Widdershins

by Charles de Lint

  “Hello, darling,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Been awhile, hasn’t it?”

  He bared his teeth and her hackles began to rise before she remembered that this was how men showed their good humour.

  It’s good to see you, she replied.

  She used her spirit voice, speaking mind to mind, employing images as well as words to get her meaning across.

  His eyebrows rose and he showed more of his teeth.

  “I thought this might happen,” he said, “if you stayed in the otherworld for long enough. Could be, pretty soon you’ll be able to walk around on two legs—if you want, that is.”

  ???

  “Yeah, I know. Why would you want to? But it can be useful.”

  No. I meant . . . how would it be possible?

  He shrugged. “I never could figure out the exact physics, if that’s what you’re asking, but somebody tried to explain it to me once. What I got out of it is that there’s all these little subatomic particles that make up everything. You go looking down far enough and eventually you can see that everything’s just energy, not one thing or another. It just is. If you can put a name on it, you can make it be or do anything you want. It’s how we change our shapes and why we don’t stand around buck-naked when we shift from animal to human. Hell, it’s why everything looks the way it does, because of Raven putting a name to it in the long ago.

  “See, there’s a reason names are so important in all the old stories. Put a name to something and you don’t just control it, you can create it.”

  As she absorbed that, his gaze drifted down into the dry wash where the pups were cautiously making their way out of their various hiding places.

  “They yours?” he asked.

  When she shook her head, he studied them a little more closely.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can see now that they don’t have your blood.” His gaze went back to her. “How are those kids of yours?” he added.

  Strong. Smart.

  “No surprise there. They’d pretty much have to be, with you for their mother.”

  Flatterer.

  “Just telling it like it is.”

  Incorrigible flatterer.

  His eyebrows rose again.

  “You’re waking all the way up, aren’t you?” he said.

  What do you mean?

  “The way you’re dealing with intangible concepts. You’re becoming a full-blooded cousin.”

  Can you teach me to walk on two legs? To fly?

  “You don’t have any bird blood, darling, so flying’s out. But taking a human shape? Sure. It’ll take a little while, but I figure you aren’t scared of some hard work.”

  No. But it might be . . . useful to learn the trick of it.

  He bared his teeth again—smiled, she corrected herself. That was what they called it. Smiling.

  “Can be,” he says. “Makes life more complicated, too, but hell. Complications build character, right?”

  When can we start?

  “I’d say right now,” he told her, “except I’m in the middle of a crisis. It’s why I’ve come to you. You remember that sister of mine you helped me with before?”

  She had to think for a moment before she found the name.

  Jilly.

  “That’s the one. Well, trouble’s found her again, and I sure could use your help in tracking her down.”

  She hesitated for a moment and he misread her.

  “I’m not saying the one’s dependent on the other,” he told her. “But I need to deal with this first. Whether you help me or not, soon as she’s safe, I’ll come back to work on it with you.”

  No. I was thinking of the last time. How that woman died. . . .

  “Wasn’t your fault. You just knocked her down. Might as well blame the rock she cracked her head on.”

  If it hadn’t, I would have torn out her throat.

  Joe gave her a slow nod. “Yeah, I can see how knowing that would be a burden. But if you hadn’t, my sister’d be dead. I know how the teachings go—every death diminishes us and all that—but give me a choice, and I’d rather it was my family that lived than somebody who was trying to hurt them.”

  What do you need me to do?

  “Just find her—like you did the last time. I figure the two of you have got some kind of special connection, you know, with . . .”

  How we were hurt when we were young?

  He nodded. “I don’t know how it is for you, but that’s still sitting hard and deep in her—a dark ache that’s always right there under everything else in the life she’s made for herself. I don’t think it’s ever going to go away.”

  I know.

  “Yeah. I guess the sad truth is, you do.”

  When do you need to go?

  “Yesterday.”

  I’ll need to get someone to look after the pups.

  “I appreciate this,” he told her. He waited a beat, then added, “We should see each other more than just when there’s trouble. The times we’ve had together were good.”

  She nodded, pleased that he remembered them as fondly as she did.

  “Thing I’m wondering,” he added. “All those times you were outside the apartment . . . how come you never stopped in to say hello?”

  You knew I was there?

  “After the fact. I’d catch your scent when I stepped outside.”

  I just . . . I don’t know. I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome in that other life of yours.

  Joe regarded her for a long moment.

  “I guess that’s more of the baggage from when you were a pup, because I’ll tell you right now, my house is always going to be your house, too. If I’m not there, you can bet Cassie’ll give you the same welcome I would. Guaranteed.”

  She had trouble meeting his gaze.

  Let me get someone to watch out for the pups, she said, and then we can go.

  “I appreciate it,” he said.

  She shook her head. There are no debts between friends and kin.

  He smiled again, but she was beginning to get used to it.

  “I’d be honoured to have you as either one,” he told her.

  She nodded.

  “You want me to watch the pups while you go get a babysitter?” he asked.

  I’ve already sent for one of my boys.

  “Slick. I didn’t hear a thing.”

  She couldn’t help herself. Her tail gave a flicker of a wag under his praise.

  While we wait for my pack brother, she said to cover up her awkwardness, tell me what happened. When did you last see Jilly?

  “A couple of weeks ago,” he said. “But I’d put this safeguard on her . . .”

  He went on to explain how he’d woken when the safeguard had been tripped, and Jilly had subsequently disappeared when she should have been sent to the Greatwood.

  “And now it’s like she’s not even in the world anymore,” he said. “Not in any world.”

  I can see that, she said. This will be hard. I’ll have to go by the inside of her.

  “I don’t understand.”

  It’s hard to explain. She’s not in any world as we know it. She’s somewhere else—somewhere inside herself.

  “Inside herself?”

  She nodded. And someone’s hurting her . . .

  It was always like that with men, wasn’t it? If they couldn’t hurt a stranger, or some poor mute beast, then they’d hurt one of their own.

  Joe’s eyes, always unusual, flashed with strange fires in their depths, and she could smell the sudden surge of adrenaline in him.

  “Who’s hurting her?” he said in calm voice that promised anything but calm.

  I can’t tell. Someone she knows well.

  “Is that boy of yours going to be long?”

  He’s almost here.

  Joe nodded, giving nothing away. But he was like a hunter, poised to launch himself at his prey.

  Don’t worry, she told him. We’ll get to her in time.

  They had to, she realized, or
Joe would go rogue, and she was just beginning to get an inkling of how dangerous that would be. Not just to his prey, but to himself as well. She’d seen it before in the ring. If he let himself go, he might never get back to himself again. But he wasn’t some fighting dog, thrust into the ring. Power surged behind his eyes, old and dark and stronger than she’d ever imagined until this moment.

  Once it was loosed, he wouldn’t be just a danger to himself and those around him.

  Worlds could fall.

  Geordie

  When Walker took me through the between, we ended up on some dismal seashore with nothing going for it but its eerie desolation. There was little to see because the fog was thick, but I could hear the crash of waves close at hand, and the smell of fish and brine was all around us, strong, almost overpowering. Underfoot, it was all sand and pebbles, wet weeds, shells and bits of driftwood—everything pretty much one shade of grey or another. There didn’t seem to be any colour here at all, and I felt like I was standing in some old postcard, except it was totally depressing instead of quaint. The air itself seemed to have too much mass so that just standing as we were I felt weighed down with some unhappy and heavy burden.

  “What is this place?” I asked Walker.

  He was too busy trying to make out what lay inside the fog to look at me.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “This was simply where the trail led. Some small unwanted world, it seems, grey and abandoned by whomever . . .”

  His voice trailed off and he cocked his head.

  “No,” he said.

  I didn’t know if he was talking to me, himself, or someone I couldn’t see. “Who are you—” I started to ask, but I never got to finish.

  “I won’t allow you to do this in her name,” Walker cried.

  He spoke loudly, his eyes flashing with anger. I backed away from him, but it became quickly obvious that he wasn’t talking to me because the next thing I knew, he was gone, stepping away through the same invisible door that had brought us here.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” I cried.

  But I was alone on the beach now and talking to myself.

  I hurried over to where he’d disappeared and moved my hands through the air, but there was nothing there that I could feel or see.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Jilly and Lizzie were the ones who were lost. We were supposed to find them. So what do I do? Get lost myself.

  I looked around the beach, but I couldn’t see much of anything because of the fog. I got the sense that even if the fog wasn’t here, there still wouldn’t be anything to see. My gaze went to the ground, which was the only part of this world that I could actually make out with any clarity, but there were no clues there either.

  I kicked at a piece of driftwood in frustration.

  This was it. I’d totally screwed up. Now what was going to happen to Jilly and Lizzie? I’d barely gotten started in the search and now here I was, already defeated.

  My gaze lingered on the tracks Walker and I had made in the sand, and I realized that there were too many of them. I looked beyond where we’d appeared. The sand there was undisturbed. Turning the other way, I saw a busy trail of footprints leading off into the fog. Their edges were soft from the incoming tide, but still clearly visible.

  Shrugging, I decided to follow them. It seemed like a plan, though it turned out to not be a very good one because about thirty yards along, they ended as abruptly as they’d begun.

  I moved my hands through the air here as I had at the spot where Walker and I had appeared, not expecting to feel anything. But no sooner had I started, than someone crashed into me, and we were both sent sprawling onto the wet sand. I scrambled to my feet a moment before the strange little man who’d knocked me down did, but I didn’t see that it gave me any particular advantage. The only thing it did was leave me standing with my fiddle case in the sand a half-dozen paces away where it had been thrown when the little man knocked me down—happily, beyond the reach of the incoming tide.

  I still wanted to check that it was okay. Instead we just stood there, studying each other warily.

  He was an odd little bird, but I’d seen stranger at Galfreya’s court. He had the matted dreadlocks and very bright eyes that so many fairy did, stood no taller than my waist, and wore raggedy clothes in a mottle of earth colours. I could never decide if wearing those kinds of things was a fashion statement, or just that clothing didn’t mean that much to them so they let them get all threadbare and worn.

  Mind you, I should talk. I doubted I cut much of a figure myself after having been banged around the way I had been in the past couple of hours.

  “So . . .” I said.

  The sound of my voice broke whatever spell had been keeping the little man motionless. He took a step back.

  “No, wait!” I added, speaking quickly when I realized he might be about to abandon me the way Walker had. “Please don’t go. I won’t hurt you. I . . .” I searched for something that would let him know that I was harmless and settled for, “I’m a musician—at Mother Crone’s court in Newford.”

  He nodded. Apparently that was enough for him to hear me out, though he didn’t seem any less wary.

  “I don’t much hold with the courts,” he said.

  So he was one of the solitary fairies. He probably spent the majority of his time in the otherworld.

  “That’s cool,” I told him.

  He gave me a confused look.

  “I mean, I understand. The courts can be a pain. Even a casual one like Mother Crone’s has all these levels of hierarchy, and it’s a total pain keeping track of them all.”

  He nodded.

  “My name’s Geordie, by the way,” I went on. “Not that I expect you to tell me your name,” I added quickly, knowing how fairy felt about being asked that kind of thing. “And I’m kind of stuck here. You wouldn’t know a way out of this world, would you?”

  “That seems to be a common problem lately.”

  “What do you mean?”

  But he ignored my question to ask his own. “How did you get here?”

  I started to give him the abbreviated version, but as soon as I mentioned Jilly and Lizzie’s names, he interrupted me.

  “I know how this story goes,” he said. “I’ve met your friends.”

  “You have? Where are they? Can you take me to them?”

  “Yes, it’s hard to say, and no.”

  It took me a moment to realize he was simply answering each of my questions in turn. I focused on the middle response.

  “Why is it hard to say where they are?” I asked.

  “Are you familiar with the term croi baile?” he replied. “It means the home of one’s heart.”

  I nodded slowly. I’d heard my brother and Christiana talk about them in the past.

  “Those are the places in the otherworld where you’re most comfortable or something, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a little more thorny than that,” the little man told me. “A better way to put it would be that your croi baile is that part of the otherworld that most closely reflects what lies inside your heart.”

  I nodded to show that I understood him so far.

  “But your friends are in a place that seems to reflect the opposite of that. The place where they are mirrors Jilly’s darkest and oldest fears and is peopled with those who brought such hurts into her life. What makes it confusing is this place shouldn’t exist. At the heart of each of us, no matter how desperate or bleak our lives might seem to be, is a flicker of light and hope—a small echo of the Grace working its light against the dark. That is what our croi baile reflects, and only the dead are without it.”

  I felt my pulse quicken.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “You’re not telling me she’s—”

  “No, no. She’s not dead.”

  “But—”

  “I can’t explain it,” the little man said. “Even by the capricious laws that govern the otherworld, I wouldn’t have believed that such a plac
e could exist, because we all carry the blessing of the Grace inside us—even those of us with the darkest hearts. And your friend Jilly carries a bright reflection of the Grace’s light. But still, given that bounty of light, this place exists inside her. I think because she believes it does.”

  “She’s inside her own mind?”

  He nodded. “The three of us were trapped in there until I was pushed out by one her phantoms. And before you ask, I can’t get back in.”

  I hardly heard the last thing he said. I was too busy trying to work through the concept of being physically trapped in your own mind.

  “Is that even possible?” I found myself asking. “Being physically trapped in your own mind?”

  Just because it was nothing I’d ever heard of before didn’t mean it couldn’t be true. I knew next to nothing about magic, even after having hung around in a fairy court for a couple of years. I’d just played music there. I’d never gotten into the philosophies of magic. But still. You’d think something this odd would have come up in conversation before—with my brother, with somebody.

  “Somewhere,” the little man told me, “anything is possible.”

  “Why is that not comforting.”

  “And less so for those I was forced to leave behind. Your friends are in a terrible place. The things Jilly told us about her childhood . . .”

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah, she really had it rough.”

  The little man gave me a shocked look.

  “You knew?” he said. “You knew and you did nothing?”

  “Hey, I was just a kid myself at the time, and I hadn’t even met her yet. We didn’t meet until we were in our twenties, and all that crap was behind her.” I hesitate a moment, then add, “Well, it seemed to be behind her. You had to know her to understand that it was always going to be an issue.”

  “I don’t understand you people—how you can let such things be.”

  “I don’t understand why we treat each other the way we do either, but right now I don’t much care. I’m more concerned about how we can get to wherever it is that you left Jilly and Lizzie.”