do them all that way, it’s going to take a lot of…blood.”
“Mmm. Perhaps. Still: it is not within my power to guarantee the safety of an entire community here. You must choose another attribute for your stick.”
“My cane.”
Charley Cat glowered at him.
“Strength,” Joseph said. “I want my people to be strong.”
“Better. Your rock, your flower, your stick, and your hungry. I will accept your terms.”
“I already told you. That isn’t part of what I want.”
“And yet you have brought it. Hungry must be part of our pact.”
Joseph stepped forward. Charley Cat stood and reached across the word to place a hand on Joseph’s chest.
“I’m going to rub it out,” Joseph said. Charley Cat growled.
“You are too late,” Lorelei said. “It is already here. Your terms have been laid out and accepted.”
Joseph stepped back, leaned against his cane. His stomach complained and muttered. Exhaustion dragged at him, made him feel heavy as the massive granite face of the Bluff. He suddenly felt far older than his forty-seven years.
“What do you want, sir, madame?” he sighed.
Charley Cat stepped back and squatted on the far side of Joseph’s word. A shadow, as of a flicking tail, curled on the ground near his body. Lorelei glided over to stand beside him. He indicated the ground across from him. Joseph sat. When he was settled, Charley Cat spoke again.
“My needs are simple,” he said. “Safe passage and hospitality.”
Joseph hesitated. Safe passage was easy; the eighty-three bedraggled folk who had survived last year’s smallpox and last month’s yellow fever – those who hadn’t died in the two mine collapses this past spring – were certainly in no shape to face down this creature. Should Charley Cat choose to stretch his claws, Joseph had no doubt he could tear a gash right through the heart of Piquette and drink down all of their blood at once. Permitting him and his ilk to pass quietly along Firedown road, taking hell and whatever else he carried downriver to West Virginia or up the way to Hudsonville and that blasted Dickie Beaubeau, pleased Joseph well enough. If Charley Cat and his accursed company could be persuaded to travel at night, so much the better.
Hospitality, however…dark images clamored for Joseph’s attention at that word. Lorelei claimed Charley Cat was a god of lust, after all – but even if he weren’t, Joseph would have still been sickened at the thought of putting him up under his roof, within arm’s reach of his mother and his one remaining daughter.
“Hospitality?” Joseph replied. “That may be difficult. I doubt we have the proper accommodations for one as great as–”
“Stop it. Simpering sickens me.” Charley Cat hunched low, and Joseph edged back a step. “You are new to this place.”
Joseph straightened, ignoring the strain in his back and shoulders.
“We have been here a full seventeen months, sir,” he said.
“Seventeen months. Long enough to set large swaths of this land to farm, long enough for strong men to build a settlement I should be able to see from here, even in the dark. Where is your town, Founder?”
Joseph sagged. Charley Cat grinned. His black teeth and eyes sucked at Joseph like tar and sent a vicious buzzing along his nerves.
“How many came with you? How many remain? Joseph Albers,” Charley Cat lilted, “what have you done?”
The sound of Joseph’s heartbeat filled the world. He clutched his cane with all his waning strength.
“If you had been here longer, you would know that this is my road,” Charley Cat said. He nodded over his shoulder at the shadowed host that still waited just past clear sight, outside the circle of Nut-Meg’s firelight. A lopsided, creaking rhythm began to rise within the crowd.
“I travel with others. Many others. You will set aside two acres of flat, cleared land for us every two years. You will ensure a full turnout of all able-bodied citizens, children and adults, to attend our entertainments. Your folk shall pay us fair coin for entry, and for any extra services and diversions we elect to provide.”
“…diversions?”
“We are wandering entertainers.”
“Wandering devils,” Joseph said. The words were out before he could stop himself. He flinched, but Charley Cat appeared to take no offense. Joseph’s stomach growled in the silence. He added, “I cannot condemn my family and the good people who’ve followed me here to ‘pay fair coin’ to worship in your accursed gypsy tents.”
“We do not belong to the Traveling Folk.”
“Perhaps not. Gypsies are likely too clever by far to travel with the likes of you.”
The laughing, whickering sound lumbered up the hill. Joseph tried not to turn his gaze away from Charley Cat, worked to not shiver.
Charley Cat stood and twitched his phantom tail. Amusement radiated from him; mirth rippled from the set of his shoulders to the cant of his long-necked head.
“What you hear is simply my conveyance,” he said. “It comes for me when the parley has ended.”
“We have not reached an agreement!”
Charley Cat leaned forward. Nut-Meg stretched and pulled herself to her feet. She sidled up to Charley Cat. He twined his long fingers in her flaming fur.
“Do you intend to refuse me?”
Joseph stammered, “Surely that is my right, sir.” A feeble wheeze crept into his voice. He gritted his teeth against it.
Charley Cat whipped his arm out and hooked his fingers under Joseph’s chin. Joseph shrieked and yanked his head up, tried to scrabble away, but Charley Cat’s claws held him fast. Blood, wet and hot, began to spill down Joseph’s neck and Charley Cat’s arm. His nightmarish teeth seemed to tear the very air as he replied.
“You, with your rock and your flowers…you have already made your decision. You are welcome to offer alternate terms. I may even accept them.”
The creaking of Charley Cat’s conveyance lumbered on.
“Go,” Joseph whispered. “Please…leave, and never return.”
“Those terms are not accepted. My road is along the Ohio River. When I leave Hudsonville, the easiest path to Huntington is Firedown Road. I am a simple god, and I like simple paths.”
“You are no god.” Joseph’ voice, that traitorous bastard, was a quivering, broken whisper. Joseph would have loved to rip it right out of himself and choke it into a gasping death.
“I am.” Charley Cat released Joseph and stepped back calmly as the man staggered. Joseph pressed one hand under his chin, trying to clamp each tiny wound at once. Charley Cat drew himself up so he stood taller than Joseph for the first time. He spread his arms over Joseph and grinned down at him. Lorelei stepped up and put a hand on Charley Cat’s arm.
“It’s best to give us safe passage, darlin’,” she said. “Though we can take it.”
“He is a devil,” Joseph gasped, “a damned red Indian devil.”
“Agree,” Charley Cat snarled. “Or don’t. But decide before my conveyance arrives. We have had a long journey, and it is quite the hungriest thing in the county.”
The cat god’s carriage lurched into view. It came without horse or driver. Many-jointed, calloused, almost circular appendages shrugged at its ragged lower corners. Their thick flesh slapped the road in an uneven patter which fell together into the chittering, laughing noise that marked its passage. Its thick hide reeked of wild things and its eyes swung on their stalks, within their tender cages, looking for all the world like bright, gently patterned lanterns – until it blinked. The carriage’s mouth, low to the ground, snuffled and huffed into the dirt. Slobbered muck trailed in its wake. As it moved into the crossroads, its breath curled across the space and around Joseph’s ankles. Its exhalations were chilled and clammy rather than wet and hot, and when it as they circled him Joseph knew that death by such a creature would come not from teeth but from a million million tiny stalks within its maw, each stalk sinking into his skin and sucking him dry from every possible poin
t.
Joseph clamped his jaw tight. He had to, lest he begin to yell. He wanted to beg; to promise this accursed god anything, anything at all, as long as he agreed to take that horrid thing from his presence.
Narrow tendrils crept from beneath the monstrous caravan, stretching across the center of the crossroads. They reached across hungry and edged up to Joseph’s cuffs. He recoiled and took a quick step back. The conveyance rattled forward. Its tendrils lapped at his shoes.
“Agreed!” Joseph cried. “I accept your terms.”
Charley Cat's conveyance pulled itself the rest of the way into the crossroads and settled with a groaning thump that shook the ground. The lantern eyes closest to Joseph swayed and winked at him. He clutched his cane to his chest.
Jenny pounced across hungry and rubbed against one of the conveyance’s knobby, jointed wheels. Her purring set Joseph’s teeth to shaking. Charley Cat knelt before it and pressed his hands on either side of hungry. He rubbed his palms in the dirt and held them out as if in supplication.
“You have accepted my terms, Joseph Albers,” he said, “and I accept yours.” He blew the dirt from his hands onto hungry. Thick red earthblood oozed up to fill the word. Nut-Meg came forward. She leaned down and coughed. A fat column of flame blazed across hungry, and the sweet odor of Nut-Meg’s spiced breath curdled into a biting, acrid smell that made Joseph’s eyes water. He knuckled tears away and saw the firedog striding across hungry, heading for the path that led up to the Bluff, and from there to Joseph’s home. He