Widdershins

by Charles de Lint

  “There’s more,” Mother Crone says.

  That gets everybody’s attention.

  “Big Dan’s gang has a cousin running with them,” she tells us. “They call him Odawa. He’s old and powerful.”

  And all of a sudden, everything becomes very personal for me.

  “Tall blind guy?” I ask. “From the salmon clan?”

  She nods. “Tall and blind, but I don’t know his clan.”

  “You know him?” Joe asks me.

  “We go way back, and none of it’s pleasant. Nothing he’d like better than to stick my head on a pole.”

  “Why’s he so pissed with you?” Jack asks.

  “I pecked out his eyes.”

  “That’s a little harsh. What did he do to you?”

  I shrug. “Nothing. I thought he was dead at the time. But the point is, if he’d come after me, I’d have had no problem. It was his right.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No. He killed my wife instead. He’ll kill anybody I get close to.”

  “You mean lovers?” Even talking about something serious like this, Jack can’t help giving me a wink and adding, “Which would explain why you’re giving that sweet little fiddler the cold shoulder.”

  “I mean anybody.”

  Jack nods. “Well, thanks for that little late tip. I’ll make a point of watching my back.”

  “But this doesn’t explain what he’s doing with the bogans,” I say, “or why he’s kidnapped these two women.”

  “Well, Lizzie spoiled their party the other night,” Jack says. “Maybe they were bringing the meat back to him.”

  “And Jilly?” Joe asks.

  No one had an answer for that, least of all me.

  “We will find out,” Tatiana says. She turns to her guards. “Fetch me Big Dan and his followers. And bring a gruagagh with you, in case this Odawa offers any trouble.”

  Half the guards hurry off with the queen’s gaze on them before she turns back to us.

  “There will be a reckoning,” she tells us, and I’m not entirely sure if she means with the bogans or with us. “Until then, you are welcome to stay as our guests. I will have food and drink brought to you. Mother Crone will remain with you to answer any further questions you might have.”

  “But—” Mother Crone begins.

  Oh, she doesn’t like it, being stuck here with us. Truth is, I’d just as soon she leave with the rest of them, but I guess Tatiana’s making a point of some kind with her.

  “There is a problem?” the queen asks.

  Mother Crone shakes her head.

  “Fine. Is there anything else you require?” she asks of us.

  Jack and I wait for Joe to answer.

  “Just to be clear,” he says, “if we were to walk out that door, you wouldn’t try to stop us?”

  “Of course not. You are my guests, not prisoners. But I’d prefer you to wait here so that we don’t have to go looking for you when we have Big Dan in hand. My guards won’t be long.”

  Joe nods. “Then if someone could bring me a phone, we’re good.”

  “It will be done,” the queen says.

  Then she sweeps out of the room—which is a good trick when you don’t have some big dress or a cloak, but she pulls it off all the same. The guards all leave, the door stays open, and it’s just us, Mother Crone, and her treekin.

  Joe looks at Jack and me, then settles back in his chair, ignoring the fairies. The two of us take our seats as well, but the fairies stay on their feet.

  “Do you have any further questions?” Mother Crone asks.

  You can tell that asking us that took something from her. But I guess she’s a good soldier, following her queen’s orders.

  Joe just shakes his head.

  “This antagonism to my people’s a new thing for you,” she says to Joe. “And especially for you, Jack. Half the court has been out drinking and dancing with you and would name you a friend.”

  “Respect’s something that has to be earned,” Joe says. “And it has to be maintained. You folks have just let me down, big time. First going after my family—yeah, yeah. You don’t have to argue about how you had nothing to do with it. You tried to stonewall me and let’s get one thing straight. Jilly gets hurt coming out of this, and it’s coming out of somebody’s hide.”

  “You keep talking about family,” Mother Crone says. “But Jilly’s not related to you.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Joe tells her. “Relationships don’t have the same meaning with fairies as it does with my people. Or even humans.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Joe just shrugs. “Things are different outside of the fairy courts. People have passion. They’re not these cool customers registering zero on the emotional scale when it comes to things that matter, like a relationship.”

  Mother Crone gives him a withering look. “Oh, would you give that tired old spiel a rest? We have passion.”

  “Right. Which is why you referred to Geordie Riddell, your lover for the past couple of years, as this ‘human fiddler who visits our court.’ Why, if someone hurts one of your own, it’s a problem of honour and respect, not the deep ache you should feel when someone you care about is in pain.”

  “You don’t understand,” she says. “Human lives are so fleeting compared to ours.”

  “You’re right,” Joe agrees. “I don’t understand, and I don’t particularly want to. Because what’s important is now. What’s important is the faith and trust and love you build with your relationship to someone else. What’s important is that you take care of your own and make sure wrongs are righted. That’s why Jack’s here at my side, ready to take on all comers even though he’s got casual drinking buddies and lovers in your court. Because we’re friends. Because he’s got a big heart that won’t stand for innocents being hurt. It’s why Grey over there—a guy I’ve never met before—is willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with me to make sure the sister of my heart is brought back safe and sound.”

  “But—”

  “And, see, that’s where you really don’t get it. Because Jilly is family to me. Just like Jack is. Just like it seems Grey is. We’re bound by the way we take care of each other, no matter the personal cost.”

  “We’re not so shallow as you’d like to make us out to be.”

  “I know you’re not,” Joe says. “You’re self-centered.”

  Mother Crone glares at him, but before she can speak, one of the guards returns with a cell phone that he tosses to Joe.

  “Hold that thought,” Joe tells Mother Crone. “I need to make this call first.”

  Jilly

  I’m scared and I hate it. Ever since I broke free of the terrors of my childhood and teen years, I’ve prided myself on being fearless. I promised myself I wouldn’t let myself get scared again. At least not this kind of scared.

  I mean, everyone gets scared. Or maybe cautious is a better word.

  I’m like most people in that regard. I don’t do things that are foolhardy or take unnecessary risks just for the sake of taking them. But I’ll stand up to anybody—for myself, for my friends, for whoever needs me to. I don’t abide bullies and when I finally broke free of the cycle of abuse, I vowed that I’d never let myself fall into it again.

  But talking to Mattie, being here, all my brave words and stances have been stripped away and I find myself sucked into the mindless, abject terror that held me as a little kid, waiting in my bedroom to be hurt again. I hope you never have to know that kind of fear. It’s not even the knowledge of the pain to come. It’s being so helpless. So powerless. It’s knowing that no matter what you do, no matter what you say, it’s not going to make any difference, because the person hurting you is bigger than you, and way stronger, and they just don’t care. Or rather, they care for the wrong reasons. Your whimpering and crying makes it better for them.

  I’m not quite in that head space yet, alone here in this forest, imagining some aspect of my brother De
l about to appear from behind any tree, but I’m close. Way too close.

  And I really, really hate it.

  I hate how my mind’s betrayed me, reverting me back to a helpless child like this.

  And it’s not even real. All of this . . . Mattie, the bear, Del—if it is him terrorizing Mattie—none of it’s even real.

  Except that’s the kicker, isn’t it? Here in the otherworld, it all can be real. And I’m stuck dealing with it.

  And there’s no point crying about how it isn’t fair. Just like when my body betrayed me after the accident.

  Oh, I don’t mean I should have recovered more than I have—not when you consider the damage I sustained getting hit by that car. Given how badly I was hurt, I’m doing better than the doctors expected.

  But I know people in magical places, by which I mean healers. Big-time magic workers. They could have helped me recover so that I’m not this Broken Girl the way I am back in the World As It Is. But my body won’t cooperate with them because it turns out that where I’m really a Broken Girl is inside. All these healers, Joe told me, can’t do a thing until I fix the thing that’s wrong inside of me.

  I thought I had. When I reconciled with Raylene. When I came to terms with my having run away from that house of horrors and leaving her to take my place. I didn’t know that was going to happen, but I should have.

  Now I find out that wasn’t the real problem. Or only a part of the real problem.

  The real problem is that locked away inside my head are two little girls who are still dealing with the nightmare: the girl I created from a fairy-tale book, and the one I was. Mattie and me. Poor Mattie, made real by me when I didn’t even know what I was doing.

  So there’s that, and then there’s this place where Del’s still running free, where all my hard-earned bravery and courage have just drained away, turning me back into a victim.

  This must be what blocked the healers from helping me.

  And the thing is, I haven’t even seen Del yet. I don’t have a shred of evidence that he’s actually here. All Mattie said was “he” and I just assumed it was Del. “He” could be anyone. But I know who he is. Del was only the first of many for me, but he was Mattie’s first and only, so who else would be here?

  I look around myself.

  I could wait here for Mattie to come back and tell me if she’s decided to turn me over to Del. Or for Del himself to show up.

  I walk off instead. Not to avoid the problem, because how can you avoid what’s locked up in the deepest part of your own head? It’s just that I need to be moving. Doing something.

  So I press on through the woods and they start to seem familiar. I don’t realize why until I see the house.

  It stops me cold. I haven’t seen that place since I went back to Tyson with Geordie, but I couldn’t forget it if I tried.

  That’s where it all began.

  In an old clapboard house without indoor plumbing on the edge of Tyson—the part of town that people called Hillbilly Holler when I was growing up. A shabby, unkempt place, the overgrown yard dotted with junked cars, machinery debris, and other rubbish half-swallowed by the vegetation. It looks as abandoned as it did when Geordie and I came here years ago in the World As It Is. Maybe it always looked abandoned, even when my family lived there. It’s not like anybody ever took any care of it except for me, and what did I know about gardening or the upkeep a house needs? But at least I tried.

  The county road still runs by it, here in this world inside my head, but the house stands all alone, the neighbouring houses and shacks gone like they never existed.

  I guess in this place they never did.

  I wonder if this is where Del’s holed up. I study the windows, their screens hanging awry, curtains in tatters. It’s impossible to tell if there’s anyone in there or not. Then I catch a glimpse of movement—not inside the house, but along the side.

  Nothing’s changed, except . . .

  I blink and take a closer look. The figure I thought I saw has either stepped out of sight or it’s just me, projecting more of my fears. But I swear I caught a glimpse of a priest in his black habit, standing at the corner of the house before he slipped away.

  I step back deeper under the trees, hoping I wasn’t seen.

  Does this mean they’re all here? All the freaks that made my life such a horror show?

  Del, the priest, my old boyfriend Rob, my foster parents . . .

  I feel nausea rise up my throat and I have to sit down. I lean my head against the trunk of the tall birch behind me, wishing I could stop the flood of memories. But I can’t.

  Del was the worst betrayal—because you expect your family to protect you, not to hurt you—but Father Cleary came pretty close. When the church preaches love, you don’t think they mean it so literally.

  I had my first communion when I was six, which followed hard on the heels of my first confession. I knew what I had to confess, but I also knew what Del would do if I ever told anybody. That line Mattie had about having her nose cut off and a necklace made of her fingers and toes—that came from Del. I’d only ever tried to tell anyone about it once, when it first started happening. All it got me was a slap in the face from my mother for being such a filthy little liar. And later Del made his own point: he burned me with the end of his cigarette, then claimed I’d walked into it. Naturally, they all believed him.

  So I couldn’t confess to the priest because I wanted to keep my nose and fingers and toes, and I didn’t want to be burned again. But it started eating at me because I knew I was lying during confession by not telling about it.

  I realized that not only was Del hurting me, but when I died I was going straight to hell.

  Still, it was another two years before I finally got the courage.

  There I am, this little eight-year-old girl trying to tell the priest what’s been happening to me, and he says that I have to go to his office after I leave the confessional and wait for him there.

  “This is very serious, Jillian,” he told me. “We’re going to have to pray hard and long together to make things better between you and the Lord.”

  Who knew that “praying” was just Father Cleary’s euphemism for dealing with something else that was hard and long? Not the little kid I was. Not until we were in his office later. Not until he closed the door and started to unzip his pants.

  Del was waiting for me outside the church to walk me home. I don’t know if he was psychic, or if it showed all over my face, but he knew right away what had happened. He slapped me hard across the back of the head, just like Mama always did, and told me I was going to pay for this.

  I guess he didn’t like to share his toys.

  That night when I was asleep he scattered broken glass on the floor beside my bed, like my water glass had fallen over, and when I got out of bed in the morning, I stepped right on it with my bare feet.

  Oh, it was a mess, me bawling my head off, blood all over the bottoms of my feet and dripping on the floor. It hurt so bad.

  Mama came in and started yelling at me about how could I be so stupid as to not clean up my glass when it broke last night. I saw my younger brothers, Jimmy and Robbie, standing in the doorway, eyes wide. Del was in the hallway behind them, just grinning away and we both knew why.

  Mama threw a rag at me.

  “Now, you just clean that up, missy,” she told me. “And don’t you go tracking blood all over the floors, neither.”

  I was hobbling around for days, my feet wrapped in rags, trying not to cry with every step I had to take as I did my chores. But I learnt my lesson. I didn’t go tell anybody else. And I knew there was no god. Or at least, if there was, I hated him for letting this happen to me.

  After that, I expected people to betray me. So I wasn’t surprised when I got abused again in one of the foster homes I was put in after I ran away from home. I wasn’t surprised when my boyfriend Rob—another runaway like me—got me strung out on junk and started me turning tricks.

  By
the time Lou—who was a patrolman at the time—got me off the streets and into his girlfriend Angel’s recovery program for kids like me, I’d been betrayed so many times I don’t know how I ever learned to trust again.

  I guess Lou and Angel started the process with—when I look back on it—their infinite patience.

  Sophie and Wendy made it real, befriending me, teaching me what it could mean to have people in your life that you can count on.

  And Geordie . . . Geordie was the first guy I ever met who didn’t betray me, who wouldn’t even think of betraying me. I mean a guy my age, because Lou’d already proven to me there were decent men in the world.

  But they’re not here. Lou and Angel. Sophie and Wendy. My dear lad Geordie.

  There’s only a made-up girl and her monstrous bear who hate me.

  Del, and it looks like the priest.

  Maybe Rob and Adrian L. Brewer, the pasty-faced freak from the last foster home I was in. I remember him the best because he was the worst that child services sent me to.

  Maybe they’re all living together in the house, all my enemies under one roof.

  If I had a can of gasoline, I could burn it down with them in it.

  I sigh. No, I couldn’t. Oh, I could burn the house down, no question, but I wouldn’t want the deaths of even such monsters weighing down my soul.

  It’s funny. Whenever I talk about this kind of thing—in my art, in out-reach programs like Angel runs—you get these people saying things like how it’s all old hat, movie-of-the-week, tearjerker crap. They’re tired of it and wish that people would just shut up and get on with their lives instead of going on and on about it. Well, we’re tired of it, too, those of us unfortunate enough to be Children of the Secret. But that didn’t stop it from happening to us and screwing up our lives. Way too many of us weren’t lucky enough to find support like I got to help me pick up the pieces of my life again.

  And as being here makes it all too clear, the reality of it never really goes away, does it? It’s always there inside us, an unhappy ache that we can’t completely ease no matter how deeply we bury it.