of coffee,
cold roast beef, a peanut butter sandwich, and a handful of potato chips, he
began to pace restlessly about the house, unable to stay in one place for more
than a minute or two. The radio was full of static, the TV was out entirely,
and reading demanded more concentration than he could muster.
He paced the house, and when that became too much, went out onto the front
porch to watch the storm.
Safe or unsafe, he did not really care. It was raining as if it would never
cease, and he stared at that silver-laced darkness for a long time before
starting back inside. He reached for the doorhandle and stopped short. His
runestaff was leaning in the corner by the door. Liz had left it for him.  Oh,
Christ! he whispered.  If anything happens to her . . .
But there was nothing he could do about it now, he realized glumly as he
brought it inside and retreated to the final sanctuary of his room. Whatever
happened would happen.
He flopped down on his bed, ran his gaze blankly over his bookcase. Idly he
reached out and snagged the worn blue copy of
Gods and Fighting Men.
He wished he d had time to scour the local libraries, and the one at Young
Harris as well, for more books on Celtic folklore, but there just hadn t been
time. He had prowled around in
The Secret Common-Wealth a good bit, but all he could remember from that was
something about iron and crosses, and he had doubted that those were always
reliable. Still, the
Faery boy had said he was under some sort of protection, and he evidently
was and fairly powerful protection at that, or else the Sidhe would have
carried him off themselves by now. Maybe it was the ring, still protecting him
from afar. But even if he had the ring right now, what good would it do? He
couldn t fancy it undoing what was already done. No, there must be other
solutions, if only he could think of them.
David flipped absently through the pages of the book. Namesp. 181and places
once glorious to him flickered by.
And now I don t care, he thought.
The glamour is gone.
He looked at the long list of names in the glossary, and thought about the
changeling.  One of these people may be his father or his mother, he
whispered.  I wonder where my little brother is sleeping now. He slammed the
covers.
Chapter XII: On The Mountain p. 182David stood again on the back porch looking
out at the rain, barely noticing how it stung his skin.
It was falling really hard, sluicing off the tin roof in cold silver sheets,
turning the yard to bog, the driveway to a blood-colored river. The sorghum
patch was almost completely flooded now; only a few stray stalks of derelict
cane showed above the water. The sky hung heavy, almost black. Across the
drive the crosshatched shapes of trees and fences stuck up out of the mush
like frozen black lightning.
He sighed and went back into the coziness of the kitchen to turn on the coffee
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David couldn t take any more. He was going crazy with inaction and indecision.
Tension throbbed in the air like thunder.
At a loss as to what to do, he slumped sullenly at the kitchen table, gazing
out the window, watching the rain, the drops hard and bitter as his own
despair. The riverbottoms were completely covered now, and he could only
barely see the mountains across the valley. Water was creeping across the
Sullivan Cove road, too, and he knew it was only a matter of time before it
became impassable. David tried to imagine what the waterfall up on Lookout
Rock must look like, and shuddered. It had been raining virtually all
afternoon, without a letup and that was all he needed.
p. 183He tried to remember bright, clear skies and lush foliage; green grass
and soft, warm winds; and calm, cool water not this demon-driven stuff. As if
to taunt him, a gust of wind banged the screen door, forced its way inside to
chill him where he sat with a quarter-cup of cold coffee in his hand. The
single overhead light cast harsh shadows around the room, and David hugged
himself, for the warmth had gone from the kitchen, indeed from the whole
house. It felt cold and clammy as winter.
The door banged again, and David jumped. Probably the Sidhe come for him at
last, he told himself grimly.
And I think if they asked I d go . . . I ll give them credit for one thing;
they sure know how to get at me: make my house an island, hide the sun, put my
friends at a distance, my brother in some other world, my uncle barely in
this. Shoot, what have I got to live for, anyway? There s simply no more hope.
David slammed his fist on the table so hard that the sugar bowl came uncapped.
I ll do it. I ll give myself up to the Sidhe.
It was insane, he thought, to even contemplate such a thing. And where would
he go? Where did one seek the Sidhe? The Straight Track? Well, it was a thing
of the Sidhe, one of their Places of Power if it could be called a place. But
he wasn t certain how to find it, nor did he know how it worked. It might lead
him to Faerie, or it might lead him somewhere else, and he didn t dare risk
that.
Bloody Bald? But it was an island, maybe half a mile from the nearest shore,
and though David was a good swimmer, he didn t want to risk such a thing in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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