Blind God's bluff

thickness out of me, hurled it out like vomit, and got away with only cuts and scrapes.

But it was still time to stop playing tag, before I screwed up worse. I turned and raced back the way I’d come, toward the two figures floating together in the cloudy green water. With its arms just hanging, my physical body looked drowned and dead. A’marie had her legs wrapped around it in an awkward piggyback way. It kept the two of them from drifting apart and still left her hands free to play. To make music to feed the shark’s anger. To urge it to chase me faster than it had ever swum before, and never stop until it ripped me apart.

I tried to lead it in close. When my spirit body vanished from in front of it, I wanted it to see the physical me just a few yards farther on, and, crazy with rage, not notice any difference between that and what it had just been chasing.

It worked. I jumped back into my flesh and bones, and damn, the shark was close, and it sure as hell kept coming. I pictured the Thunderbird and threw up a new wall, giving it everything I had.

When the fire shark crashed into it, it rocked my head back like a sock on the jaw. But it also knocked the creature out, and it drifted toward the bottom. Blood floated up from its jaws. We were deep enough that it looked brown.

A’marie and I hugged for about a second. Until we each felt how much it hurt.

Her skin was red and blistered, like from the world’s worst sunburn. Mine was the same, with what looked like third-degree burns on my hands. I also had my own blood floating up from the cuts that had opened in my physical body when the shark bit the ghostly one.

“Paging Dr. Red,” I said.

I had to give props to Timon’s teaching. Red filled me up instantly, although the pain of my injuries dulled the feeling of joyful vitality a little. Or maybe it was the fact that I’d already burned through a lot of magic.

Fortunately, I still had some left. I took A’marie’s hand in both of mine and sent power pulsing into her in time with my heartbeat. In some places, the angry redness simply faded. In others, blisters flaked away and uncovered healthy new skin beneath.

I gave myself the same treatment. It killed most of the pain and stopped the bleeding. I shrunk Red back down till he blended in with rest of me.

A’marie looked me over. “Are you all right now?” she asked.

“Yes, except that this water is still too hot. Let’s move.”

As we did, she asked, “Do you think we killed the shark?”

“I hope not. Murk might not like it if we did.”

She grunted, and then giggled.

“What?”

“We were in hot water.”

I snorted. “Is that the kind of joke that Old People think is funny?”

“You have no sense of humor. That was hilarious.” And I guessed she thought so, because she kept chortling off and on, right until the moment when the sight of Murk’s den knocked it out of her.

I was just as amazed as she was. Mel Fisher spent years and tons of investor money looking for wreck sites in the waters off Florida. Would-be Mel Fishers still do it today. Yet here, within spitting distance of the Tampa shore, were several old barnacle-covered ships heaped like firewood or a kid’s blocks. Two were Spanish galleons, and, for all I knew, full of gold doubloons. That would fit with a wannabe lord’s pride and sense of style.

“Hey, Murk!” I yelled. “Are you in there?”

He was. He flowed out from under the pile like an ordinary octopus coming out of a hole in the rocks. I caught myself holding my breath, because, even though he was fast, it took a while for all of him to slide into view. I’d imagined him as a dinosaur-sized animal, but I’m not sure even dinosaurs really grew that big. His tentacles were like rubber telephone poles. His black, glaring eyes were the size of truck tires.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m sorry, but we had to beat up on the hammerhead to get to you. I hope it’ll be okay. This is A’marie, and I’m Billy.”

“I know who you are,” the kraken said. Before, his laughter had reminded me of a muted trombone. Now his voice was like a foghorn. “Timon’s new champion.”

“Kinda sorta,” I said. “That’s what we’re here to talk to you about.”

“You shouldn’t have invaded my privacy.” The giant tentacles reached for A’marie and me. She let out a yelp.

I felt like yelping, too. But I was also irritated, and that helped me find the mojo to make a wall big and strong enough to bump the lead tentacles back.

“Screw you, too,” I said. “In the first place, you Old People are way too grabby. In the second, what’s the big deal about your privacy? It’s not like you’re a hermit. You talk to people. Hell, you mentioned talking to the Twin Helens, whoever they are, when I saw you before.”

“I communicate with whom I choose, in the manner I prefer.”

“Well, aren’t you special. So how about choosing us, in the manner of here and now? You might like what you hear.”

“But I know I can solve my problems by eating you.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Either way, I’ll still be just as tasty in ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Please,” said A’marie to Murk. “I brought him to you because everyone says you’re wise and honorable.”

“Talk,” growled Murk, “and, for your own sake, make it good.”

A’marie and I laid it out for him. And when we finished, I said, “So that’s the plan. We came to you first because we don’t have much time, and, like she said, everybody respects you. If you get onboard, others will, too.”

Tentacles waving-some still too close to A’marie and me for comfort-Murk floated and thought for a few seconds. Then he said, “You’re either very brave or a very great fool.”

I shrugged. “Can’t I be both?”

“Do you know why Timon inspires such fear?”

“I told you, he gave me a taste of what he can do.”

“That’s only part of it. Most beings die because of things that happen here in the waking world. We can suffer and find ourselves inconvenienced in a dream, but it can only kill us if magic is involved.”

“Okay, but so what?”

“By all accounts, Timon is the opposite. It would take sorcery to kill him in the waking world, and no one knows the spell. Whereas in the dream realm, he holds every advantage.”

“That’s interesting, but I don’t want to kill him anyway. I just want to… deal with him.”

“I’m trying to warn you just what a powerful, uncanny creature he really is. I’ve seldom met his like, and I’m old enough to remember when your kind first dared to sail beyond sight of land.”

“I get it. He’s a badass. But somebody isn’t afraid to mess with him. Whoever sicced the brownwings on him.”

“A fellow lord, who was able to act anonymously, and who will soon go home to some fortified place beyond Timon’s reach in both the waking and dreaming worlds.”

“I thought you Old People were supposed to be gamblers. How come you won’t take a chance when there’s something really worth winning?”

“For one thing, you haven’t convinced me you’re worth betting on.”

“Even working together,” said A’marie, “Leticia and Gimble couldn’t take him out of the game.”

“I also escaped from a trap the Pharaoh set for me,” I said. The damn bubbles were still tickling my mouth. “And, like I said, I slapped your watchdog around. Plus, I’m smart enough to know you vassals were tipped off that brownwings were going to attack Timon. It’s just that nobody warned him.”

Murk hesitated. “How could you know that?”

“If you didn’t know he was going to get hurt, why would you all make an agreement that nobody would stand in for him?”

“Perhaps we made it afterward.”

I shook my head. “I know you guys are all supernatural and everything, but even if somebody saw him get his eyes popped, there just wasn’t time for the word to go around and everybody to palaver before he called you up out of the water. But don’t worry. I didn’t tell him you all let him walk into an ambush, and as far as I know, he hasn’t