Before he could make it out of the tree I had sprinted past and was hightailing it back toward the parking lot and my van. Lou was well out in front; I might have knocked the wind out of him, but he could still move faster than I could.
I made it to the van, and was roaring back down Highway 1 in no time. I drove in ghastly silence until I realized I’d neglected to take the hearing spell off. As soon as I was back over the bridge I turned the van toward Victor’s. Checking out something for Rolf was one thing, but this was serious and I needed help.
Victor was at his desk in the study, scribbling notes about something. Eli was also there, as usual, and he was annoyed.
“I’ve been calling you all day,” he said. “Were you going to tell me about the Columbarium and Sherwood, or just wait until I asked?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I figured Victor would fill you in.”
“Well, he did, of course. But I want to hear it from you.”
“Okay, but there’s something else going on. Something important.”
“More important than Sherwood?”
“Well, no. More urgent, though.” He regarded me skeptically until I began my story. “You remember how Rolf said something else came out of that energy sink?”
“Rolf?”
“Bridge Guy. His name is Rolf.”
“Oh. Of course.”
“Well, I found what that was, or at least I think I did. And it’s bad.”
After I finished the tale, Victor sad, “So it never actually did anything to you, then? I mean, before you tried to kill it?”
“You weren’t there. You would have done the same.”
“Possibly. But I wouldn’t have missed.”
“I don’t think I did.”
Eli had walked over to the window and was staring out at the ocean as if Victor and I didn’t exist. I started to ask him a question, but Victor put his finger to his lips and shook his head. We sat there in silence for a good five minutes. The only other thing that happened was that Lou curled up and went to sleep.
“The world is a strange and wondrous place,” Eli finally said, turning back from the window. Not a statement that required comment, but I tossed one out anyway.
“Strange, yes. I’m not so sure about the wondrous part.” Eli smiled, but in an abstracted fashion. “So what do you think? Apart from it being wondrous and strange?”
“I think we’re in very deep waters indeed.” He turned to the window, staring out again, his back toward us when he continued. His voice took on that familiar professorial tone, as if lecturing in a classroom. “Now, you’ll remember a few months ago, when I posited that some of the creatures you were dealing with were archetypes-werewolves, trolls, and the like. Or rather, their uncontrolled talent had caused them to take on those aspects.” I nodded, but of course he couldn’t see me. “Well, I think we’re dealing with the same thing here, except on a far more powerful level. The energy that helped bring it into existence was enormous-not only from your friend under the bridge and his cohorts but from those rune stones. The fake Ifrit, that horrible creature, was bound by the invocation-limited in scope. Dangerous, but not any more so than any predator with near-human intelligence. But what came next was not a result of a focused spell-so it took on the aspect of legend, and I’m afraid it’s very powerful indeed.”
“But what is it?” I asked. “I can’t recall anything about tree-dwelling men with hypnotic powers.
“It wouldn’t have to be an exact replica of anything from mythology,” said Victor. “It could be an amalgam of legends-including more modern tales, works of fiction.”
“Like H. P. Lovecraft?” I scoffed. “You mean we’re lucky they didn’t call up Cthulhu, lord of the universe?”
“No,” Eli said. “But there are also ancient legends that got a modern makeover. Native American myths, for one.”
He turned back and pointed a finger at Victor. “A creature who lives in the forest. When it calls your name, you have to go with it, over the treetops. ‘Oh, my burning feet of fire!’ Do you recognize that?”
I hadn’t told Eli about my feet feeling like they were burning up. This was too close to the mark for my liking. I didn’t get Eli’s reference, but Victor did.
“Algernon Blackwood. The Wendigo,” he said.
“A Wendigo? Isn’t that a spirit that possesses people? Turns them into cannibals?”
“There are many diverse legends, from different tribes,” said Eli. “Blackwood took a little here, a little there. He also got ideas from his unconscious, I’m sure. And the unconscious certainly taps into that Jungian archetype pool. Haven’t you told me that sometimes when you’re playing at your best, the ideas aren’t so much yours as they are channeled from somewhere outside you? As if you’re tapping into something-much like accessing talent, by the way.”
“Well, sure, but that’s music. That’s a different thing.”
“Is it? Maybe, but whatever the mechanism, I think that’s what we’re seeing here.” He turned away again to continue his contemplation of the ocean, so his next words were muffled. “Who would have thought. A Wendigo.”
At least, that was what he’d obviously said, given the context. But he’d spoken softly, and the words were obscured. What I actually heard was “a wennigo.” Wennigo. When I go. Oh, my ever-loving God.
“When I go,” I said. “That’s what Sherwood said, out on the moor. It made no sense. ‘He must call me. When I go.’ She was talking about a Wendigo.”
“I don’t know,” said Victor. “That seems rather far-fetched, don’t you think?”
Eli walked back over to the big desk where Victor sat.
“No, I don’t think it is,” he said. “Not that much of a stretch at all. The Wendigo came out of the energy pool. Sherwood made her first appearance, after more than a year, at that same pool. And what did she say? ‘He must call me’? As Mason found out, when this creature calls, you have to go. Quite the coincidence, no?”
“And that raises an interesting point,” Victor said.
“Which is?”
“Your name,” Eli said. “How did it know your name, Mason?”
“Well, I certainly didn’t tell it. But what does my name have to do with anything? Do you think that’s what gave it power over me? That whole nonsense of knowledge of names giving another power over you is ancient superstition.” I paused. “Isn’t it?”
“I used to think so, but if you’ll think back on the events of the last year or so, I think you’ll find a lot of our former beliefs have been tested. And as to how it knew your name, and whether that knowledge bestows power-I have no idea, but I think it significant. Maybe it knows all names, just by virtue of what it is.”
“That’s a comforting thought.”
“Okay,” said Victor. “Assuming, hypothetically, that you’re right, where does that leave us? If it could really call Sherwood, bring her back from wherever, how does that help us? We can hardly go up and say, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Wendigo. I have a favor to ask.’ ”
“I don’t know. Maybe we could strike a bargain,” I said. Victor snorted.
“You don’t strike bargains with elemental archetypes.”
“Quite the contrary,” Eli said. “That’s exactly what one does. Think of the literature.”
“But we have nothing to trade.”
“Coercion, then,” I said. “Compel him in some way.
Could we trap him?”
“Doubtful,” Eli said. “It would take far more power to control something like that than any of us possess, singly or in concert. Now, if we had a magical enhancer, something like those rune stones, the ones that gave us so much trouble, that might be a different matter.”
Those stones, the petrified bones of long-dead creatures, were of immense magical potency. They’d come from another time and place, or dimension, or something-I’m not very good with the cosmology of such things. A black practitioner had discovered them and brought them back, and they’d caused all kinds of trouble. The stones acted as enhancers-with them, even an ordinary practitioner could achieve extraordinary things, and they’d been used in unpleasant ways. When it was all over, I confiscated the lot of them. They were too dangerous to be left lying around.