Carousel Tides

by Sharon Lee

  “Sorry, sorry!” The gray-haired man in the navy blue overcoat grabbed the handle and pushed the door closed. “She slipped away from me, is all. Didn’t mean to disturb any illicit conversations— Oh, there you are, Kate!” He came over to the booth, hands at his rumpled hair, smoothing it down into perfection. “You might’ve phoned, you know, instead of letting me find out you’re back home through a third party. ’Morning, Bob.”

  “You don’t mean to say that Joe Nemeier actually called you?” I asked in disbelief. Honestly—flatlanders.

  “ ’Morning, Henry,” Bob said, heading back to the kitchen. “Coffee’s on the plate. You want anything else, give a yell.”

  Henry nodded. “Not only did he call me with the news that you’ve poisoned his grass, but he was so obliging as to leave me the name and phone number of his lawyer in Boston,” he said, smiling. There’s nothing Henry Emerson likes better than to be calling attorneys in Boston and straightening out their view of the law.

  “I’m glad to see you called Mr. Nemeier’s lawyer right away,” I said, mouth full of muffin.

  “As it happens, I attempted to contact the gentleman as soon as I hung up with Mr. Nemeier, but—he was in a meeting. Left a message to call me on an urgent matter regarding his client. Then I called Tupelo House, but no one answered. You will get an answering machine, won’t you, Kate?”

  I swallowed. “I’ll think about it.”

  “As you like, my dear, but tell me—what did you do to Mr. Nemeier’s lawn?”

  “He’s over our line,” I said. “I tried to explain the situation and he told me he was above property lines drawn on trees and rocks. Words were exchanged and—I lost my temper. The upshot being that nothing Mr. Nemeier plants on our land will grow.”

  Henry stroked his baby smooth chin with a long, well-manicured hand. It wasn’t that he disbelieved me, I knew. The Emersons might not be as old as the Pepperidges, or as tied in with the land as the Archers, but they’ve been in town a good long while, and they’ve seen and heard tell of odder things than the simple hexing of a swath of grass.

  “Kate,” Henry said now, “where exactly was the boundary boulder?”

  “Six feet into Mr. Nemeier’s lawn,” I told him, feeling my temper sparking again. I reached for my mug and drank more than I wanted of tepid, oily coffee.

  His eyes gleamed. “Oh,” he purred, “was it?” He smiled. “I think Mr. Nemeier’s lawyer and I will be able to work out an accommodation,” he said. “Do you want damages?”

  “No, I don’t want damages. I want him to honor the line.”

  “Consider it done, my dear. Call the office a little later today, all right?”

  “Sure,” I said, and put my mug down, eying him. “What’re you doing here, by the way? The message on the machine says you’re out until next week.”

  Henry’s blue eyes widened. “Did it say that? Silly me. Of course, I meant I would be back in the office today.”

  “Really?” I asked, not buying it for a second.

  “Really,” Henry said emphatically. “Do me a favor, Kate, and try not to get angry again today. For my sake?”

  “No promises,” I told him. “I’ve got to see Marilyn about the lease.”

  Henry sighed, reached into an inside pocket and put a business card on the table next to my mug. “Keep my number handy,” he said, and headed for the coffeepot.

  * * *

  “What the hell do you mean, I can’t pay the Season up front?” I glared at Marilyn, who wasn’t impressed. Historically, Marilyn was unimpressed. She’d been the resident agent for Fun Country since before I’d graduated high school, and I’ve never been able to figure out if she’s unflappable, or just stupid. Purely academic, you understand; the end result was just as annoying.

  “New policy,” she said, turning her back on me to haul open the listing file cabinet and finger through the paper-choked drawer.

  “What new policy?” I asked, sarcasm mode full on. “Fun Country’s going to stop skinning its tenants?”

  “The new policy is that Fun Country is now accepting park space lease payments in three equal installments throughout the Season,” Marilyn said, in her Number Three Neutral Voice, not even bothering to turn around. “Corporate hopes that this move will ease the financial burden on our tenants.”

  Yeah, sure. Like Fun Country Corporate cared about its tenants except as cash cows. Something was going on that would shortly be found to not benefit the tenants one whit, but I was too tired to try and scope it out right now. All I wanted to do right now was pay the damn’ rent and go home.

  “Look, Marilyn, I got a certified letter from the boss down in Jersey, giving me a deadline of tomorrow to pay up the whole Season’s rent. I’ve got the money right here—in cash. So just write out the receipt and I’ll stop taking up your air.”

  Marilyn slammed the file cabinet and came back to her desk, settling in to the chair before finally looking at me.

  “Katharine,” she said, patiently, like I was maybe four and on the verge of a tantrum, which, come to think of it, was pretty much the way I felt. “I’ll be happy to accept your first payment. Since you’re paying before Corporate’s deadline, according to regulations now in force, you won’t need to take any further action at this time.”

  I sighed, loud.

  “I want to pay the whole Season and get it over with,” I said, keeping it reasonable and calm.

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not possible,” Marilyn answered, folding her hands together on the desk top and looking like she could wait all day for me to Get It. Which personal experience has shown that she can and will do.

  “All right,” I said, giving her the round. Bob’s muffin had been amazingly restorative, but I wasn’t about to risk phasing out in front of Marilyn.

  I pulled the bank envelope out of my pocket, counted a third of the bills onto her desk, then reached into my jeans pocket and dropped three dimes and four pennies on top.

  “You can keep the extra two-thirds of a cent for your trouble, deah,” I told her.

  Marilyn didn’t even look at me. She swept the change into her palm, picked the bills up off the desk, counted them twice, then leaned over to unlock the cash drawer. She put the bills away nice and neat, like paired with like and all facing the same direction, and dropped the dimes and the pennies in their assigned pockets.

  That done, she relocked the drawer, pulled the receipt book to her, and flipped it open, carefully slid the overworked strip of carbon paper between the next two clean sheets. Picking up a generic blue ballpoint, she clicked it and wrote the ticket out in her round, neutral handwriting, bearing down extra hard, wringing the last bit of ink out of the carbon. That done, she turned the book around and filled out the stub, too. Then she clicked the pen closed, and used both hands to tear the receipt out of the book.

  She handed it to me without looking up.

  “Thank you, Katharine. Your next payment is due on June first. Have a nice day.”

  I took the receipt and left, pausing outside the door for a deep breath of ocean air.

  Well, I thought, as I folded the receipt and slipped it carefully into the pocket of my jeans, I hadn’t set Marilyn’s hair on fire. Wouldn’t Henry be proud?

  I walked slowly across to the square and sat down on the edge of the fountain, still in its winter wrappings. The sun was warm and welcome, and I closed my eyes, half-drowsing, until the wail of a siren ’way up on 5 startled me awake.

  Right. I pushed myself to my feet and took a deep breath.

  Next stop, Gregor’s Electronics.

  SEVEN

  Thursday, April 20

  Low Tide 10:39 a.m.

  Sunrise 5:51 a.m. EDT

  The sun was bright and busy about melting away the last of the morning mist when I strolled across Fountain Circle at a few minutes shy of a quarter ’til eight. I’d slept twelve hours straight through, which was somewhere between an oddity and a miracle, and was decidedly the better for it.
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  Someone had gotten it together to run the American, Maine, and Canadian flags up the triple flagpoles at the center of the circle, and they were snapping smartly in a brisk off-shore breeze. Seagulls swung in a complicated do-si-do overhead, their shadows flashing across the cobblestones.

  Inside Fun Country, the storm gate was open at Tony Lee’s Kitchen, and the breeze brought me the scent of fresh-frying egg rolls. My stomach grumbled like I hadn’t fed it perfectly good scrambled eggs and toast not twenty minutes before. I bribed it with a sip of coffee from the commuter mug I carried—good coffee, the last of my morning pot, not any of Bob’s paint remover—and bore left.

  A shadow clung to the carousel’s storm gates, thin and tremulous. It moved before I could get worried, resolving into Nancy Vois.

  “You’re early,” I said, as she came forward to meet me, hands tucked into the pockets of her jeans.

  She smiled slightly, the lines around her pale gold eyes deepening.

  “Want to make a good impression,” she said in her raspy voice, “my first day on the job.”

  “I’m impressed,” I assured her, and she nodded like she’d expected it to be so.

  I opened the hatch and shouldered it wide, releasing a gust of ice-cold air. Nancy slipped by me and used the toe of her work boot to shove the door-stop brick into position.

  The shadows retreated a mite from the rectangle of sunlight, and I gave Nancy an approving nod before going across to the fuse box and hitting the switch.

  Electric light flared, and the shadows retreated further.

  Or so I told myself.

  I had a sip of coffee and set the cup down next to the post. When I turned around, Nancy was standing quietly just outside the tattered wards, hands in pockets, gimme hat shoved back off her forehead, considering the animals with that kind of bland indifference that makes you think somebody’s seen something they’d rather not have, and are trying very hard to pretend they weren’t ever going to see anything like it again.

  “When I worked for your gran,” she said, not looking at me, oh, no, not at all. “Couple Seasons back. She had me to bring the mechanicals up to spec, polish the brass, and see to the organ. Herself, she did what was needful for the critters.” She slide a pale gold glance in my direction. “I’m agreeable to a similar arrangement. But you ought to know right off, I’m no hand with them animals.”

  As if anybody but a powerful trenvay, or a mage of note—or, in Gran’s case, an extremely powerful trenvay who also had some small skill in magery—could handle the animals. I nodded to show I understood her position.

  “I’ll need you to do exactly what you did for Gran,” I said. “I’ll take care of the menagerie.”

  She was quiet a a beat too long, her eyes still on the animals. “That’s all right then,” she said finally, and shifted her shoulders.

  “Saw the one with the batwings take a nip out of a fella come down to talk with your gran,” she said abruptly. “Plain fact. Your gran, she didn’t much care for him, that’s how I read it.” A sigh, another shift of thin shoulders under the shapeless sweater. “Bill collector, he looked like to me.” She shook herself and turned to face me. “I’ll need to get into the tool locker.”

  “That’ll be the next stop for both of us,” I agreed, leading the way around to the metal shed against the permanent wall that stood between the carousel and Summer’s Wheel.

  The door shrieked when I opened it, and of course I jumped a foot, gasping like a fish out of water, and damn’ near knocked Nancy over.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, and skinned inside, barking my shins on something, and reached up to turn the light bulb in its socket. Tools and brushes were illuminated, hung on pegboard along two sides of the interior; solvents, lubricants, and paint cans sorted by color sat on the shelves beneath. All nice and orderly, just like Gran always kept things. In the center, right at shin-barking height, stood two wooden sawhorses, a paint-spattered tarp folded neatly across the pair of them. Nancy helped me shift them out onto the concrete, then went back inside for a can of WD-40, which she used liberally on the metal door hinges.

  “That’ll keep ’er quiet,” she said with satisfaction, moving the door back and forth to show off the silence. I gave her a smile.

  “ ’Preciate it,” I said, and carried the tarp out to the utility pole, where I rescued my mug and drank what was left of the tepid coffee, considering the task at hand.

  Of the twenty-three creatures on the carousel, seventeen are ordinary tupelo wood carvings, much in need of repainting. Not an easy job, but doable, stipulating I started doing pretty quick.

  The remaining six—those being the seahorse, unicorn, goat, wolf, the armored charger, and the dainty batwinged gray—were something else entirely. Specifically, they’re criminals in their homelands, exiled by order of the Wise, who seemed to think rustication would do them good.

  There are, as you might imagine, a couple of problems about that.

  The first is that the climate hereabouts is terribly hard on the bindings that tie the wrongdoers to the carousel creatures. Which means that, at the end of every Season the bindings are renewed, and the extra protection of industrial-grade wards and warn-aways are put in place.

  At the beginning of the Season, the bindings are strengthened, though obviously you don’t want to ward a public amusement. Most people aren’t sensitive enough to notice the bindings, or that some of animals are a little . . . strange. Still, it’s a risky enterprise, with the potential for being Extremely Unhealthy for the average man on the midway. Not that the Wise care. Given to odd notions, the Wise, and with lots of firepower to back them up.

  It was just such an odd notion that fixed on the carousel as the perfect instrument of incarceration. According to Gran, they figured the local climate would eventually work beneficial changes on their criminals.

  The operative word being “eventually.”

  Second problem is that the nature of the criminals and their jail more or less requires constant oversight by a skilled magic-worker. If that sort of supervision isn’t on tap, the whole operation goes from risky to stupendously dangerous.

  I sighed. As far as I could see—which, let’s be honest, was somewhere just shy of the end of my nose—the bindings on the creatures were still strong. The wards fraying was—troubling, but not critical. Hell, it was even theoretically possible that I could use some the remaining energy in the wards to craft new bindings.

  Unfortunately, all I had was theory, though I supposed I’d have to put it to the test if a better answer didn’t present itself. The optimum solution being that Gran showed up within the next fifteen minutes and took a hand.

  Failing that, I could at least start with the repainting.

  One thing at a time.

  * * *

  We’d left the hatch propped open, letting in the noise of the day to disturb the deep silence inside the storm gates. Nancy was down deep in the workings, making a good bit of noise herself.

  But up on the carousel, inside the wards, it was as quiet and breathless as the ocean air just before a nor’easter.

  I cleaned and repainted the broad work on the chariot first, leaving it to dry before I went back with a fine brush for the scrolls, then cleaned the Indian pony and spread the tarp around the base, paints open and brushes to hand. The work demanded concentration; more than it should have, really. I started at the ears and moved down, trying to work fast, but careful. Trying to take simple pleasure in the simple work.

  My hand shook at first, but eventually I settled into the rhythm, and by the time I’d gotten ’round to brightening the feathers braided into the wild mane, I was actually beginning to enjoy myself.

  Which is when something nipped me, sharp and secret, and I jumped, smudging yellow into black.

  What have we here? A wounded soldier at the front? The voice was oily and insincere and the instant I heard it, I wanted it out of my head.

  It laughed, not nicely, and I recognized it now—th
e batwing horse.

  Halt, lame, blind, and failing. But not deaf yet, eh? Where is the old one? Rotted at last and leaving only you between Is and Ending?

  I took a breath, used the rag on the smudge, and touched up the feather edge, pleased to see my hand so steady.

  “You’ll get your chance,” I said, and my voice was steady, too.

  Indeed. I am quite looking forward to it. Don’t tarry too long at your mundane tasks, halfing. It wouldn’t do for you to die before the challenge. There was a blast of wind, bitter and edgy, rocking my brain in its holdings—and I was alone again inside my head.

  I put the brush in the turpentine jar, and sat back on my heels, shaking all over. Which was bad, very bad. If they thought I was too weak to stand against an attack . . .

  I took a breath, tasting turpentine, and wobbled to my feet.

  It was definitely time for a break.

  I stepped off the deck, and crossed the floor on rubbery legs, the wards so much white noise against my senses. When I broke through, it was like coming into clear air after a long dive, lungs burning, eyes tearing, muscles shivering with effort.

  My ears cleared first, filling up with metallic clanks, the distant scream of a seagull, men’s voices, the spit of hot oil . . .

  I gulped a mouthful of air, blinked my eyes clear—and blinked again.

  He had one shoulder against the pole supporting the fuse box, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup emblazoned with the proud scarlet legend, “Bob’s Diner, East Grand Avenue, Archers Beach, Maine. Where the Stars Come to Dine.”

  “Afternoon,” he said comfortably. “We met yesterday morning, over at the Pier—you might remember it.”

  I took a breath and gave him a nod. “Borgan.”

  He smiled and raised the cup in salute. “Always nice when a pretty lady remembers my name,” he said and had a sip from his cup. “Hope it’s all right that I’m here.”

  It was slightly worrisome that he was here, frankly, though I’d told him right out straight who I was. I didn’t need a stalker—especially one twice as big as I was, in all directions. On the other hand, I also didn’t need an enemy.