Widdershins

by Charles de Lint

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “I owe you my life. Ask me anything, and if it’s in my power, I will give it to you.”

  “You mean like a magic wish?”

  He nodded.

  She shook her head. “No, that wouldn’t be right. I didn’t know that my tears would bring you back to life, but even if I had, what kind of a person would I have been to just leave you lying there like you were dead? You can’t trade on that kind of thing.”

  “That doesn’t change my debt to you.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “Let’s just concentrate on how to get out of here. Or at least find someplace safe.”

  “I have a house,” Timony began, “under the ground . . .” But then he shook his head. “Except that’s where I was when the blind man pulled me out with a binding word.”

  He gave Lizzie a considering look.

  “What?” she said, feeling self-conscious.

  “You’re not really dressed for any kind of a journey,” he told her.

  “That’s because I’m dressed for bed. God, do you think I just walk around like this? I’m a fiddler, not some pop tart.”

  “Let me see if I have something that will fit,” he said.

  And then he did that disappearing thing that all the fairy people seemed to be so good at, like they were walking through a door that only they could see. She moved her hands in the air where he’d been standing, but there was nothing there that she could either sense or feel. Before she could start to worry “What if he never comes back?” he appeared back in front of her, stepping out of nowhere with a huge armload of clothes that he dumped on the ground between them.

  “See if any of this appeals to you,” he said.

  Like anything that belonged to somebody half her height had the remotest chance of fitting.

  But when she picked up the first item—a pair of pants made of some sort of thick cotton, dyed a greenish brown—both the waist and inseam looked to be about her size. When she tried them on, they were a perfect fit. There was also a cream-coloured jersey with three-quarter sleeves, a long-sleeved shirt made of some sort of soft blue material that was like flannel, socks, and a pair of boots that all fit as though they’d been tailored for her.

  “You can turn around,” she told Timony, who’d been sitting with his back to her to offer her some privacy.

  “Do you like your new clothes?” he asked.

  “Anything’d be better than wandering around the forest in just a T-shirt,” she said, “but these are wonderful, thank you. They’re all so comfortable. Not really my colours, but I’m totally grateful.”

  “What’s your colour?”

  She smiled. “Not really a colour, per se. Just your basic blacks.”

  Timony made a motion with his hands, as though he was writing something in the air, and just like that, everything she was wearing changed to a black as deep as a moonless night. It gave Lizzie a shiver, as though they weren’t clothes on her skin, but some living thing.

  “Okay, how did you do that?” she asked. “Not to mention how did you find me a wardrobe that’s such a perfect fit?”

  It was his turn to smile. “That’s a doonie’s gift. Our magics are of a helping nature—unless you cause us offense. But when we take a liking to you, we can call up the small changes that bring comfort against common hardships.”

  “So magic just lets you do anything?”

  “No. All I did just now was to ask your clothing to be a different colour and happily it agreed.”

  “So it is alive. I got this creepy feeling when you made it change colour.” Then she realized what she was saying, so she held up her arm and told her sleeve, “No offense.”

  The doonie laughed. “It’s only alive in the same sense that everything is alive with a spirit of some sort. But your clothes can’t get up and walk off on their own.”

  “Then how can you ask it to change colour? Who are you talking to?”

  “The great dream of the world—that’s how my granddad put it. Everything is connected, so when you ask the whole of it all for a favour—with the right words, and the right amount of respect—oftentimes, it will do as you ask. So your clothes changed colour, while the clothing itself was made from root and leaf and briar, convinced to take another shape.”

  “Is that how the blind man caught you?” Lizzie asked. “You said he used a binding word.”

  Timony gave a glum nod. “The great dream of the world grants favours through its grace, but if you know the true name of a thing, and if you have power and the will to use it, you need ask no one. You simply take and do.”

  “So, even though you don’t know him, the blind man must know you.” Then she had another thought. “You told me your name.”

  “I told you my speaking name—it’s not the same.”

  “Oh.”

  She was vaguely disappointed in that. But then it made perfect sense. Why should he trust her? They’d only just met and hadn’t some other stranger gone and nailed him to a tree with wooden spikes?

  “I should have remembered,” she said. “Somebody else told me about the whole business with names.”

  “But it’s a cold soul who uses such advantages against another,” Timony told her.

  As though responding to a cue, they heard a sudden hubbub of voices from the direction of the glade.

  Oh god, Lizzie thought. The bogans were finally back. She looked around for where she’d dropped the knife.

  Timony dropped to his hands and knees.

  “Quick!” he whispered. “Stand above me.”

  “What?”

  “If you want to live, you’ll do as I say. Now, without question.”

  Lizzie hesitated only a moment longer before doing what he’d told her. She swung a leg over so that she was straddling the crouching doonie, then gasped as he changed under her, transforming into a small brown pony that was still large enough to lift her feet from the ground. She grabbed onto his mane to keep her balance.

  Hold tight, a voice said inside her head.

  “But . . .”

  Too late. Before she could register the shock of his changing shape, of his voice inside her head, the pony that had been Timony dashed toward the wall of thorns and briars. Lizzie stared wide-eyed, wanting to jump off, too scared to let go. She heard a cry from behind them, then everything went grey, the forest dropped away, and they were somewhere else. A place of thick mists, filled with the salty smell of the sea.

  Crap, she thought. I forgot the knife.

  Bogan Boys

  The bogans appeared by The Doonie Stane in a jostling crowd, a half-dozen plus one of them, followed a moment later by Odawa and Big Dan who arrived at a slower pace. The bogans cursed loudly when they found Gathen, his body sprawled near the stone, head bent at an awkward angle. Big Dan stepped over to where it lay and frowned.

  Lairds help them, there was no doubt about it. Gathen was as dead as the doe they’d taken down in that hunt the other night. But it made no sense. How could this pluiking slip of a girl have killed him with only her bare hands? Big Dan had been there at the crossroads. He’d seen her tremble and shake, for all the brave stance she took. She had no magics. She had no power. There was nothing special about her except for her relationship with Grey.

  “She’s there,” Odawa said, pointing to a section of the woods.

  Big Dan looked up, his gaze moving from Odawa’s face to the direction he was pointing. The blind man appeared to be taken off guard by something, but whatever it was, he wasn’t sharing it.

  Fine, Big Dan thought. Keep your secrets. You won’t have them forever.

  He turned his attention back to his men.

  “Well, you little shites?” he said. “What are you waiting for? Go fetch her.”

  The bogans ran off in the direction Odawa had indicated. Big Dan heard one of his men shout in surprise as he followed them.

  Bother and damn, he thought as he picked up his pace. However she does it, don’t let her kill another one of my boy
s.

  But when he and Odawa caught up to the others, it was only to see the girl disappear, riding bareback on a pony as she shifted out of this world. He caught a flash of her unnaturally bright red hair, a flick of the pony’s tail, and then the pair were gone. All that remained behind were a discarded T-shirt and the knife the woman had stolen from Gathen’s body.

  Big Dan turned to Odawa. “That was a doonie she was riding.”

  “So it seems.”

  “I hate the stink of those do-gooders,” Big Dan said. He waited a beat, then added, “I thought you’d killed him.”

  “I did,” the blind man said. “This woman has power indeed if she can raise the dead.”

  Unless you never killed him at all, Big Dan thought. But all he said was, “She didn’t seem so powerful at the crossroads. We could have had her easy if Grey hadn’t shown up.”

  Odawa nodded. “But he did, and you lost her, and now we’ve lost her again.”

  “We can track her,” Big Dan said. “Rabedy’s got a nose like a Church Grim.”

  Rabedy flushed and the other bogans snickered.

  “Not to mention the ears and tail to match,” Scantaglen said.

  Big Dan glared at him. When Gathlen was still alive, he and Scantaglen had made it their personal crusade to torment his nephew, and it seemed Scantaglen planned to continue the practice. Big Dan had thought it might build Rabedy’s character—make him stand up for himself for a change—so he’d let it go on, but Rabedy had yet to stand up for himself and Big Dan grew tired of the endless baiting. And after all, while there might not be much to his nephew, he was still family.

  “At least Rabedy’s learned some part of the shapeshifting spell,” he told Scantaglen, before turning his dark gaze on the others. “That’s better than the rest of you pluiking lot. I don’t know why I bother with any of you.”

  Scantaglen cast his gaze to the ground, apparently cowed, but Big Dan knew he was unrepentant. It was a bogan’s way to give ground to the more powerful, biding a moment of weakness. And there was always a weakness. The trick of being a boss was to never show it.

  “You and you,” Big Dan said, pointing to Luren and Geric. “Go with Rabedy and see what you can find.”

  The three bogans stepped away, out of this little pocket of a world. Big Dan toed the girl’s T-shirt with his boot, then walked over to the trunk of a nearby tree. There was blood on the bark, wooden spikes on the ground at its base, holes in the trunk from which he assumed the spikes had been pulled. Odawa joined him, his passage as unerring as always. Just once Big Dan would like to see him stumble.

  “He was dead when I hung him on that tree,” the blind man said.

  Big Dan nodded. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t matter anymore. The doonie was alive now.

  “How did you find this place anyway?” he asked. “A doonie’s hidey-hole is supposed to be impenetrable.”

  The blind green-bree shrugged. “I came upon it while I was swimming.”

  “Swimming? There are no rivers near here.”

  “There are always rivers,” Odawa told him. “If you know how to see them.”

  Big Dan gave another noncommittal nod.

  “Your water clans probably have the same ability,” the blind man added. “I wouldn’t know,” Big Dan said. “You’re the first I’ve ever spent any time with and you’re not even close to kin.”

  He was just a great big pluiking green-bree, maybe blind, maybe not, but for damn sure too full of his own importance.

  Big Dan looked over to where his men were lounging against the trees while they waited. He was suddenly tired of all of this. What had started as a kind of game to relieve boredom and perhaps raise his standing among the fairy clans was turning more sour than he’d ever admit to anyone but himself. The truth was he didn’t care for either Odawa or Grey’s problems. He didn’t care about this girl. And he was sick and tired of feeling like no more than an errand boy for the blind piece of shite who’d gotten him into all of this.

  Happily, Odawa kept his own counsel while they waited for Rabedy and his companions to return. As soon as they did, Big Dan walked over to get their report.

  “Well?” he asked. “I see you don’t have the girl. Do you at least have any news?”

  “She’s gone,” Luren said, picking his nose as he spoke. “Both of them—like they never were. Rabedy tracked them to a beach on some grey sea, but they were already gone when we got there. The pony’s tracks started nowhere, then ended the same, but we couldn’t find a way through to wherever it was that they went.”

  Rabedy nodded. “We hunted up and down the beach, but it was all grey sand, and then a fog came rolling in from the water and we couldn’t see anything anymore anyway, so we came back.”

  “Where was this beach?” Odawa asked.

  Rabedy shrugged. “Somewhere in the otherworld.”

  “Could you see the sun? The moon or stars? Was the water east or west of the land?”

  Rabedy and the other two bogans took a step back under the blind green-bree’s sudden barrage of questions. Luren shot Big Dan a questioning look, but Odawa spoke before Big Dan could.

  “Answer me, you stupid little men,” he demanded, his voice booming between the trees. “Surely your tiny brains will let you do that much.”

  “Hold on there,” Big Dan said.

  The green-bree turned, his blind gaze fixing on the bogans’ chief.

  “This is my business,” he began.

  His voice had gone soft, dangerous, and low now.

  “And these are my men,” Big Dan said before he could go on. “So you’ll be respectful to them, or you won’t speak at all.”

  “This from the one who constantly berates them himself.”

  “What I do or don’t is none of your pluiking business. While you’re working for me, you’ll do as I say, or you’ll take a hike up your own arse.”

  “Working for you?”

  Big Dan gave him a dangerous smile. “Well, I’m sure as shite not working for you.”

  “Why you—”

  “And before you go on,” Big Dan added, finally enjoying himself for a change, “think on this: Piss me off enough and I’ll speak a name you won’t want to hear, and then you will have to do as I say.”

  “You’re bluffing,” the blind man said. “You know nothing about me but what I’ve chosen to share—certainly not my name.”

  “So try me.”

  The blind gaze lay on Big Dan for a long moment, then Odawa shrugged and smiled.

  “Why are we arguing?” he said. “We’re allies. Partners in this endeavour. We each have everything to gain if we’re successful.”

  Big Dan nodded. “So, why do you think the doonie took her to your croi baile—your heart home?”

  The green-bree was unable to hide his surprise.

  “How could you know?” he asked.

  “This land is full of stories,” Big Dan replied. “Do you think we don’t hear them, just because we came to its shores later? One of them tells of a corbae who pecked out the eyes of a salmon on a night it was so cold he froze half in and half out of the water. We have a story like that back in the Isles—on Achill Island. The difference, it seems, is that on this side of the ocean that corbae was a grey jay instead of an old crow.”

  Odawa said nothing.

  “This new version I’ve heard,” Big Dan went on, “took place long ago on the western shores of this land—coincidentally, the same place you and Grey are from. A landscape of grey shores and tall pines. The story names the salmon by his true name, if not the corbae.”

  “I don’t know that story,” Odawa finally said.

  “Of course you don’t. But that place the doonie fled to with the girl—you suspect it’s your croi baile, don’t you? That little piece of our own true home that each of us carries inside us. I’m guessing you left a bit of it in the doonie when you killed him.”

  “It’s possible. Now you see why I have to track him down.”<
br />
  “Sure,” Big Dan said.

  He wouldn’t want anyone to have access to the place where his own heart home manifested in the otherworld either. No one would.

  “And why I have to do this by myself,” Odawa added. “The doonie owes me.”

  “What? Now you’ve got a vendetta against him, as well as Grey?”

  “He owes me an explanation as to how he survived the death I gave him.”

  “You said it was the girl that brought him back.”

  Odawa nodded. “She’ll have some explaining to do also.”

  “Fair enough,” Big Dan said. “Can you get there on your own?”

  “To my heart home? Of course. But not this other beach your men found. I’m not entirely convinced they’re the same place.”

  Big Dan turned to Rabedy. “Show him the way and then come right back. It’s time we got back to some real bogan business.”

  “You’re dissolving our partnership?” Odawa asked.

  “Nah. But I’m getting tired of all the pussyfooting about we’re doing when it comes to this pluiking corbae. These complicated schemes of yours—that’s not a bogan’s way. When you’re ready to finish the business proper, let me know and we’ll lend you the help we promised.”

  “You don’t think I will deliver what I promised?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just know I’ve got a man dead, and we’ve been doing a lot of running around without much profit to show for our efforts. What am I supposed to tell Gathlen’s mam and da? I should have something fine to offer them for their loss. Gold. Silver. Or at least a death they can brag about. But all I’ve got is the story of him dying the way he did, killed by some pluiking little girl while we’re running around playing fetch for some green-bree. How do you think that’s going to wash?”

  “I understand,” Odawa said.

  He seemed to take no offense at the derogatory term. Maybe he didn’t know what it meant.

  “But let me ask you this,” he added. “Will one of your company travel with me to be my eyes?”

  “To be your servant, you mean.”

  “No, I will treat him with the respect you rightfully demanded of me.”