Through The Rift (as told by Scotty) - John Stormm (bill gates best books .TXT) 📗

at us being there and just watched us without running away.

     “When you see the wildlife like this,” Stormm explained quietly, “make no abrupt or sudden moves that can be taken for aggression. If you just stand still quietly, you can watch to your heart’s content and leave them the option to leave you in peace.”

      I noticed by the twitching of their big ears that the deer heard us and were aware of our presence. They didn’t seem concerned, so neither was I. Besides, Jungle Jim here had a sword. I found that it was not always possible to stop what I was doing and stand stock still when I had chosen to step off the trail to relieve me self. There I was, willie in hand and minding my own business when I saw the damnedest collection of animals ever to wear a single skin. There was no abruptly stopping anything as this creature had found me in the bushes. I stared and it stared right back at me. It had a ring striped tail like a raccoon and the body of a largish long haired cat, dusky black with white and tan streaks. The ears and yellow slitted eyes were more like a cat’s, but the face and nose were coloured and pointed like a red fox. The paws were more like the hands of a raccoon too.

     “You might be wanting to draw that sword of yours now,” I said quietly, “and come and take a look at this bozo.”

     He placed one hand up to his right shoulder and peered over the bushes. The critter gave him a casual glance and looked back at me and it just sort of sniffed and strolled off on its way as if it was satisfied it had checked me out.

     “Those are sort of common here,” he commented. “I’ve always referred to them as Cheshire Cats, though I believe they might either be some kind of sub-species of raccoon or a pooka.”

     “Where the hell is here?” I asked.

     “No longer in the park you remember,” he said with no further comment.

     The next thing we come to a series of broad meadows bordering wetland bogs. Frogs singing and herons fishing and a beaver dam. Stormm was hacking at the reeds among the cattails with his short sword and peeling the stalks down to their white piths and putting the sections in his cottage cheese container with the Italian dressing as a treat for later. We had stopped to enjoy the cold bottled water and the nectarines he had brought when it occurred to me that we should be seeing the golf course by now or the water treatment plant or the gravel access road to either of those but the trail continued on into the next portion of pine woods with a few oaks interspersed. Here we saw puffball mushrooms the size of hassocks. I’ve seen puffballs in these woods before but never so big. But it‘s been hot and humid for most of this summer and I guess such growth can be expected.

     Coming out of the piney woods on the other side, I about fell on my face in shock. Stretched out before us was the Lake Ontario. A great , fresh water lake so big you just can’t see all the way across it. By rights, we should have crossed Lakeshore Blvd before we come to the parking lot and THEN the lake but we had walked all the way through the woods and not a four lane highway insight anywhere. Or even a single lane gravel road for that matter. I’ve lived over 15 years in Irondequoit and I know this area well. There is no possible way to come out of those woods in any direction without crossing a road. Also there was nobody at the beach. The hottest day of the year and not a soul to be seen, not even the locally famous new swimming area the city proposed this year. It doesn’t look as sandy as usual but more small smooth pebbles than sand. Not a house or a boat of any kind to be seen anywhere. A herd of deer gathered at the water further up the beach. I was flabbergasted but Stormy had it in mind to peel off his pack and splash around in the waist deep water. The water was crystal clear and in the seventies. Like I said, it was HOT so I remembered who I was with and I bounded into the lake and went swimming too when he reminded me it might not be a good idea.



     “Just wade and cool off in the shallows,” he said, glancing nervously out into the distance. “The marine life around here can get a bit extreme.”

     I noticed that even though he had shrugged off his pack and kit, the sword was still slung in its nylon scabbard and baldric over his right shoulder. The stainless utilitarian blade was in no danger of rusting, but the memories of my friend squaring off against several local thugs in his old job as a store manager came flooding back to me. I remember it well because I remember the glint in his eye and the lopsided grin on his face as if he thought the whole thing might be a joke that only he knew the punch line to. He didn’t look nearly so smug now as the shadow of worry crossed his features. I waded back to the shallower waters in his vicinity and we lay back in the water watched the occasional puffy cumulus cloud drift by. It was a glorious day.

     We watched what appeared to be a lone turkey vulture circling lazily in the afternoon sky.

     “Bloody big bird, that,” I mused aloud. “I wonder if it’s circling because it thinks it might have found some carrion.”

     “I don’t think it’s a carrion eater,” Stormy said conversationally.

     “Of course it is, lad,” I objected. “It’s a vulture and that’s what they do.”

     “It’s bigger than you think,” he replied. “Watch.”

     I saw what I thought was a turkey vulture soaring high above. They are big birds but this one soared right into one of those big puffy clouds and I realized how high up that had to be and by proportion how big that bloody bird had to be to appear that size. I dare say it had to be AT LEAST big enough to carry off a full grown man. Those clouds had to be thousands of feet up. At least the better part of a mile and I thought it was just a turkey vulture circling a couple hundred feet off the ground.

     “That ain’t no bloody Cessna, is it?” I asked.

     “No, I think it’s a rok,” Stormy replied, watching the bird drifting in and out of the cloud. “The thunderbirds of Native American lore. They still exist here. I’m not sure if Natives came here and seen them or the birds, themselves crossed over into our world at some point in time and were seen. As we have often discussed, even myths and outright lies have to have at least some basis in reality to carry any weight for any length of time. That’s why I warned you not to go out too far in these waters.”

     “Sea serpents?” I asked, sitting up quickly.

     “Exactly,” he replied scanning the horizon again.

     “You know, we’ll burn if we stay too long out here in the sun,” I pointed out.

     “How about we retire to the shade of the trees and entertain ourselves with a little knife throwing?” he said, standing and wading to shore. “Later, we’ll see what we can do about dinner.”

      Under the trees, Stormm picks up a large piece of driftwood and pulls a marker out of his kit and draws a few targets on its surface and props it up. Pacing off about ten to fifteen feet he draws two leaf shaped throwing blades out of his pack and instructs me in their use. The more I relax into the exercise of throwing and flipping the blade, the more often it sticks. I can see why he finds this so relaxing. On the average, he seems to peg the mark four out of five times.

     “As often as you do this,” I said, playfully, “I would have thought you would be better at it.”

     “I was taught this a bit differently from how I taught you,” he said, turning his back on the targets. “I was taught to defend my weakest points. When you are ready, say: Stick ‘em up.”

     “Stick - “ I say, and he whirls and pegs the target in its middle. Sinking the knife into the wood up to the haft.

     I thought you’d have to be mad to pick a fight with this man head on, but it is sheer suicide to try and take him from behind too. I’m glad he’s my tour guide here today. We threw targets for a little while longer until my arm wearied and I hunted the beach for smoothed pebbles to make into a fine set of rune stones. Stormm had promised to carve them in Celtic runes for me when we got back to his apartment. Drawing his sword, Stormy lopped a sapling and shaved it smooth took out a piece of leather thong and lashed the knife onto the pole for a fine spear.

     I can’t help but let my Celtic pride get stirred as I watch my friend at work. If I squint my eyes just a little, his baggy black shorts with the silver Celtic Cross buckle looks like a warrior’s kilt. The designs and glyphs on his powerful arms and deep, hairless chest, along with the sandals, shouldered sword with the long flowing hair with the raven’s feathers intertwined complete the picture of a Celtic aristocrat about two thousand years ago. Spear in hand, he then spent about twenty minutes exploring an inlet to one of the ponds when he speared a good sized trout which he cleaned on the spot and left the head and guts on a flat rock for an offering. He showed me how to pick dry wood and twigs from the lower dead branches to make a smokeless fire and rigged up a rotisserie of green branches to cook the tastiest fish I have ever eaten in my life. The cattail piths made a fine salad to go with this that sort of tasted like cucumbers with a peppery aftertaste. I can’t help but notice that Stormy is very much at home in these woods.

     “You’ve done this before,” I comment.

     “Many times, with friends and family,” he said, with his eyes going distant as though he could see them now. “There are some sweet bramble berries up on that ridge behind us for desert if you like.”

     “If I died and went to heaven,” I muse, “it would be like this.”

     “Better,” he said. “The bramble berries there don’t have any thorns.”

     He says these things like he knows, and I’m long past looking for explanations at this point. By normal physics we have to be a hundred miles from where we entered the woods to be in any spot along this lake even half so remote. Even the bloody deer don’t look like the whitetail variety common to this part of New York State. We clean up our