Widdershins

by Charles de Lint

  There was no moon here—at least not yet—but the stars were peculiarly bright and cast a cool light by which I couldn’t have read, but I could still see well enough to get around. I could even make out the petroglyphs.

  I ran my fingers along their patterns, then sat down with my back to the rocks that held them. The view was still spectacular—more so, or maybe just differently so in this eerie starlight—but all I did was stare at my shoes and start running all my worries through my head again.

  I know. A pointless endeavour. But did you ever try to not think about something?

  I was so caught up inside myself that I never heard Lizzie and Timony return until Lizzie spoke.

  “Earth to Geordie,” she said.

  I started at the sound of her voice. Then the words sank in, and I realized she must have called me a couple of times before I’d finally heard her.

  “You’re back,” I said, looking up.

  “And successfully, too,” she said. She held a fiddle case in either hand and lifted them to emphasize her point. “We even got food that Timony didn’t have to make.”

  I dredged up a smile. “What? Somebody opened up a pretzel stand on that impossibly desolate seashore?”

  “No, we went back to the hotel. I wanted to get my fiddle, too, and let the band know we were doing okay.”

  There was enough light for me to see the worry crease between her eyebrows.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “They weren’t there. Eddie couldn’t tell me where they’d gone except that the last time he’d seen them, they were with Cassie.”

  “Then they’ll be okay,” I told her. “Cassie’d never let them get into any trouble. They’re probably out in the woods, still looking for us.”

  “I guess. Eddie got weird about the rooms, so I put another night on my charge card for all three of them.”

  I nodded. “That’s good. I’ll give you some money when we get back.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Are you hungry?”

  I wasn’t, but I knew I should eat. The way things were going, who knew what was going to happen next? Better to eat while I could to keep up my strength.

  “Sure,” I said. “What have you got?”

  Timony opened the paper bag he was carrying and the smell of fish and chips filled the air. He handed us each a package of them, then reached into the bag again and brought out a large Styrofoam cup of coffee.

  “Lizzie said you’d like this,” he told me as he handed it over.

  “You,” I told her, “are an angel.”

  She smiled. “Aren’t I, just?”

  Timony lit the fire I’d laid—I’ve no idea how because I wasn’t watching—and we sat around it, eating the meal they’d brought. Lizzie wanted to play some tunes then, but I begged off, telling her to go ahead. Instead, she poked at the fire with a stick and looked at me across the flames.

  “I take it you’re not holding up so well,” she said.

  “That’s an understatement. I can’t stop worrying about Jilly—she’s been gone so long.”

  “That might not mean anything,” Timony said. “Time moves differently in different parts of the otherworld.”

  “I know. But then I’m also . . .”

  I hesitated a moment, but knew I had to talk to someone. It might be easier with folks I didn’t know so well.

  “I’m also worried about what happens when she does get back,” I said.

  Lizzie and Timony both waited for me to go on.

  “It’s just we’ve been best friends forever,” I explained, “only it was always just that. Friends.”

  “I have to tell you,” Lizzie said. “When you and Jilly showed up at the hotel—and doesn’t that feel like a million years ago?—I thought the two of you were already a couple. I didn’t know any different until your sister got all excited.”

  “Christiana’s pretty much an ‘in the now’ person, and she tends to wear her emotions on her sleeve.”

  “From the way you say it, I take it that’s not the case with the rest of your family.”

  I hesitated a moment. Where did you even begin explaining Christiana?

  I settled for, “She didn’t really grow up with the rest of us.”

  “She’s not even . . . “ the doonie started to add, but broke off and gave me an embarrassed look. “I’m sorry,” he said

  “It’s okay,” I told him. I looked to Lizzie. “What Timony started to say is that she isn’t human.”

  I gave her the short explanation, the one Christiana had given me, how she was my brother Christy’s shadow: all the bits of himself that he hadn’t liked when he was six or seven that he somehow rolled up into a bundle and cast off. Except she ended up having a life of her own. Took a name that was part his and part that of a girl he’d had a crush on in grade school, and there she was. Christiana Tree. She used the surname because that’s what Christy called her for years, before she’d tell him who she really was. To him, she was Mystery. So, she liked to call herself Ms. Tree.

  “If you’d tried to tell me this a few days ago,” Lizzie said, “I’d have thought you were nuts. But now it almost doesn’t seem weird.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So, do we all have these shadows?”

  “Fairy don’t,” Timony put in.

  “Well, you’d know,” I said. “As for the rest of us .. . I guess. But I don’t think it’s the same for most people. I’d say you have to be pretty intense to start off. Christy certainly fit that bill. He was a bad-tempered little kid, but one day he just changed—like someone had thrown a switch inside him. He didn’t suddenly start liking our parents, but he didn’t bother battling them anymore. He just kind of shut himself off from everybody. At least, that’s what our older brother Paddy told me.”

  “You have another brother?” Lizzie asked.

  I nodded.

  “Let’s see,” she said. “You’re a musician and Christy’s a writer . . . so he must be an artist. Or an actor.”

  “No, he’s dead.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make a joke of him.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry, too. After I learned to make an effort to get along with Christy and found out that, what do you know, I actually like the guy, I wished I’d been able to do it with Paddy, too. But I never got the chance.”

  “What about your parents? Did you reconcile with them, too?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t even try. They’ve always been a lost cause.” We fell silent for a few moments. Timony added some more wood to the fire—he’d taken on the role of caretaker for it, and I was happy to leave him to it. There must have been some mesquite in the new wood he’d added because its distinctive scent was soon wafting over to me.

  “So, was Mother Crone really your girlfriend?” Lizzie asked.

  “I think it was more that I was her boy toy. Except she surprised me today. Now she wants to get serious.”

  “After you’ve hooked up with Jilly.”

  “Isn’t that always the way? But nothing should surprise me when it comes to Mother Crone. She . . .”

  I broke off when I saw Timony leaning close, eyes wide. Lizzie laughed.

  “You have to dish all the dirt,” she said. “Timony’s kind of like the royalty junkies back home when it comes to court fairies.”

  “I am not.”

  “You are so,” Lizzie told him.

  I think he blushed, though it might just have been from the way the firelight fell on his features.

  “Well, there’s not a whole lot to tell,” I said. “I was at her court a lot—you’d have liked it, Lizzie. Fairy musicians have tunes you just never hear anywhere else. But you’d never get her out of the place.”

  “And where was Jilly during all of this?”

  “She had a regular boyfriend. That’s the way it’s always been. When one of us isn’t in a relationship, the other’s been seeing someone else.”

  “And now neither of you is,” Li
zzie said. “So what’s the problem?”

  “Neither of us is very good at keeping a relationship going.”

  “Maybe you were just never in the right one.”

  “Maybe. But what if it doesn’t work out? I’ll lose my best friend.”

  Lizzie gave a slow shake of her head. Her gaze met mine across the fire.

  “And what if it does?” she asked.

  Timony nodded in agreement.

  “Love is the great gift all creatures can share,” he said. “It’s our only chance to be a part of the Grace.”

  “The Grace?” I asked.

  I heard a capital when he said the word and instinctively found myself repeating it the same way.

  “I learned that from the First People,” he said, “who call themselves the cousins. Like our friend Honey. Fairy would say it’s the blessing of the moon. It might not last, but to not dare her gift . . . “ He shrugged. “One might as well not be alive.”

  “I understand what you’re saying. It’s just . . . ”

  “Don’t let fear choose the outcome,” Timony told me when my voice trailed off.

  “I suppose.”

  “You need to distract yourself. Too much heavy thinking’s not good for human or fairy.”

  “We should play some tunes,” Lizzie said. “You could show me one of those fairy ones you were talking about.”

  I was afraid that would only remind me too much of Galfreya, but music’s always been my way out of my head. When I’m playing, the rest of the world dissolves away. I might be unhappy, or broke, or lonely, but music could change that. It didn’t so much make me forget, as give me a new perspective, and lord knew I needed a new perspective right about now.

  I pulled my fiddle case closer and opened the clasps.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  “Music has a magic of its own,” Timony said. “Maybe your playing will help Jilly return more quickly.”

  I already liked the doonie, but when he said that, I felt a real warmth toward him.

  Lizzie and I rosined our bows and checked the tuning of our fiddles against each other.

  “Okay,” I said. “I got this from a troll whistle player, if you can imagine that. It sort of feels like ‘Shenandoah’ when it starts, but then it gets into this funny modal section that really gives it a lift. Let me show you.”

  I played it through, slowly, smiling when she started to pick it up by the second time around.

  Rabedy

  The only thing that saved Rabedy from sharing a fate similar to that of his uncle and the other bogans in Big Dan’s gang was a bad case of nerves.

  Anwatan had told him to wait for her here by the lake’s shore, but without her to protect him, he’d been afraid that some other cousin might come along and discover him. So he hid himself away in a cave-like overhang that had burrowed its way almost ten feet into the limestone cliffs. For good measure, he’d also changed back into the shape of a black dog.

  He’d hardly been in there a half-hour, when he heard the crows arrive.

  At first they kept to their bird shapes, filling the air with hoarse caws, but they soon landed on the beach and took human shape. Rabedy listened to their footsteps and the snatches of conversation that drifted in and out of his hearing.

  “. . . can smell him. He was here.”

  “But he’s not here now.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “He might come back.”

  “Or he could be hiding.”

  That brought a croak of laughter in response.

  “Where? In a crack in the rocks?”

  “Ha ha. But there might be caves in that cliff face.”

  Oh no, oh no, Rabedy thought. Don’t look here.

  But it was too late. He could hear their footsteps approaching.

  What should he do, oh what should he do?

  He looked like a black dog, but he was sure they’d see through to his true shape. Crows were just too smart. That’s what Big Dan always said. Don’t get on the wrong side of a crow, because they never forgot and were far too ingenious when it came to retribution. That was if they didn’t simply call up a murder and swarm you, beak and talon.

  How far back did this overhang go?

  Except that would do no good. It was too hard to move backwards in this shape—at least not without making too much noise—and he wasn’t about to turn around and have his back to them.

  Perhaps he should simply emerge from his hiding place and brazen it out.

  Oh, good plan.

  Here was a better one: why not simply turn back into a bogan and cut his own throat?

  But then the decision was taken away from him.

  “Oh look, crow boys,” a familiar voice said. “Have you come to pay your respects to my departed spirit, or were you hoping for some carrion overlooked by others of your kin?”

  It was Anwatan, Rabedy realized.

  He could feel his whole body relax—though not enough for him to emerge just yet.

  “Can’t help what we are,” one of the crow boys said.

  “That’s true,” Anwatan replied. “But this place has nothing for you.”

  “We’re here on Raven’s business.”

  “Ah, Raven. That’s true. He’s not too happy with you boys just now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was just with him when he got the news about the bogans you slaughtered. You have a strange way of defining the word ‘find.’ ”

  Slaughtered? Rabedy thought. The others were all dead?

  “They killed you,” a crow boy said.

  “They did. But cerva don’t believe that more killing is a solution. The Grace holds all life sacred.”

  “But—”

  “And carrion-eater though Raven is,” she went on, “he doesn’t seem at all pleased to have only bits and pieces of bogans with which to approach the fairy court. It won’t make negotiations easy.”

  “He said that?”

  “Not in so many words. But you know Raven. He can say more with the look in his eye than you or I might in ten minutes of talk.”

  “We thought he’d be glad . . .”

  “Well, he’s not. Now, shoo! Get away from here. This place is sacred to those who follow the path of nonviolence.”

  “We’re sorry . . .”

  “It’s all right, cousin. I know you thought you were helping. But now it’s time for you to go.”

  Rabedy leaned closer when there was no response to that. What was happening out there?

  But then he heard the sound of wings, and he knew they were leaving. He let out the breath he’d been holding.

  “You can come out now,” Anwatan said.

  Still nervous, he crept forward until he emerged from under the overhang. But Anwatan was alone on the beach.

  “Keep that shape,” she said, “or you’ll bring them back. I’ve had enough of death and vengeance.”

  Rabedy cocked his head and looked up at her. There was an unhappy light in her eyes.

  Are you all right, mistress? he asked.

  “No,” she replied. “How could I be? I’m dead. Minisino is dead. Your friends are all dead. Soon Odawa will be, too. And what has anyone learned from all this killing and death? Nothing.”

  I’m so sorry . . .

  She reached down and ruffled the fur on the top of his head.

  “I know you are. Why do you think I kept them from you?”

  But maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to go free. Maybe I should give myself up to—

  “Weren’t you listening to me? I think there’s been enough ‘justice’ served as it is.”

  But—

  “No. Preserving your life . . . that’s all I have left.”

  Only I’m the enemy.

  “Are you? Is that how you feel?”

  No. But I was with them. I’m a bogan.

  “And there are stags that kill, but so what? We all have our natures, but that doesn’t mean we should use them to excuse what
we do. We choose what we do. You chose not to be a part of the killings. I choose not to take vengeance.”

  The more he got to know her, the worse Rabedy felt about not having tried to stop the others from killing her. She was so strong of spirit—nothing like an Unseelie fairy.

  If I could trade places with you—

  “I wouldn’t let you,” she said before he could finish. “My time on this wheel is done—yours isn’t. But if you want to honour me, then choose to add to the Grace, not degrade her gifts.”

  I don’t know that I’m brave enough to be as good as you. I don’t know that I could ever find the courage.

  “You might surprise yourself,” she told him. “But I won’t leave you alone.”

  You’ll stay to teach me?

  She gave him a sad smile. “No. I told you. My time is done. But a friend has promised to help you. I think you’ll like him. He’s part crow, but part dog, too.”

  Rabedy began to get a bad feeling. If this was who he thought it was, every Unseelie fairy did their very best to not attract his attention.

  What’s his name?

  “People just call him Joe.”

  Do you mean Joe Crazy Dog?

  She nodded. “Do you know him?”

  Everybody knows of him. He’s . . . How to put this diplomatically? He’s not exactly patient with the likes of me. And if he was to find out that I was a part of your death . . .

  “He already knows,” Anwatan said. “And he’s promised to help you. But now it’s up to you.”

  Up to me to what?

  “To prove that I haven’t made a mistake in hiding you from the corbae’s too-fierce justice.”

  But . . .

  “I have to go now, Rabedy Collins. I won’t ask you to promise to be the best you can be. I only ask you to promise that you will try.”

  I . . .

  She ruffled the fur on his head again.

  “Don’t worry so much. There is a reason for everything. Perhaps the reason for this was for you to claim the chance to truly be yourself.”

  It’s too dear a price.

  “Then perhaps it was to stop Minisino before he did any real harm. I don’t pretend to understand fate’s plans.”

  She bent down and kissed the top of his head.