Dreams Underfoot

by Charles de Lint

  “It’s just that—”

  “Look,” he said, turning to Amy, “she seems nice, that’s all. I think maybe we started out on the wrong foot, but I’m trying to fix that. For now, I just want to be her friend. If something else comes up later, okay. But I want to take it as it comes. Slowly. Is that so wrong?”

  Amy shook her head. And then it struck her. For the first time that they weren’t on stage together or working out an arrangement, Matt actually seemed to focus on her. To listen to what she was saying and answer honestly. Protective walls maybe were not completely down, but there was a little breach in them.

  “I think she loves you,” Amy said.

  Matt sighed. “It’s kind of early for that, don’t you think? I think it’s more a kind of infatuation. She’ll probably grow out of it just as fast as she fell into it.”

  “I don’t know about that. Seems to me that if you’re going to be at all fair, you’d be just a little bit more—”

  “Don’t talk to me about responsibility,” Matt said, breaking in. “Just because someone falls in love with you, it doesn’t mean you owe them anything. I’ve got no control over how other people feel about me—”

  That’s where you’re wrong, Amy thought. If you’d just act more human, more like this…

  “—and I’m sure not going to run my life by their feelings and schedules. I’m not trying to sound self-centered, I’m just trying to…I don’t know. Protect my privacy.”

  “But if you don’t give a little, how will you ever know what you might be missing?”

  “Giving too much, too fast—that just leaves you open to being hurt.”

  “But—”

  “Oh, shit,” Matt said, glancing at his watch. “I’ve got another set to do.” He pushed away from the Bronco. “Look, I’m sorry if I don’t measure up to how people want me to be, but this is just the way I am.”

  Why didn’t you open yourself up even this much while we were going out together? Amy wanted to ask. But all she did was nod and say, “I know.”

  “Are you coming in?”

  She shook her head. “Not right away.”

  “Well, I’ve got—”

  “I know.” She waved him off. “Break a leg or whatever.”

  Once he’d gone inside, he moved away from the Bronco and crossed the parking lot, gravel crunching underfoot until she reached the grass verge. She followed it around to the lawn by the side of the building and down to the lakefront. There she stood listening to the vague sound of Matt’s voice and guitar as it carried through an open window. She looked at all the boats clustered around the pier. A splash drew her attention to the far end of the wooden walkway where a figure sat with its back to the shore having just thrown something into the lake.

  Amy had one of those moments of utter clarity. She knew immediately that it was Katrina sitting there, feet dangling in the water, long hair clouding down her back, knew as well that it was the silver knife she’d thrown into the lake. Amy could almost see it, turning end on slow end as it sank in the water.

  She hesitated for the space of a few long breaths, gaze tracking the surface of the lake for Katrina’s sisters, then she slowly made her way down to the pier. Katrina turned at the sound of Amy’s shoes on the wooden slats of the walkway. She nodded once, then looked back out over the lake.

  Amy sat beside her. She hesitated again, then put her arm comfortingly around Katrina’s small shoulders. They sat like that for a long time. The water lapped against the pilings below them. An owl called out from the woods to their left, a long mournful sound. A truck pulled into the bar’s parking lot. Car doors slammed, voices rose in laughter, then disappeared into the bar.

  Katrina stirred beside Amy. She began to move her hands, but Amy shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

  Katrina mimed steering, both hands raised up in front of her, fingers closed around an invisible steering wheel.

  Amy nodded. “I drove up in my brother’s car.”

  Katrina pointed to herself then to Amy and again mimed turning a steering wheel.

  “You want me to drive you somewhere?”

  Katrina nodded.

  Amy looked back toward the bar. “What about Matt?”

  Katrina shook her head. She put her hands together, eyes eloquent where her voice was silent. Please.

  Amy looked at her for a long moment before she nodded. “Sure. I can give you a lift. Is there someplace specific you want to go?”

  Katrina merely rose to her feet and started back down the pier toward shore. Once they were in the Chev, she pointed to the glove department.

  “Go ahead,” Amy said.

  As she started the car, Katrina pulled out a handful of roadmaps. She sorted through them until she came to one that showed the whole north shore of the lake. She unfolded it and laid it on the dashboard between them and pointed to a spot west of Newford. Amy looked more closely. The place where Katrina had her finger was where the Dulfer River emptied into the lake. The tip of her small finger was placed directly on the lakeside campgrounds of the State Park there.

  “Jesus,” Amy said. “It’ll take us all night to get there. We’ll be lucky to make it before dawn.”

  As Katrina shrugged, Amy remembered what Katrina’s sisters had said last night.

  Before the first dawn light follows tomorrow night.

  That was tonight. This morning.

  Or foam you’ll be.

  She shivered and looked at Katrina.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” she said. “Please, Katrina. Maybe I can help you.”

  Katrina just shook her head sadly. She mimed driving, hands around the invisible steering wheel again.

  Amy sighed. She put the car in gear and pulled out of the parking lot. Katrina reached toward the radio, eyebrows raised quizzically. When Amy nodded, she turned it on and slowly wound through the stations until she got Newford’s WKPN-FM. It was too early for Zoe B.’s “Nightnoise” show, so they listened to Mariah Carey, the Vaughan Brothers and the like as they followed the highway east.

  Neither of them spoke as they drove; Katrina couldn’t and Amy was just too depressed. She didn’t know what was going on. She just felt as though she’d become trapped in a Greek tragedy. The storyline was already written, everything was predestined to a certain outcome and there was nothing she could do about it. Only Matt could have, if he’d loved Katrina, but she couldn’t even blame him. You couldn’t force a person to love somebody.

  She didn’t agree with his need to protect his privacy. Maybe it stopped him from being hurt, but it also stopped him from being alive. But he was right about one thing: he couldn’t be held responsible for who chose to love him.

  * * *

  They crossed over the Dulfer River just as dawn was starting to pink the eastern horizon. When Amy pulled into the campgrounds, Katrina directed her down a narrow dirt road that led to the park’s boat launch.

  They had the place to themselves. Amy pulled up by the water and killed the engine. The pines stood silent around them when they got out of the car. There was birdsong, but it seemed strangely muted. Distant. As though heard through gauze.

  Katrina lifted a hand and touched Amy’s cheek, then walked toward the water. She headed to the left of the launching area where a series of broad flat rocks staircased down into the water. After a moment’s hesitation, Amy followed after. She sat down beside Katrina who was right by the edge of the water, arms wrapped around her knees.

  “Katrina,” she began. “Please tell me what’s going on. I—”

  She fussed in her purse, looking for pen and paper. She found the former, and pulled out her chequebook to use the back of a cheque as a writing surface.

  “I want to help,” she said, holding the pen and chequebook out to her companion.

  Katrina regarded her for a long moment, a helpless look in her eyes, but finally she took the proffered items. She began to write on the ba
ck of one of the cheques, but before she could hand it back to Amy, a wind rose up. The pine trees shivered, needles whispering against each other.

  An electric tingle sparked across every inch of Amy’s skin. The hairs at the nape of her neck prickled and goose bumps traveled up her arms. It was like that moment before a storm broke, when the air is so charged with ions that it seems anything might happen.

  “What—?” she began.

  Her voice died in her throat as the air around them thickened. Shapes formed in the air, pale diffuse airy shapes, slender and transparent. Their voices were like the sound of the wind in the pines.

  “Come with us,” they said, beckoning to Katrina.

  “Be one with us.”

  “We can give you what you lack.”

  Katrina stared at the misty apparitions for the longest time. Then she let pen and chequebook fall to the rock and stood up, stretching her arms toward the airy figures. Her own body began to lose its definition. She was a spiderweb in the shape of a woman, gossamer, smoke and mist. Her clothing dropped from her transparent form to fall into a tangle beside Amy.

  And then she was gone. The wind died. The whisper stilled in the pines.

  Amy stared open-mouthed at where Katrina had disappeared. All that lay on the rock were Katrina’s clothes, the pen and the chequebook. Amy reached out toward the clothes. They were damp to the touch.

  Or foam you’ll be.

  Amy looked up into the lightening sky. But Katrina hadn’t just turned to foam, had she? Something had come and taken her away before that happened. If any of this had even been real at all. If she hadn’t just lost it completely.

  She heard weeping and lowered her gaze to the surface of the lake. There were four women’s heads there, bobbing in the unruly water. Their hair was short, cropped close to their heads, untidily, as though cut with garden shears or a knife. Their eyes were red with tears. Each could have been Katrina’s twin.

  Seeing her gaze upon them, they sank beneath the waves, one by one, and then Amy was alone again. She swallowed thickly, then picked up her chequebook to read what Katrina had written before what could only have been angels came to take her away:

  “Is this what having a soul means, to know such bittersweet pain? But still, I cherish the time I had. Those who live forever, who have no stake in the dance of death’s inevitable approach, can never understand the sanctity of life.”

  It sounded stiff, like a quote, but then Amy realized she’d never heard how Katrina would speak, not the cadence of her voice, nor its timbre, nor her diction.

  And now she never would.

  * * *

  The next day, Matt found Amy where her brother Pete said she was going. She was by the statue of the little mermaid on Wolf Island, just sitting on a bench and staring out at the lake. She looked haggard from a lack of sleep.

  “What happened to you last night?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I decided to go for a drive.”

  Matt nodded as though he understood, though he didn’t pretend to have a clue. The complexities that made up people’s personalities were forever a mystery to him.

  He sat down beside her.

  “Have you seen Katrina?” he asked. “I went by Lucia’s place looking for her, but she was acting all weird—” not unusual for Lucia, he added to himself “—and told me I should ask you.”

  “She’s gone,” Amy said. “Maybe back into the lake, maybe into the sky. I’m not really sure.”

  Matt just looked at her. “Come again?” he said finally.

  So Amy told him about it all, of what she’d seen two nights ago by the old L & N sawmill, of what had happened last night.

  “It’s like in that legend about the little mermaid,” she said as she finished up. She glanced at the statue beside them. “The real legend, not what the Disney studios used for their movie.”

  Matt shook his head. “‘The Little Mermaid’ isn’t a legend,” he said. “It’s just a story, made up by Hans Christian Anderson, like ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and ‘The Ugly Ducking.’ They sure as hell aren’t real.”

  “I’m just telling you what I saw.”

  “Jesus, Amy. Will you listen to yourself?”

  When she turned to face him, he saw anguish in her features.

  “I can’t help it,” she said. “It really happened.”

  Matt started to argue, but then he shook his head. He didn’t know what had gotten into Amy to go on like this. He expected this kind of thing from Geordie’s brother who made his living gussying up fantastical stories from nothing, but Amy?

  “It looks like her, doesn’t it?” Amy said.

  Matt followed her gaze to the statue. He remembered the last time he’d been on the island, the night when he’d walked out on Katrina, when everything had looked like her. He got up from the bench and stepped closer. The statue’s bronze features gleamed in the sunlight.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess it does.”

  Then he walked away.

  * * *

  He was pissed off with Amy for going on the way she had, and brooded about her stupid story all the way back to the city. He had a copy of the Anderson Fairy Tales at home. When he got back to his apartment, he took it down from the shelf and read the story again.

  “Aw, shit,” he said as he closed the book.

  It was just a story. Katrina would turn up. They’d all share a laugh at how Amy was having him on.

  But Katrina didn’t turn up. Not that day, nor the next, nor by the end of the week. She’d vanished from his life as mysteriously as she’d come into it.

  That’s why I don’t want to get involved with people, he wanted to tell Amy. Because they just walk out of your life if you don’t do what they want you to do.

  No way it had happened as Amy had said it did. But he found himself wondering about what it would be like to be without a soul, wondering if he even had one.

  Friday of that week, he found himself back on the island, standing by the statue once again. There were a couple of tattered silk flowers on the stone at its base. He stared at the mermaid’s features for a long time, then he went home and started to phone the members of Marrowbones.

  * * *

  “Well, I kind of thought this was coming,” Amy said when he called to tell her that he was breaking up the band, “except I thought it’d be Johnny or Nicky quitting.”

  She was sitting in the window seat of her apartment’s bay window, back against one side, feet propped up against the other. She was feeling better than she had when she’d seen him on Sunday, but there was still a strangeness inside her. A lost feeling, a sense of the world having shifted underfoot and the rules being all changed.

  “So what’re you going to do?” she added when he didn’t respond.

  “Hit the road for a while.”

  “Gigging, or just traveling?”

  “Little of both, I guess.”

  There was another long pause and Amy wondered if he was waiting for her to ask if she could come. But she was really over him now. Had been for a long time. She wasn’t looking to be anybody’s psychiatrist, or mother. Or matchmaker.

  “Well, see you then,” he said.

  “Bon voyage,” Amy said.

  She cradled the phone. She thought of how he’d talked with her the other night up at Hartnett’s Point, opening up, actually relating to her. And now… She realized that the whole business with Katrina had just wound him up tighter than ever before.

  Well, somebody else was going to have to work on those walls and she knew who it had to be. A guy named Matt Casey.

  She looked out the window again.

  “Good luck,” she said.

  * * *

  Matt was gone for a year. When he came back, the first place he went to was Wolf Island. He stood out by the statue for a long time, not saying anything, just trying to sort out why he was here. He didn’t have much luck, not that year, nor each subsequent year that he came. Finally, almost a decade after
Katrina was gone—walked out of his life, turned into a puddle of lake water, went sailing through the air with angels, whatever—he decided to stay overnight, as though being alone in the dark would reveal something that was hidden from the day.

  “Lady,” he said, standing in front of the statue, drowned in the thick silence of the night.

  He hadn’t brought an offering for the statue—Our Lady of the Harbour, as the bag lady had called her. He was just here, looking for something that remained forever out of reach. He wasn’t trying to understand Katrina or the story that Amy had told of her. Not anymore.

  “Why am I so empty inside?” he asked.

  * * *

  “I can’t believe you’re going to play with him again,” Lucia said when Amy told her about her new band, Johnny Jump Up.

  Amy shrugged. “It’ll just be the three of us—Geordie’s going to be playing fiddle.”

  “But he hasn’t changed at all. He’s still so…cold.”

  “Not on stage.”

  “I suppose not,” Lucia said. “I guess all he’s got going for him is his music.”

  Amy nodded sadly.

  “I know,” she said.

  18

  Paperjack

  If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

  —Derek Bok

  * * *

  Churches aren’t havens of spiritual enlightenment; they enclose the spirit. The way Jilly explains it, organizing Mystery tends to undermine its essence. I’m not so sure I agree, but then I don’t really know enough about it. When it comes to things that can’t be logically explained, I take a step back and leave them to Jilly or my brother Christy—they thrive on that kind of thing. If I had to describe myself as belonging to any church or mystical order, it’d be one devoted to secular humanism. My concerns are for real people and the here and now; the possible existence of God, faeries, or some metaphysical Otherworld just doesn’t fit into my worldview.

  Except…