It was exactly like riding the lightning.
Laura took the stick from the backseat of the car. She left Mr. Town in the front seat of the Ford Explorer, climbed out of the car, and walked through the rain to Rock City. The ticket office was closed. The door to the gift shop was not locked and she walked through it, past the rock candy and the display of SEE ROCK CITY birdhouses, into the Eighth Wonder of the World.
Nobody challenged her, although she passed several men and women on the path, in the rain. Many of them looked faintly artificial; several of them were translucent. She walked across a swinging rope bridge. She passed the white deer gardens, and pushed herself through the Fat Man’s Squeeze, where the path ran between two rock walls.
And, in the end, she stepped over a chain, with a sign on it telling her that this part of the attraction was closed, she went into a cavern, and she saw a man sitting on a plastic chair, in front of a diorama of drunken gnomes. He was reading the Washington Post by the light of a small electric lantern. When he saw her he folded the paper and placed it beneath his chair. He stood up, a tall man with close-cropped orange hair in an expensive raincoat, and he gave her a small bow.
“I shall assume that Mister Town is dead,” he said. “Welcome, spear-carrier.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry about Mack,” she said. “Were you friends?”
“Not at all. He should have kept himself alive, if he wanted to keep his job. But you brought his stick.” He looked her up and down with eyes that glimmered like the orange embers of a dying fire. “I am afraid you have the advantage of me. They call me Mister World, here at the top of the hill.”
“I’m Shadow’s wife.”
“Of course. The lovely Laura,” he said. “I should have recognized you. He had several photographs of you up above his bed, in the cell that once we shared. And, if you don’t mind my saying so, you are looking lovelier than you have any right to look. Shouldn’t you be further along on the whole road-to-rot-and-ruin business by now?”
“I was,” she said simply. “But those women, in the farm, they gave me water from their well.”
An eyebrow raised. “Urd’s Well? Surely not.”
She pointed to herself. Her skin was pale, and her eye sockets were dark, but she was manifestly whole: if she was indeed a walking corpse, she was freshly dead.
“It won’t last,” said Mr. World. “The Norns gave you a little taste of the past. It will dissolve into the present soon enough, and then those pretty blue eyes will roll out of their sockets and ooze down those pretty cheeks, which will, by then, of course, no longer be so pretty. By the way, you have my stick. Can I have it, please?”
He pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes, took a cigarette, lit it with a disposable black Bic.
She said, “Can I have one of those?”
“Sure. I’ll give you a cigarette if you give me my stick.”
“If you want it, it
’s worth more than just a cigarette.”
He said nothing.
She said, “I want answers. I want to know things.”
He lit a cigarette and passed it to her. She took it and inhaled. Then she blinked. “I can almost taste this one,” she said. “I think maybe I can.” She smiled. “Mm. Nicotine.”
“Yes,” he said. “Why did you go to the women in the farmhouse?”
“Shadow told me to go to them,” she said. “He said to ask them for water.”
“I wonder if he knew what it would do. Probably not. Still, that’s the good thing about having him dead on his tree. I know where he is at all times, now. He’s off the board.”
“You set up my husband,” she said. “You set him up all the way, you people. He has a good heart, you know that?”
“Yes,” said Mr. World. “I know. When this is all done with, I guess I’ll sharpen a stick of mistletoe and go down to the ash tree, and ram it through his eye. Now. My stick, please.”
“Why do you want it?”
“It’s a souvenir of this whole sorry mess,” said Mr. World. “Don’t worry, it’s not mistletoe.” He flashed a grin. “It symbolizes a spear, and in this sorry world, the symbol is the thing.”
The noises from outside grew louder.
“Which side are you on?” she asked.