Widdershins

by Charles de Lint

  I’ve given my word.

  So I step back into Kakagi-aki—Raven’s world—and set off to find its creator. Who knows? Maybe he’ll listen to me. Maybe he’ll take out that old pot of his, the one he stirred that brought the world into being in the long ago. Maybe he’ll stir it again and re-create the world. Make a place where we can all start over and do it right this time.

  Jilly

  My paralysis lasts right up until the moment Del actually touches me . . .

  And then all hell breaks loose.

  Maybe I’m just a little kid, but I only look like a little kid. I’m still the grown-up me inside this nine-year-old body. I’m tough. I’m resilient. I’ve survived a lifetime of good and bad, and while maybe the good was really good, the bad was worse than bad, so it’s not like I’m a pushover.

  What I know for sure is, I don’t have to take his crap anymore—not like the little kid I used to be had to.

  Am I still scared? Sure I am. I’d be stupid not to be. In my present circumstances, he’s at least twice my size and way stronger. And he’s always been way meaner.

  But I don’t give up.

  Through the hardest times I’ve been through, I never gave up except for once—that day when I was out of dope and out of money and three-days hungry, when Lou found me and took me to Angel. And even then, I still sassed him. But I just didn’t have it in me to care anymore.

  I care now. I care big time.

  What’s happening to me right now is something I’ve fought against ever since I got myself off the streets. Not just for myself, but for other people, for other kids. I’ve worked at raising awareness. At standing up when standing up was needed. Being the shoulder to lean on. Working the soup kitchens, the crisis lines, whatever was needed when it was needed, not only when it was convenient.

  Until my accident, I was always out there on the front lines, cutting out a chunk of every week to be there. To be doing something. To fight the injustice and wrongs that we seem to do so casually to each other.

  So how can I not fight for myself?

  As soon as that big brother of mine gets close enough, I give him a solid kick in the groin with all the power of a little girl’s leg behind it. And it hurts him. I know it hurts him. I can see it in his eyes. I can see it in his body language.

  But he doesn’t buckle. He just stands there, and I watch the pain leave his eyes. I see him grin at me.

  “You just don’t get it, do you?” he says. “You might have put this world together in some little dark place of your mind, but it was never yours. It was always mine, little sister. What I say goes and only what I say.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He gives me a casual swat with his hand that sends my little child’s body tumbling to the grass.

  “Don’t you sass me, little sister,” he says. “I purely don’t have the patience for it.”

  My head is ringing, but I force myself to sit up. I can feel the heat of a welt burning on my cheek. But I’m too mad to pay attention to either. Too mad to consider the consequences of fighting back, if only with words.

  “You don’t have the patience for it?” I say, getting to my feet. I feel dizzy and my voice sounds so weird—thin and childlike. “You arrogant piece of—”

  He hits me again—still with an open hand, but harder now, enough to make me cry out and send me sprawling once more. Before I can even think of getting up, he’s standing over me—towering, larger than life. He puts a boot on my shoulder and pushes down until it feels like my shoulder is going to snap.

  “Where’d you get all this fight in you?” he asks.

  He leans down, peering into my face. The motion puts increased pressure on the weight of his boot. Tears of pain leak from my eyes.

  “Not that it matters none,” he tells me. “It all comes out the same in the end. You do whatever the hell I tell you, when I tell you, the way I tell you. Or I just break you like a twig.”

  The weight of his boot lifts for a moment, then he brings it down hard and bones snap in my shoulder. He grins as I cry out.

  “And here’s the fun part,” he says.

  He grabs me by my hair and hauls me to my feet. My arm dangles limply from the broken shoulder and pain flares in sharp, dark waves until I can barely stay conscious.

  He grabs my shoulder and squeezes it. I shrink in anticipation, but it’s all gone. The broken bones are mended, the pain is gone except for the memory of it.

  “Whatever I break,” he tells me, “I can fix, too. Isn’t that a comfort, little sister? Knowing that no matter what I do to you, I can bring you back just with a snap of my fingers and we’re ready to start all over again.”

  He waits for me to make some smart remark but I’ve got nothing. I’m too numbed by the enormity of this hell I’ve made for myself.

  He laughs, knowing just what’s going through my head. Knowing he’s got me beat. Then he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder.

  “Time we were getting back to the house,” he says.

  He sets off across the field, my head bouncing against his back. He smells of sweat and cigarettes and something else, something vile and awful that’s rotting there in the dark void of his soul.

  “We’ve got so much catching up to do . . .”

  Lizzie

  Before the priest carried her away, Lizzie saw enough of what was happening to Jilly to break her heart. But there was nothing she could do to help her. She had her own problems with the priest. But whether the priest simply wasn’t as strong as Del, she was more determined or stronger than Jilly, or he simply hadn’t been expecting her to bite his arm, she was able to break free of his grip. He grabbed at her as soon as she got loose, but she scrambled out of his reach.

  She glanced over to where she’d last seen Jilly. Del had her slung over his shoulder now and was already carrying her away—to the house over in the next field, Lizzie assumed. She took a step in their direction.

  She wanted to help Jilly. She wanted to knock that smirk off Del’s face and show him what it meant to be helpless. And she would have, too—or at least she would have tried—but then the priest was lunging at her again, and she had to dodge out of his way.

  This was so insane.

  Surely, when her car had stalled at that crossroads, she’d fallen asleep and was only dreaming all of this.

  The bogans and Grey. Siobhan’s tumble down the stairs. Being kidnapped into some fairy world. Killing a bogan and meeting the doonie.

  And this.

  This.

  It couldn’t be real, not any of it, but especially not this.

  Stuck in a world inside Jilly’s head. That hateful little girl who had led Del and the priest to them, then ambled off like she was on a Sunday stroll. Del’s manhandling of Jilly. And now Jilly was so still, slung over her brother’s back, not even struggling anymore as he carried her to that dilapidated old house in the distance.

  And, of course, the priest.

  Maybe she was the size of some little kid, but if he thought that meant she was easy pickings, he had a whole world of hurt coming to him.

  “Child,” he told her. “Denying your holy duty is a cardinal sin.”

  “So’s fucking little girls.”

  She wasn’t sure which stopped him. The coarse language coming from an apparent child’s mouth, or the simple truth that what he did was wrong in the eyes of both God and man.

  He gave a sad shake of his head.

  “I’m afraid you need to be taught a lesson,” he said, then he smiled. “And there will be smiting.”

  If that’s what you want to call it, Lizzie thought, but she didn’t bother replying.

  Instead, she backed away from his careful approach, waiting for an opening. She knew she couldn’t count on much power from this child’s body she was stuck in, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t hurt him. Just so long as he didn’t use his mojo on her.

  The weird thing here was that she couldn’t get past his being a priest. Oh, she knew al
l about how so many of them were old pervs—sometimes it seemed like a new scandal showed up on the news every second day. And she sure knew the dark side of the church’s black-robed pep squad. She and her cousin had gone to an all-girls Catholic school where the nuns worshipped the priests maybe more than they did God, and they certainly believed that a ruler on the hand or the back of the head was a far better behaviour modifier than ever a kind word might be—never mind the Bible’s teachings. And there had always been talk of which priests and nuns to avoid seeing when you were by yourself.

  So, she wasn’t exactly naive about the so-called sanctity of a priest’s vows.

  What was it her granddad used to say? Something about how the two main problems of the Irish were black with white collars: one you found in the church, the other in a pub in a pint of Guinness.

  But none of that stopped her from this feeling of . . . uneasiness that came over her whenever she saw a priest. It was like seeing a policeman. She couldn’t help but feel guilty as soon as she came into their periphery, even when she’d done absolutely nothing wrong. It was so stupid. And priests . . . well, being around a priest made her think that God’s eye was upon her because she was in such close proximity to one of His chosen. That she should go to confession, say a few “Hail Marys” and ask for the priest’s blessing.

  All bollocks, she knew. At least it was for her, more power to those who still got comfort from the church. But even feeling this way, respect for the clergy had been so ingrained in her from before her first communion that, while the passing of time had faded the edges on any number of her memories, the expectation of being respectful still reared up inside her, sharp and clear, whenever she saw a priest’s collar.

  Even now. Even in this stupid place that shouldn’t exist, with a priest who made a mockery of everything he was supposed to believe in.

  He made a sudden grab for her, and she dodged under his arm. She kicked him in the back of the knee as he went by—cursing this weak little body she was in as she did—but he still went down. While he was off-balance, she kicked him again. Once, in the side of the head, but that didn’t do more than shake him up. He turned to her, and she kicked him a second time, in the solar plexus. All the air went out of him. She watched his face go white as he tumbled to the grass, turned and gave him one last satisfying kick in the side of the head.

  She stood in a defensive position, ready, for long moments, watching his still body. When he still didn’t move, she let herself relax a little. If she ever got out of this and back to the gym, she was going to have to give Johnny a big thank you, since he was the one who insisted she learn footwork as well as the hand-to-hand and defensive techniques she’d been more interested in. In this body, a blow from a little hand couldn’t do nearly as much damage as a foot with the weight of her body behind it.

  Carefully, she went over to the priest. With the toe of her shoe, she lifted his head from the ground. When she pulled her foot away, his head fell limply back to the grass.

  Okay, she thought. So, either he didn’t have the time to work the mojo, or he didn’t have it in the first place, either of which pointed to Del being the really dangerous one.

  She looked toward the house where he’d taken Jilly.

  “Is he dead?” a voice asked from behind her.

  Lizzie turned to see that Mattie had come back. She still held that teddy bear in her arms like a little kid would, but Lizzie wasn’t sure how much of a kid she really was. Her eyes were anything but a child’s—too old, too calculating. And from what Jilly had said, the teddy bear wasn’t exactly an innocent little toy either.

  “Well, is he?”

  Lizzie shrugged. “Who cares?”

  “He will.”

  Lizzie knew the girl meant Del, not this sorry excuse for a priest that lay at her feet. She looked across the field to the farmhouse, then turned her gaze back to the girl’s.

  “Only if you tell him,” she said.

  Mattie smirked. “You can’t stop me.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  Because she’d seen the bear twitch in its mistress’ arms, Lizzie loaded her voice with discouragement, letting Mattie think she was beaten. It was still only a plush toy, threadbare and floppy, but seeing that twitch of movement made Lizzie believe Jilly’s description of how the toy could turn into a giant grizzly bear. She wasn’t going to give it a chance to transform.

  She let her shoulders sag and cast her gaze down when Mattie started grinning. But she looked at the little girl through her lashes, chose her moment, then lunged forward.

  Mattie cried out as Lizzie snatched the toy bear from her hands. Before she could recover, Lizzie started to twist off the teddy’s head.

  “No!” Mattie screamed.

  She charged forward. Lizzie stepped aside and gave the girl a boot in the rear to send her reeling off-balance as she went by. Mattie tripped over a root and went sprawling in the weeds. Lizzie returned her attention to the teddy bear. In her hands she could feel the toy swelling in size, changing. The plush sprouted coarse hairs. The sawdust stuffing took on a spongy feel, like flesh. Grimacing, she gave a final twist and the head came free, happily spraying sawdust rather than blood.

  Whatever spell had begun to animate the teddy was gone and now it was simply a broken toy, head held in one hand, body in the other. Mattie sat in the weeds, staring in horror, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “No!” she cried. “No no no no . . .”

  Lizzie pushed down the sympathy that rose up in her at the pitiable figure the little girl made.

  “Now it’s down to just you and me,” she said. “Are you ready to bargain?”

  Mattie stared daggers at her. She wiped at her cheeks with her sleeve, then blew her nose in the fabric.

  “Why should I?” she asked, her voice gone flat and hard. “You’ve killed him.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “Give me a needle and thread and I can have him back, ship-shape, in no time. But first you have to make me a promise.”

  “I won’t promise anything. I hate you!”

  “I’m sure you do. But I can fix your bear. Just swear you won’t hurt or help anyone hurt Jilly or me or any of our friends.”

  “I won’t. I hate her. I hate both of you, but I hate her more.”

  There was no point in arguing that Jilly had never meant to hurt her. Mattie was a child, with a child’s one-dimensional concept of right and wrong. Shades of grey in terms of circumstances or remorse simply didn’t enter into the equation.

  “I don’t care if you do or don’t,” Lizzie told her. “Swear, or you’ll never get your teddy back. I’ll tear it up into so many small pieces no one will ever be able to put him back together again.”

  Mattie started to cry again and once more Lizzie almost gave in. The little girl’s tears were so heartbreaking. But she remembered how Mattie had led Del to them earlier, and from what Jilly had told her, the bear was extremely dangerous. They couldn’t chance Mattie sending it after them—just saying they managed to escape Del in the first place.

  “Swear, on your true name,” Lizzie said.

  A cunning look came into Mattie’s eyes, but Lizzie shook her head.

  “Don’t think for a moment that I don’t know your true name, Mattie Finn,” she said.

  Jilly had told her that as well.

  “So . . .” Mattie said. “If I help you and promise not to hurt you or Jilly or any of your friends, you’ll fix Grath and give him back to me?”

  Lizzie nodded. “You don’t even have to help. Just promise not to hurt us.”

  “Okay, then. I promise.”

  This seemed a bit too easy, Lizzie thought. And Mattie still had a bit of a smug look, hiding there in the back of her eyes. She also had her hands behind her back.

  “Say it again,” Lizzie said, “and let me see your fingers this time. And it doesn’t count to cross your toes or your eyes or any other part of your body you might be able to cross.”

  Mattie gl
ared at her.

  I was right, Lizzie thought.

  It was so easy to forget that although they both looked like children, Mattie still was a child. To a child, forget ethics. Crossing your fingers while making a promise truly invalidated the promise.

  “I won’t,” Mattie told her.

  “Won’t what?” an all too familiar voice asked.

  Don’t let it be, Lizzie thought. But turning, she saw that Del really had come back and her heart sank. She remembered how easily he had dealt with the child Jilly was. What were the chances she’d have any better success?

  Mattie had turned as well, but as soon as she saw him, she looked away and stared at her shoes.

  “I won’t promise not to hurt them,” she said in a small voice.

  Del shook his head. “I don’t like my girls squabbling. And you know what I do when things I don’t like start happening.”

  Mattie kept her gaze on her shoes and nodded.

  “How about you, little girl?” Del asked Lizzie. “Can you guess what happens?”

  Lizzie shook her head. “But go ahead. Do your worst.”

  Del laughed.

  “Little girl,” he said. “You can’t even imagine my worst. Say, what’s your name, anyway?”

  Lizzie let the moment draw out. She was figuring out the distance between them, the best way to take him down.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t feel like answering. So bite me.”

  He swung his hand at her, but he’d telegraphed the attack with his eyes and Lizzie easily dodged the blow. While he was off-balance, she spun around, putting the force of the movement behind the foot aimed at his knee. After all, it had worked on the priest. But Del recovered faster than she’d expected and grabbed her leg. He gave it a jerk and she went tumbling to the ground.

  Before she could get up, he had a boot on her chest, exerting pressure until she stopped struggling.

  “Feisty little thing, aren’t you?”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Potty-mouthed, too.” He glanced at Mattie. “And we all know what happens to potty-mouthed little girls, don’t we?”