Sunshaker's War by Tom Deitz Page A

runoff from both the fields and the hills above them. She’d had to set the wipers on full most of the way, and had spent a lot of time scrunched up close behind the steering wheel squinting through the windshield at the near-horizontal sheets. Twice, in spite of low speeds, they had aquaplaned. They’d passed two cars off the road, too, but wreckers and the Georgia State Patrol were already in attendance. The lights were out in the Ignorance Creek community, though, and also in Fairplay and East Damascus (there was no West)—legacy, probably, of blown transformers.
    Liz eased the car along the muddy road, trying to stay in the high spots where a trace of gravel yet remained. Fortunately the road was not as worn as many, mostly because only the Sullivans or their visitors used it, except for the paperboy on weekends, and the small congregation of the Sullivan Cove Church of God on Sunday morning.
    They passed David’s house on the left, the ruins of Uncle Dade’s cabin a half mile further on. David strained his eyes in the darkness, trying to make out the trailer the old man had slipped in behind it. It was too bad, though, that his favorite uncle had been reduced to that in his old age. Oh, he’d heard the excuses: too much trouble to fix the house, and he planned to leave it to David anyway, so he’d rather let David build the kind of place he wanted than stick him with something he might not like. But that didn’t make him feel any better when it was his fault the place was trashed to start with. It also reminded him of the inevitability of Uncle Dale’s death, and that thought chilled him.
    A short way further on forest closed briefly in, and then they reached the turnaround at B.A. Beach. The rain had stopped again, but they did not get out to make their way across the field of soggy broom sedge and through the line of trees to their usual lakefront makeout site. Instead, Liz turned the car around so it was pointed back the way they had come. David reached into the glovebox and pushed the button that popped the hatch, and they climbed into the long carpeted platform behind the seats. Too short to stretch out in, really, the upholstered cylindrical cushion Liz stored there made a good support for their heads. Feet propped on the high trunk sill, they looked out on the night. David shivered when he thought about the image they must project: rather like a snake’s head agape, with them reclining in its jaws.
    They did not look at each other, simply twined their fingers and relaxed into each other’s company.
    “So what do you think’s going on?” Liz asked at last.
    “Oh, Lord,” David began, “I don’t know where to start.”
    “How ’bout with the rain? This much can’t be natural.”
    David shrugged. “Well, it has to be something to do with the war in Faerie. Remember Ailill? Ailill Windmaster they called him, ’cause he was born in a storm and therefore had a natural affinity for ’em. He liked to make ’em, too, according to Nuada. Would sense ’em forming in Tir-Nan-Og, help ’em along, and then send ’em through the World Walls to bother us.”
    “Right—but he’s out of the picture now.”
    “Yeah,” David agreed. “But remember last fall when the Sidhe were out to get Alec and we were all holed up at Uncle Dale’s? They couldn’t actually attack the house, so they juiced up the weather and brought storms down on us—worse than these, actually. These have just been goin’ on longer.”
    “So you think this is Sidhe doing?”
    “I know it is! It’s the war in Faerie. Lugh said it would happen and it has: it’s come to Tir-Nan-Og, and the results are resonating even here. And remember what Calvin told us about what Uki said? That the storm at Dale’s was felt even in Galunlati? It’s the same thing here: storms in Faerie leaking through the World Walls to clobber us.”
    Liz shuddered and drew closer to David, resting her head against his shoulder and stroking his bare thigh