Cutbelly sagged, and sank to the dirt of the infield. He buried his face in his hands. “I know it,” he said, rubbing at his long snout. “I told them as much my own self. But we have something less than a choice. It may be too late already as it is.” He held out a tiny paw to Ethan, who pulled him to his feet. “We must cross over, now. The other piglet, too, it’s unfortunate she saw me, but there’s no helping it now.”
For the first time since Cutbelly’s appearance, Ethan remembered Jennifer T. She was still standing on the pitcher’s mound, a little behind the rubber now, as if to keep something between her and Cutbelly. Her mouth was twisted into a strange half-smile but her eyes were wide and empty. Ethan saw that she was afraid.
“It’s OK,” Ethan said, using his newfound catcher’s voice. “He’s a friend of mine. I tried to tell you yesterday, but—”
“Little people,” Jennifer T. said, in a thick voice.
“—but you didn’t believe me.”
“She believed you,” Cutbelly said. “Come on, girl. See what you’ll see.”
THEY LEAPED ACROSS to the Summerlands through deeper shadows than Ethan remembered, the frost of the crossing streaking their hair and dusting the brims of their caps. The darkness was only partial but thick and deep. It reminded him of the false night that had fallen on Colorado Springs during a solar eclipse, one winter day back when he was in the first grade. Cutbelly hurried along as quickly as he could on his wounded leg, looking all around him as they went, his bright orange eyes darting from left to right. From time to time he would stop, and motion for the children to do the same with a curt gesture, and stand motionless, his long ears quavering, studying the air for a sound they alone could detect. Though Ethan was filled with questions, Cutbelly refused to listen to them, or to reply. He would not say how he had been injured, or what was happening in the Birchwood.
“Two thirds of all the shadows you are seeing around you are not real shadows at all,” was all he would say, in a low whisper. “Try to keep that in mind, piglets.”
They looked around; the shadows twisted like smoke, billowed like curtains, dangled like Spanish moss from the limbs of birch trees; then they looked again and all was still. Jennifer T. bumped up against Ethan and they walked that way for a while, shoulder to shoulder, holding each other up as they lumbered after the werefox through the silent woods. Great slow wheels of crows turned in the grey skies overhead. Rain was falling all around. And then they stepped out of the trees, into the clearing where Ethan had met Cinquefoil and the other Clam Island ferishers, to find that the final lines of the first paragraph of the last chapter in the history of the world had already been written.
“Too late!” Cutbelly cried. “Too late!”
The clearing was filled with grey smoke and hissing jets of steam. The turf was trodden and torn. And the Birchwood itself was gone; all the trees had been cut down and apparently hauled away. All that was left of the great mass of tall white trees were splintered stumps and tall piles of stripped branches. The beautiful little ballpark, made from the bones of a giant, lay in ruins, the towers torn down and scattered, the stands collapsed in on themselves. In the midst of the field that had once surrounded the ballpark, churned up in a muddy tumult of earth, lay an overturned vehicle of some kind, a twisted hulk of black iron with heavy leather treads, cruelly spiked. Here and there around this ruined hulk lay a number of small bodies. They might have been children, or even ferishers, but for their pale grey skin.
In all this expanse of waste and wreckage nothing was moving but the twisting curls of steam. Except—
“Hey,” Ethan said.” What’s that?”
Down on the beach, where the ferishers had gone to consult Johnny Speakwater, one final skirmish was taking place. A ferisher stood on top of the great driftwood log, while around him crowded half a dozen winged creatures that Ethan recognised, even from a distance, as the same one that had grinned at him through his bedroom window.
Cutbelly cried out. “That’s Cinquefoil! The skrikers are on him!”
“Skrikers,” Ethan said. “What are they?”
“Ferishers changed by the Changer,” Cutbelly said. “They hate what they are and even worse what they once were. Help him, piglet!”
“What should I do?” Ethan said. “Just tell me.”
Cutbelly turned to him, his black-tipped snout quivering, his eyes wide and lit with what looked to Ethan like a surprising glimmer of hope.
“Search your heart, piglet!” he said. “You were dug up by old Chiron himself! The wight that scouted up Achilles! Arthur! Toussaint and Crazy Horse! You’ve got to have the stuff in you somewhere, piglet or no!”
Ethan felt something catch inside him at Cutbelly’s words, like the scrape of a match against the rough black stripe of a matchbook. He looked around, something bright and dense and hot kindling inside him. He started, trotting at first, towards the beach.
“Ethan!” Jennifer T. said.
He looked back at her. She was standing behind Cutbelly. Her gaze was as blank and strange as before, but now the crooked half-smile was gone.
“What are you going to do?”
Ethan shrugged.” I guess I’m supposed to save him,” he said. He didn’t really believe that he could do it, in spite of Cutbelly’s words. But he felt he ought to try. After all, it was just a question of saving one ferisher, not a whole tribe. Maybe he could do something to draw them off, and give the ferisher a chance to recoup his strength. He was clearly an excellent fighter, much better than Ethan could ever hope to be.
Ethan ran towards the driftwood log. Cinquefoil leapt and ducked, thrust and slashed, hacking at a swarm of the bat-things with a long, wicked knife. His hair blew back from his head and his knife arm lashed and flailed and held steady. The sight was inspiring. That was a hero. That was how you did it. Ethan ran up, yelling and screaming, hoping to distract the skrikers for a moment. Cinquefoil turned, and smiled faintly, and then three of the skrikers looked Ethan’s way. They grinned yellow grins, and the bridges of their sharp little noses wrinkled with a rank pleasure that snuffed out the little flame of purpose which Cutbelly’s words had kindled in Ethan. They flew at Ethan, scattering themselves around him, their wings jerking and spasming. Ethan saw that the wings were not a part of them but queer machines, affixed to their backs by means of brass-red screws. Ethan ran past them, ducking underneath their spindly legs, and then when he turned they were on him.
He looked around for something to use to defend himself, but all he could see were the spiky stumps of broken limbs that jutted from the driftwood log. Most of them were much too short to be of any use, but there was one that was longer, and nearly perfectly straight. He clambered up onto the log and grabbed hold of the limb, and pulled. It made a dry, cracking sound, but held firm.
“Glad you could make it,” Cinquefoil said, and then there was a muffled explosion, and the ferisher cried out and tumbled from the log. One of the skrikers, Ethan noticed, seemed to have lost its head, and was wheeling crazily around in the air. Cinquefoil must have decapitated it just before he himself fell. The skrikers hovered over his motionless body, now, poking and prodding it with their steel-tipped toes. Ethan threw his weight against the limb, putting his whole shoulder into it. With a great crunching snap it broke loose, and came away free in his hand.
It was about the size and length of a baseball bat,
