Widdershins

by Charles de Lint

  None of them was particularly appealing, so after awhile he let himself doze. There was no cozy hedgerow at hand, nor a warm tree to wrap him in its deep roots, but he was still able to forget this cool, foggy beach on which he’d set up camp to wait for either Lizzie or Geordie to return—at least he could forget it enough to drift off. He didn’t fall into a deep sleep like the one in which the fish man had caught him unaware, back in the Aisling’s Wood. It was more a light dreaming, a half-awake wander through a dreamscape where the sun shone cheerfully bright, gleaming on the white caps, and the rhythm of the waves on the shore was comforting rather than sullen. Gulls wheeled and dipped above, and there was only one cloud in that otherwise clear blue sky.

  He studied it, vaguely considering its shape. Was it like a turtle—if you ignored that big bit on the left—or more like syrup pooling on a stack of pancakes in some goodwife’s kitchen?

  Hunger woke a faint rumble in his stomach, and he considered convincing some of the seaweed draped upon the sand into becoming something more to his liking. Scones, perhaps. Or a fat slice of ham. Perhaps both, with plenty of syrup and a side dish of—

  His eyes snapped open and he jumped to his feet, a knife held ready in each hand, before he realized what had brought him out of his half-sleep to stand here, awake and alert upon the sand.

  Lizzie.

  She’d escaped that locked world. In fact . . .

  Yes, the world was open now, but that didn’t matter because Lizzie was free of it.

  He let his mind range wide, focusing on where she was, but before he could step away to join her, he realized he was no longer alone on this shore.

  He turned slowly around, trying to pierce the fog. Though he didn’t sense danger, he held the knives by their blades, locked between thumbs and fingers, ready to be thrown.

  “Who’s there?” he asked after a moment.

  He got no response, but he sensed confusion in whoever was hiding from him.

  “I know where you are,” he lied. “If you don’t step out where I can see you, you’ll be trying to tug one of these blades out of your throat, see if you won’t.”

  Though there was still no response, he didn’t throw the knives. There was no point. Because now he realized that floating out there in the fog was a spirit. Bodiless. Voiceless. The spirit of what, he had no idea. All he could sense from it was the confusion and a sadness. No malevolence.

  And it was beginning to drift away from him, losing itself in the fog.

  “Wait!” he called after it. “Don’t go. I can help you find a voice, and then you can tell me what you need.”

  Because when they were left behind like this, spirits always needed something.

  Usually, if the will was strong enough to keep them from going on to wherever the dead went when they were done with their bodies, they were also strong enough to give themselves a shape and make their needs understood. But some were helpless. They existed more in the next world than in this, but were unable to move on.

  “Come to me,” he said.

  He let the knives drop onto the sand and began to gather driftwood and seaweed, shells and whatever other flotsam he could find upon the sand. When he had as much as he needed, he pushed it all together in the rough shape of a man.

  “You see?” he said. “You can wear this and tell me who you are, what you need.”

  Then he began to use that gift of his, convincing the spirit to enter his makeshift man, the changeling shape to hold that spirit and allow it to take on a semblance of life.

  This was an old knowledge he worked with. Normally, one wouldn’t make room for a spirit in the changeling. It was only meant to last long enough to replace the child or human that had been taken away. The poor twig and leaf creature was expected to die quickly, leaving the survivors something to bury.

  This was different, but not so different that he couldn’t see the way to bind the two together. Not permanently—nothing could be permanent with a body such as this—but certainly long enough for him to speak with it.

  “Yes, yes,” he said softly. “That’s it. There’s nothing to hurt you in this body I’ve made for you. It’s all found debris, washed up on the shore. Natural. No spells on it. Nothing to bind you to it, just here for you to use while you will.”

  Spirits like this were such funny things. They wanted to be bound back into the world, but at the same time they couldn’t abide the binding.

  “There, there,” he said, as first an arm twitched, then a foot. “See how comfortable it is. Made just for you, and you can cast it off any time you like. You don’t need my promise to know I speak true. You can feel it in the changeling, can’t you?”

  It was a thing of his making, but Timony still took a step back when the creature sat up.

  Oh, it was a marvel, this calling up magic. Wasn’t it just?

  I . . . feel really weird . . .

  Timony blinked. He knew that voice echoing in his head.

  “Geordie?” he said.

  Its two seashell eyes looked down at its body, then lifted to the doonie’s face.

  What . . . what did you do to me? Geordie asked.

  “Gave you a body and a voice,” Timony told him. “That’s all. I . . . oh, lad, who did this to you? Who killed you?”

  I’m . . . dead?

  Timony nodded.

  But . . .

  Geordie held his arms in front of his face, seaweed wrapped around pieces of driftwood. He tried to touch his fingers to each other, but the doonie hadn’t made them particularly flexible. He hadn’t been trying for an exact anything, since he’d had no idea what the body that once housed the spirit had originally been. Mostly, he’d concentrated on the changeling’s head, giving it sight and hearing and a voice.

  “I’m sorry, lad,” he said. “This is the best I could do with what I had at hand.”

  Geordie didn’t reply. He let his hands drop. It was impossible to read an expression in that grotesque face of his, but the doonie could feel the continuing waves of confusion and despair coming from him.

  “What happened to you?” Timony asked.

  Geordie told him. It wasn’t a long story. He’d arrived in the bedroom of some old farmhouse where he’d had a few moments to be with Jilly before her brother had changed him into a creature much like the one Timony had just built to hold his spirit. And then Del had kicked that changeling apart.

  But do you know what she said? he added. She said I was the only thing she ever really cared about.

  When he spoke of Jilly, he gained a strength and an inner glow.

  This was the thing that was keeping his spirit here, Timony thought. Except . . .

  “Tell me again what he did,” the doonie said. “When he made that changeling of his.”

  There wasn’t much to it, it happened so fast. He just appeared in the doorway . . .

  Timony listened carefully as Geordie repeated that part of his story, interrupting him a couple of times to make sure had the details right.

  “Maybe you’re not dead,” he said. “That world you found her in is still open. We can go back and put together the changeling Del kicked apart. If he could convince your body to turn into the creature, I can make it go back to what you were.”

  It’s not there anymore, Geordie said. Jilly scraped it all together into a pail and took it with her.

  “And she’s with Lizzie?”

  Geordie nodded. With Lizzie and the dog. Her name’s Honey.

  “That’s still good,” Timony told him. “We’ll go to them.”

  And you can do this?

  The doonie nodded confidently.

  “So long as she gathered up all the parts of the changeling her brother made,” he said.

  Geordie stood up and teetered for a moment on legs made of driftwood, held together with seaweed.

  Then what are we waiting for? he asked.

  Walker

  In the beginning, there was only Walker standing alone on the plain, a solitary bulwark to
protect the courts of fairy from the buffalo army that Minisino had raised against them. The worst of it was that Walker didn’t even want to be here. His sympathies, if they were to be counted, lay with the buffalo, to the clans with whom his own people were kin. Not to fairy.

  It was his daughter that was dead.

  It was he who should be seeking vengeance.

  But not like this. Not through war. That was never the way of his own clan. For them, all life was sacred and the taking of it—even from an enemy—left a scar on the soul that never went away, even after the prescribed cleansing and healing ceremonies had been undertaken.

  There were no exceptions. Not even in the defense of one’s own territories and life. The scars remained forever—in this world, and in the next.

  Walker wouldn’t allow it—not in his daughter’s name.

  The stomp dance, the drumming, the chanting, the thunder of the buffalo didn’t stop, didn’t even pause, when he took up his defensive position. But he knew they were aware of him. He knew they saw the tall tines of his antlers scraping at the sky, the determination in the set of his shoulders, the stillness in him when everything that defined them at this moment was sound and movement. They didn’t call for him to join them, but they made no threatening move toward him, either. He wasn’t sure if it was out of respect for his recent loss, or because they knew that one antlered forest lord standing against so many buffalo soldiers would make no difference when they finally marched on the fairy courts.

  After a time, Minisino stepped out of the crowd to face him. Walker wore the shape of a man, tall and broad-shouldered with the wide spread of his antlers rising high, but the buffalo war chief still loomed over him, taller, broader of shoulder, shaggy as only these plains cousins could be.

  They faced each other in a long silence until Minisino finally raised a hand and silenced the war dance. The ensuing quiet seemed as loud as the thundering drums and stomping hooves had earlier and left a ringing in Walker’s ears. He could still hear the drumming, but soon realized it was the sound of his own pulse, still keeping time to the rhythm of the now silent stomp dance.

  As the quiet lengthened, deepened, the two cerva studied each other, neither speaking.

  There was something wrong here, Walker thought. No, not exactly wrong, but not exactly right, either. He knew the politics behind this move of Minisino’s, how it was time for all the injustices against the cerva clans and tribes to be set right, beginning with Anwatan’s death and stretching back to the great herds of buffalo that had been slaughtered with the coming of the Europeans and the aganesha who stowed away on their great ships as they crossed the ocean. Trolls and bogans, hidden deep in the holds. Fairies riding invisible on the rigging.

  A reckoning was not only required, it was long past due.

  It was an old, unhappy argument.

  At one time, when he was a young buck, Walker might have been swayed to join Minisino’s army. But while he’d seen too much of the hurt and trouble of the world, he’d also seen the good in it. And he knew the spiritual leaders of the cerva spoke the truth when they named all life sacred, even that of one’s enemy.

  So, while yes, Walker agreed, it had been better before the Europeans had come, that was many, many moons and seasons ago. The world changed, whether you wanted it to or not. It had changed from when Raven first called it up out of the long ago, and it would continue to change. The great tribes of buffalo could not be brought back. Anwatan, and those who had died these past few months as she had . . . they could not be brought back, either. Attacking all humans, or all fairy, would change nothing except to leave a dark stain on the soul of any cousin who took part in this war.

  Minisino obviously disagreed. With the count of recent deaths mounting, more and more of his clan came to side with him until finally Pijaki-tibik, the old war chief, was ousted and Minisino claimed the title.

  There had always been coals of anger smoldering deep in Minisino’s eyes, but today Walker sensed that anger was older than the injustice of Anwatan’s death and had little to do with vengeance for the thousands slain by the Europeans with their rifles and knives, who left their bodies to rot on the plains, taking only their skins.

  But Walker couldn’t work his way through to the source of that anger, and now was not the time to try. With the army listening, he could only use the argument to which he had an undeniable right.

  “You need to step aside, old man,” Minisino finally said.

  Walker glared at him. “I will not allow you to do this in Anwatan’s name.”

  “Perhaps you haven’t noticed: you are only one and we are many.”

  “You have no right to take my vengeance,” Walker told him. “It is mine to take. Mine to decide the when and the where and the how.”

  “Of course,” Minisino said. “But this is not for Anwatan, though we could certainly include her vengeance in ours. We do this for all the cerva the aganesha have butchered. The time of reckoning has finally come.”

  “This is wrong. When one of the herd breaks a leg in a prairie dog’s hole, do you declare war on all prairie dogs?”

  Minisino shook his head. “Except these aganesha are not innocent. Have you forgotten so quickly how they butchered your daughter?”

  Walker had to take a breath to steady himself, but it was still hard to keep his sorrow and his own anger in check.

  “Bogans killed Anwatan,” he said finally. “A handful of them. You declare war on all fairies.”

  “I repeat: they are none of them innocent. Those who haven’t raised a hand against us have still stood aside while the damage was done. They treat us like vermin in our own land. I say again, a reckoning is long overdue.”

  “I won’t allow it.”

  Minisino nodded.

  “Except standing there alone as you are,” he said, “there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop us.”

  “Do you want me to beg you?” Walker said. “Is that what it will take?”

  “No,” Minisino said. “I want you to—”

  But he was cut off by a stranger’s voice before he could finish.

  “Or maybe you want me to beg,” the newcomer said.

  They had appeared out of nowhere, the two men who approached them now.

  No, not men, Walker realized. But cousins. The collective surprise of the gathered buffalo echoed in his own chest when he realized who the larger of the two was.

  Ayabe, the moose lord.

  And with him . . .

  An instinctual nervousness tracked up his spine when he saw the coyote in Ayabe’s companion—a cerva’s natural response to a predator—and he immediately looked for the rest of the pack. But the two were alone and Walker made himself relax. What could one canid do in such a gathering of cerva? And after all, he was in Ayabe’s company.

  Ayabe.

  Walker could count on one hand the times he’d seen the elusive cerva lord. There were always stories of his carousing in far-off places, of week-long poker games and story sessions that went on longer still. But the only glimpses Walker had ever had were from a distance, the proud moose lord ghosting through the cedar woods, or spied in the shallows of a lake, high in the mountains, seen one moment, gone the next. Walker couldn’t ever remember hearing of Ayabe involving himself in a situation such as this. By winter fires, when the stories were told, if a hero went to Ayabe for aid, he was told that whatever trouble you got yourself into, it was up to you to extract yourself from it.

  Walker turned his attention back to Minisino. The buffalo war chief had already recovered from his own surprise.

  “An admirable show of concern,” he told Ayabe, “for one who, by all accounts, otherwise expresses so little interest in the welfare of his people.”

  Ayabe frowned. “You are not my people. I rule no one.”

  “Yet here you are, expecting us to forget hundreds of years of murder and death, because your views differ from ours.”

  “You have no idea why I am here,” Ayabe told hi
m. “I have yet to speak.”

  “I think it’s quite clear. You expect us to defer to—”

  “I am an individual,” Ayabe broke in, “just as we are all individuals, though you seem to forget that, or why would a herd mentality have you all following the foolishness of whoever has the loudest voice?”

  “You—”

  “I don’t agree with this war and I am here to explain why. But I don’t rule you. Each of you must make up your own mind as to why you are willing to go to war.”

  “We have concerns—”

  “Everyone has concerns,” yet another new voice said, “though most of us don’t express them in war.”

  If Ayabe’s appearance was a surprise, Raven’s was a complete shock. Walker couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard of Raven leaving the neighbourhood of his roost, little say involving himself in the business of others. He came with one corbae for a companion, but he didn’t need a show of force to command attention. He had such an imposing authority that even Ayabe was overshadowed by his presence.

  Walker looked from one to the other and couldn’t understand how two of the most powerful of the cousins, two known to distance themselves from the troubles of the world, had been brought together in this place, at this time. Then yet another group appeared on the plain—a handful of humans led by a cousin, part dog, part crow—and Walker began to get an inkling.

  Joseph Crazy Dog.

  He knew those crazy clown eyes. Everybody did. The stories surrounding this crow dog cousin were endless—mostly tall tales, Walker had always assumed. Now he wasn’t so sure, because this was just like one of those improbable stories told late at night around a campfire. Who else but Crazy Dog would find a way to bring both Ayabe and Raven here? And while this was unlike either of them, it was classic Crazy Dog, considering how each story told of him began with his involving himself in everybody’s and anybody’s business. At least, he did so if he thought there was a wrong that needed to be set right.

  So it had to be Crazy Dog’s doing. And if Walker needed more confirmation . . . while he didn’t know Raven’s companion, he now recognized the canid that had come with Ayabe: Whiskey Jack, a well-known companion of Crazy Dog’s.