Earl couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was like these guys took all this bullshit seriously. What the fuck was the mob in business for if it is wasn’t to turn a profit?
“So here’s the deal,” Louie said. “If Valenti’s alone, we take him—me and Fingers. We’re not going to play this pretty anymore. This time we’re going in and we’re going to blow the fuck out of him. If your old lady’s around, we’ll let you talk her out, but just long enough to sign over the bread. After that, she’s got to go. We’re not leaving anything of Valenti’s standing. Not him, not his house, not his women, nothing. capito?”
“That’s fine by me,” Earl said. And it was. The wops could take turns blowing the hell out of each other for all he cared, just so long as he got to walk away with his bread. “Are we going now?”
“We’re going to need one or two more things,” Louie said. “How long’ll it take you to run us down a rocket launcher?”
Earl blinked. “Hey, come on. What’re you—”
“You don’t understand, do you?” Louie said. “These fuckers killed my old man, not some asshole I never heard of, but my old man. I want Valenti and Papale in little pieces. I want to drop their ears on the old man’s coffin when it gets lowered into the ground, you understand?”
“Right. A rocket launcher. That’s gonna cost.”
“Money’s no problem. Fingers, give the man some bread.”
Fingers pulled out a billfold filled with U.S. currency and started counting out hundred dollar bills into Earl’s hand.
“That’s enough,” Earl said when he was holding twenty of them. “If I can’t get it for this, it can’t be got. You want anything else?”
Louie shaped a fist with his right hand and tapped it against his left breast. “Everything else I need’s right in here,” he said.
Earl looked into Louie’s eyes and saw something in them that he found in his own reflection sometimes. It was a piece of madness—not fruit loops, but the kind that could pass for sane, until you check out the eyes. It leapt like a spark from Louie to Earl, and Earl grinned.
“I guess you’re right,” he told Louie.
Fingers Maita stepped back and regarded the pair with misgivings. There was something in the air and he didn’t like it. He knew that neither man cared for the other, but right now it was as though they were brothers. He’d known Louie for a long time, and knew him to get like this once in a while. He was hard to hold down, then. He just went crazy until he levelled whatever was standing in his way. Fingers didn’t give a shit about that. Louie was the boss and what he wanted done got done, but this way of doing it just made things too risky.
The air in the room almost crackled with whatever was passing between the two men. Then just before it broke off, Fingers thought he heard something, a sound like a flute coming from a long way off, but as soon as he started to listen to it, the vague music faded and he wasn’t sure if he’d actually heard it or imagined it. As soon as it was gone, whatever it was that had linked his boss to the Canadian was gone as well. We’re getting into some weird shit here, he thought.
“Give me a couple of hours,” Earl said. “I’ll be back so we can still make it out there before it gets completely dark.”
Louie looked at his watch. “If you’re not back by seven-fifteen, we’re going on without you.”
Not with the honeypot that was gonna bankroll him lying there right in the line of fire, they weren’t. “I’ll be back in time,” Earl said and headed out the door.
Jesus, Howie, he thought as he was waiting for the elevator. Too bad you’re missing out on this. It’s gonna be some party. He grinned. Anything’d be a party compared to the car trunk that he’d shoved Howie’s corpse into, though he wouldn’t mind being there to see the face of the dude who finally opened his trunk when the smell got to be too strong and he found himself staring face to face with Howie Peale and his amazing maggot show.
The elevator arrived with a ping and Earl got in, turning his thoughts to the business at hand. Who the fuck did he know that could come up with a rocket launcher in the next hour or so? By the time he was out on the street, he had a destination in mind. He’d just check out the Ottawa chapter of the Devil’s Dragon biker gang. If those suckers didn’t have it, it probably hadn’t been made yet. At least not when it came to handheld weapons. Christ, he’d even seen a full-size cannon out there one time.
5
The top of Wolding Hill lifted a flat granite face from its wooded shoulders. It was a solid expanse of rock, with little vegetation except for an old pine growing out of a fat crevice that time and the elements had filled with wind-gathered dirt. The pine grew in one corner of the summit and had shed a carpet of browned needles that needed sweeping.
Using cedar boughs, Ali and the wild girl cleared the needles away from the area they were using. Throughout the afternoon, they lugged fuel for the bonfire up to the summit, laying it down on the rock. By the time they were finished, they had a tangle of wind-fallen branches, twigs and most of the bones from the skeleton of a deer, which Mally had found, all piled up in a circle five feet across and almost four feet high at the tip of its cone.
Ali sat and looked at it now, poking at the wood with the metal-shod point of her walking stick. She still wasn’t sure that what she was doing was right; she wasn’t even sure exactly what she was supposed to do here. All she knew was that she had to see it through.
She stared at the antler that lay at the very top of the pile. This one was different from the small antlers that had been with the deer skeleton. It was carved with designs and hung with beads and feathers. “They were Old Hornie’s once,” Mally had informed her. The twin to the one in front of Ali should be in her mother’s hands by now, she thought. She wasn’t really sure why she’d sent it along with Mally.
She heard a sound, someone scrabbling up the last bit of bare rock, and turned, almost expecting it to be her mother or Tony, but it was just Mally returning from having delivered Ali’s message. She had a paper bag in one hand, a leather water sack slung over her shoulder.
“’Lo, Ali. Come see what I found.” She presented Ali with the bag, which, when Ali opened it, proved to hold sandwiches. Ali’s stomach grumbled as she smelled them.
“Where did you ‘find’ them?” she asked.
“At Lewis’s cabin.”
Ali started to tell the wild girl that just taking things wasn’t right, but she was too hungry to offer the argument. Thank you, Lewis, she thought as she took the top sandwich out. “What did my mom say?” she asked around a mouthful of bread, sliced hardboiled eggs, cheese and watercress.
“Well, she started out saying no,” Mally replied, taking the other sandwich, “but she changed her mind.”
“What made her change her mind?”
Mally shrugged. “Don’t really know. I think it’s partly because she knows you have to do this, and partly because they’re expecting their own trouble down there and they want to keep you out of it.”
Ali stopped chewing. Trouble. That meant either her father, or the men that were after Tony, or maybe both. She wondered how much Tony had told her mother. He had to have told her about the stag at least, and something about what Ali was doing up here, but what about the men who were after Tony? Had he told her about them and why they were after him?
Probably not. She couldn’t see her mother accepting that very readily. It was too bad, though. Ali had been having hopes of maybe getting the two of them together when this was all over. But they were probably too dense to know that they’d make a good couple, and knowing her mother, once she did find out about Tony’s past, all bets would be off.
“They both had guns,” Mally said.
“They did? Both of them?”
Mally nodded. “Small ones.” She mimicked a pistol with her hand. “And one that was neither small, nor big like a rifle.”
Considering Tony’s background, Ali thought, that could be just about anything. “You sure my mom had one?”
she asked again. She just couldn’t believe it.
“Oh, yes,” Mally said. “I saw it, didn’t I?”
Way-to-go, Tony. Turn my mother into a moll. But just remember—she’s not Sybil Danning. Not by a long shot. And those were just movies, not the real thing. Ali wasn’t sure if the idea that her mother had a gun comforted her or not. It was good to know that she’d be able to protect herself, but Ali liked her mother the way she was. She needed to assert herself a little more, especially around men, but this?
Ali sighed and took another bite of her sandwich. What a weird move this had turned out to be. We have to put down some roots, her mother had said. Find a place we can really call our own. But the peace and quiet they’d both been hoping for hadn’t appeared. Ali thought about how their lives had turned topsy-turvy in the past few weeks. She didn’t regret it—not exactly. Not when you weighed Tony and Mally and the stag—especially the way the mystery made her feel—not when you weighed not ever having known them against the trouble that had come with them.
“Did you have enough?” Mally asked.
Ali looked down and realized that she’d devoured her sandwich. “I guess so,” she said with a rueful smile. “I’m not being very good company, am I?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been moody—brooding all day.”
Mally shrugged. “Talking’s not everything, Ali. Sometimes just being together’s enough. Didn’t the mystery teach you that yet?”
“I’m not very good at lessons, I guess.” Ali licked a crumb off her finger. “Are you sure my mom understood why I couldn’t come home?”
“No. But I think she trusts you to know your own heart.”
“That’d be the day,” Ali said, but she knew she wasn’t being fair. Her mother was pretty good when it came to disciplining her, but she gave Ali a lot of slack. Ali found that she didn’t get into a lot of the messes that other kids did simply because she knew her mother trusted her not to and Ali didn’t want to blow that trust. “I hope they’ll be okay,” she added.
“You can’t worry about them,” Mally said. “You’ve got to think about Old Hornie now.”
Ali shot a glance at the unlit bonfire. “When do we start—you know, lighting the fire and everything?”
“When we hear Tommy’s pipes—that’d be best.”
Ali nodded. She looked away to the west. The sun was lowering steadily, turning into a deep orange ball as it neared the horizon. She hadn’t brought her watch, but by the way the shadows were lengthening down below them in the forest, she didn’t think it’d be too long until nightfall. Then they’d hear Tommy’s pipes and light the fire and she’d call the mystery to her….
Thinking about the piping reminded her of last night and where Mally and the stag had taken her. That place was almost like the music itself—very real, very here and now, but at the same time, unearthly, otherworldly, fey. She loved the sound of that old word. Fey. That’s what people would say if she’d lived back then and they saw her riding the stag with a horned wild girl for a companion. “That Ali,” they’d say to each other. “She’s so fey.” Either that or they’d burn her as a witch.
Ali looked at the heap of wood and bones in front of them and shivered. She turned to Mally.
“What about the Hunt?” she asked. She’d already told the wild girl about having seen them outside her window last night.
“Don’t think of them,” Mally said, “or you might call them to us. But if they do come—don’t listen to them. Everything they tell you will be a lie. Logical, oh, yes, and persuasive, but a lie nevertheless.”
“I’m nervous.”
Mally smiled. “Don’t be. You rode on his back last night, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes. But this is different.”
“Yes,” Mally said softly. “It will be different.” She studied Ali for a moment. “Try to be a little merry,” she added.
“I’m having enough trouble keeping my knees from knocking together, let alone trying to wear a smile.”
“But merry can mean ‘looking for’ as well as ‘happy,’ you know. Try to be a little of both—keep a balance and you won’t do so badly. The merry poet searches for her muse, but she does so happily. Why don’t you do the same?”
“I’m not searching for a muse,” Ali said. “I’m calling the stag to me.”
“Some people might say that’s the same thing.”
Ali frowned and looked away, first to the antler on top of the unlit bonfire, bedecked with its feathers and beads, then westward, to where the sun was just peeking above the horizon now.
“I just want to talk to him,” she said. “I want to ask him if he wants to be free—that’s all, Mally. I’m not looking for anything for myself.”
Mally nodded. “I know. But you have to do something for yourself at the same time, or it’s all in vain.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know,” Mally replied. “But it doesn’t matter. It’ll happen just the same.”
“You know more than you’re telling me, don’t you? What’s in this for you, Mally?”
The wild girl shrugged. “I don’t really know more,” she said. “I don’t know what’s in it for me, or you, or even Old Hornie. I just know that some things must be done—the knowing just comes to me. I think it’s because I’m a secret, that’s why I know things, but I couldn’t explain why I know them.”
“You’re the reason Lewis’s son left, aren’t you?” Ali guessed. “And Lily’s son, and the others, too. You talked to them and showed them what lay beyond the village and these woods, and once they saw it, they just had to go. Isn’t that so?”
“I talked to them. But I always said the village needed more people in it, not less. I didn’t make them go.”
“You wouldn’t have to.” Ali felt she was close to something now, but she wasn’t sure what. It wasn’t simply a matter of figuring Mally out—who she was and why she did what she did—but something more.
“You gave Lewis the books,” she went on. “Did you talk to Ackerly Perkin as well?”
Mally didn’t answer.
“Are we freeing the mystery,” Ali asked, “or binding me to it?”
Mally lifted her gaze until her cat’s eyes studied Ali. “It’s getting near the time,” she said. “Best light the bone-fire now.”
Ali didn’t say anything for a long moment. Answer me! she wanted to shout. She wanted to grab Mally and shake the truth out of her, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. There was only one way to find out, and that was to see this thing through to its end. God, she thought as she pulled a pack of matches out of her jeans. I hope I don’t regret this.
* * *
Lewis smiled when he saw that the bag of sandwiches and the water sack were gone. He’d seen the two girls heading for Wold Hill and knew something was up. He also knew that they’d be hungry, and while Mally would never ask for something, she wouldn’t find it at all hard to just ‘find’ the provisions and take them along.
I wish I knew what you were up to, he thought as he looked toward the hill now. The twilight was deepening. He stood, listening to the quiet, enjoying it. For a few minutes all the questions and riddles were held at bay by the simple beauty of the moment, then he heard a scuffle of feet on the path running by his house.
He looked over to see Gaffa bound by, Tommy following the dog at a slower pace, his pipes in hand. This wouldn’t be a gather-up night, Lewis thought, but all the same he left his cabin behind and followed Tommy Duffin up the path to the old stone. He had a feeling that something was in the air tonight. He just didn’t know what, and he certainly didn’t intend to miss out on it.
* * *
The kindling caught quickly and soon the flames were licking the bark of the larger fuel. One match, Ali thought. Not bad. And I’ve never even been a Girl Guide. The sun dropped below the horizon as she watched the fire take hold. Soon it gave off more light than the graying sky. She glanced at Mally. The flickering ligh
t made shadows play across the wild girl’s features. Then Ali’s heart gave a little thumping lift as the sound of Tommy’s pipes drifted up the hill.
“Call him to you now,” Mally said softly.
Ali nodded slowly. “How?” she asked.
“Use the fire that burns inside you.”
I don’t have a fire inside, Ali wanted to say. All I’ve got is butterflies. But the sound of the music against the crackle of the bonfire woke something inside her and she thought that must be it. She concentrated on that feeling. Looking into the bonfire, mesmerized by the dancing flames, she tried to call the mystery to her.
“Use his name,” Mally said.
“I don’t know his name.”
“Give him one then, one that you will know him by.”
Old Hornie, Ali thought, then shook her head. No, that was Mally’s name for him. Just like Lewis called him the Green Man. What did she think of him as? Just a mystery. A small smile tugged at her lips. Maybe as Bambi’s father?
“Can you feel the night?” Mally asked. “It’s listening. Call him.”
Ali nodded. But I don’t have a name, she thought. She had to back away from the fire a little as the flames continued to rise. People are going to see this for miles, she thought. What if they send in forest fire fighters? It was a beacon. To call the mystery, yes, but if he were real, then mightn’t there be a whole realm of otherworldly denizens that it could call? Victorian elves and gnomes came to mind. Illustrations from dozens of children’s books. Faeries and trolls and everything in between. She thought of the Hunt that had been watching her window last night, the pack of hounds that chased the stag. She shivered and put the image of them away.
Instead she tried to think of a name for the mystery. What came to mind was a chapter from an old friend of a book, The Wind in the Willows. Grahame’s Rat and Mole and especially Badger all walked through her thoughts. She’d never been as big on Toad as most people. It was the quiet creatures she’d loved the best, the descriptions of quiet times. Picnics and Yule nights and rowboats on the river….
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