Four

THE MOUNTAIN KING

19

THE MOUNTAIN KING AWOKE WHEN HE SMELLED THE SUN COMING UP.

He had no idea what time it was. Time meant nothing to him anymore. For him the clock had stopped long ago, and all hours were the same, the present destroying the past, the future crowding the present. He only knew that the bitter, chilly wind had died to a whisper and the sun was rising over the eastern peaks, its golden light smelling like wild strawberries.

He'd been dressed in his long, tattered black coat and rubber-soled boots when he'd lain down to sleep on his mattress covered with rags and newspapers, and so he was dressed now, as he pulled himself up with the aid of his gnarled hickory walking stick. There were twigs in his long, unkempt, yellow-gray beard, and what was left of his angel-fine hair wisped on his liver-spotted scalp. Around him, in the remains of what had once been a structure with rough stone walls, was utter chaos: there was an untidy pile of empty food cans and soft-drink bottles, scattered newspapers and magazines, the remnants of an old washing machine and a discarded truck transmission, and a sphere of collected twine the size of a basketball. Dead leaves had drifted through gaping holes in the slate roof, and now crackled underfoot as the old man crossed the room. His cane tapped the dirt floor before him. He reached one of the structure's two windows -  neither of which held a pane of glass - and turned his face toward the sun.

A network of deep scars and gouges covered most of his face, from high forehead to sharp, jutting chin. His right eye was missing, and in its place was a brown, puckered hole. A thin gray film covered the left eye, and the little that he could see was veiled in mist. His right ear was a stub. Though he was emaciated and walked with his head bowed, there was still a fierceness in his face that made those who visited him, bringing cans of food, bottled drinks, or string for his collection, avert their eyes from him until he'd turned away. Those who knew him as the Mountain King came up here, to the peak of Briartop Mountain, to pose questions, to ask for advice, or simply to touch him. It was well known to the mountain people that the old man - who, as anyone would say, had lived on Briartop's peak for a hundred years or more - could accurately forecast the weather to the last drop of rain or flake of snow, look deeply into a person's mind and sort out any trouble that might be lying there, and give advice that might at first sound like the ravings of a lunatic - but much later would blossom into clarity. He could forecast births and deaths, boom crops or busts, even tell who might have designs on a neighbor's wife or husband. For all this he asked only canned food - peaches were his favorite - and soft drinks, preferably Buffalo Rock ginger ale. A gift of twine could buy a rambling weather forecast or a prediction of how the giver's life would end on a rain-slick road; one took such chances in asking questions of the Mountain King.

Under his coat he wore three layers of ragged old sweaters that had been left for him down on the rock where all his gifts were received. No one came up into the ruins. It was a haunted place, the locals knew, and only the Mountain King dared live there.

He let the sunlight play across his face to warm him, and then he drew several deep breaths of the morning air. Outside, the last traces of fog were being evaporated from around the tumbles of dark boulders and thin evergreens. After a while he made his way out of the stone structure and across the bleak, rocky earth toward the mountain's edge. It was still cold, and he began shivering. Around him were the forms of other stone structures, most of them fallen to ruin and barely recognizable except as heaps of lichen-green rocks. Some of the stones were as black as coals.

The Mountain King stopped; he leaned on his cane and with his other hand supported himself against a misshapen tree whose wood was in a state of petrification. Then he stared down almost two thousand feet at the massive house, on its island at the center of a black, calm lake.

For a long time he stood without moving, and an observer might have thought the old man had grown roots. He seemed to be waiting for something, his head cocked slightly to one side, his single eye with its fading sight aimed like a gunbarrel at the Lodge below.

"I know you," he said in a soft, reedy voice. "What's your next trick gonna be?"

He looked across the great expanse of Usherland, his gaze returning to the house. "Wind before rain," he said. "Stones grindin' stones. You've got a crack in your grin this mornin'. What's your next trick gonna be?"

The wind stirred around him, lifting dead leaves off the ground and snapping them in the air.

"Is it the boy?" the Mountain King whispered. "Or is it me you still want?"

He saw birds on the wing far below. Ducks or pigeons, he thought. He watched as they veered from their course as if caught in a sudden riptide of air. They smashed against one of the Lodge's walls and spun to the earth.

"I can wait, too," he said. But inwardly he knew he could not wait very much longer. His back was giving him trouble, his sight came and went, and sometimes his legs were so stiff, particularly after a hard rain, that he couldn't walk. He had lost track of time, but his body had marked the years with painful regularity. A sweep of frigid wind came from Usherland, and in it the Mountain King smelled change like charred wood. What would the change be? he asked himself. And how did the boy fit into it?

He couldn't see the answers. The eye in his mind was going blind, too. He turned away from the mountain's edge and walked slowly back to his refuge.

But before he reached it he stopped again, and brushed dead leaves aside with the tip of his cane.

There were animal tracks in the earth. They came out of the woods, he saw, and up to within fifteen feet of the house. Then they curved around the house and back into the forest again.

He was being watched, he knew. It gave him a feeling of satisfaction, but the sight of those monstrous tracks - sunken at least an inch into the ground - troubled him as well. He hadn't known the thing was out here last night, and worse still was the realization that it had never before come so close to where he lay sleeping.

Gathering saliva in his mouth, the Mountain King spat on a set of the tracks and ground it in with his foot. Then he walked slowly back to his shelter for a breakfast of canned peaches and ginger ale.