Widdershins

by Charles de de Lint

  This is impossible, she says. We can never gather it all up.

  “We can,” I tell her. “We have to.”

  Once upon a time . . .

  They try to talk me out of it, but in the end I go down to the kitchen, sidling past Del’s body, expecting him to sit up and grab me as I go by. The blood is congealing, and there are flies all over him. I find a pail, a dustpan, and a hand broom and take them back up the stairs, where I spend the next fifteen minutes sweeping up the debris that was once my Geordie and transferring it into the pail.

  When every speck of dirt, every bit of leaf, that I can find is removed from the floor and put into the bucket, I work at the bristles of the broom, making sure everything’s in there. The whole time I’m working, Lizzie kneeling on the floor beside me to help, I’m trying not to think of what the debris represents. I try not to think of Geordie, but how can I not?

  Every time I start to despair, I repeat the words in my head—

  Once upon a time . . .

  —and keep on working.

  Now I lay the broom down. I lay the rag that Lizzie gave me earlier across the dirt and leaves to keep them from coming out and pick up the pail. I turn to Honey.

  “I’m ready,” I say. “Can we still get out?”

  She nods. Put your hands on my shoulders. Keep contact with me.

  Lizzie had stepped out into the hall. She rejoins us, lays her hand on the honey-coloured fur beside mine. Two tiny hands. Children’s hands.

  He’s still dead, she says.

  I think she means Geordie, but then realize she’s talking about Del.

  Get ready, Honey tells us.

  I tighten my grip—one hand in her short fur, the other around the handle of the pail. I see—feel—the world dissolve around us.

  Just before it’s gone, I hear a voice.

  An awful, familiar voice.

  Del.

  Shouting.

  I can’t make out what he’s saying, but then it’s gone, the old farmhouse and world it was in, are all gone. We stand blinking in bright sunlight. We’re on some kind of plateau, looking out over mile after endless mile of red rock and badlands. I let go my grip of Honey’s fur and step away, my legs a little wobbly. I look at my free hand—still child size. When I turn, I see Lizzie’s still a little girl, too. She still has no mouth.

  Where are we? she asks.

  In some part of the otherworld, Honey replies. I don’t know if it has a name. It’s where I was when I crossed over to the world I found you in.

  She looks around, nose lifting to smell the air.

  I thought Joe would still be here, she adds.

  “Joe was with you?” I ask.

  She nods. But something happened just before I got into your world, and I lost hold of him.

  “But he’s okay?”

  I can’t imagine losing anybody else.

  It’s Joe—what could happen to him? But I thought he’d be waiting . . .

  She’s still looking around, still trying to get some scent from the air.

  “What is it?” I ask. “What are you looking for?”

  I’m not sure. It felt like something crossed over with us, but it’s gone now. I can’t sense it anymore.

  I swallow nervously, remembering what I’d heard just as we were leaving.

  “Did it feel like . . . my brother?” I ask.

  No. It was more . . . gentle.

  She gives herself a shake, as though to wake herself up.

  We should get down from this mesa, she adds, and see if we can find out what happened to Joe. Once we get to the bottom, I can take us more quickly to where you can rest and have a drink.

  Why can’t you do it right away? Lizzie asks.

  I want to check for signs of Joe on the path first.

  She starts to trot down what appears to be a faint trail of some kind, coming back when she realizes that we aren’t keeping up.

  Are you all right? she asks. Were either of you injured in that other world?

  We shake our heads.

  “We’re just little kids,” I say. “Physically, I mean. We can’t go as fast as you in this heat.”

  The pail with Geordie’s remains is totally weighing me down as well, but I don’t want to bring that up and have another discussion about how I should just leave it behind.

  I’ll take it slower, Honey says.

  Lizzie falls in behind her and I take up the rear, switching the pail’s weight from one hand to the other. It’s so dry and hot here. I was already tired from all we had to go through with Del, and I’m thirsty now, as well. Lizzie must be, too. That makes me worry about how she’ll even be able to take a drink.

  I’ve been staring at my feet, being careful of where I step. Looking up, I see that I’ve fallen behind, so I try to pick up my pace. That’s when I trip and lose my balance. I try to hold on to the pail, but it falls from my hand and goes tumbling down the steep slope, clattering and banging against the red rock, spraying the debris that was all that was left of Geordie in its wake.

  I scrape my knee, but manage to grab on to a rock and not follow the pail down the slope. I watch it go until it finally hits the ground far below. My vision blurs with tears.

  Once upon a time . . .

  I see a painting in my head, a big red-dirt desert stretching as far as the eye can see, and everywhere there’s little pieces of Geordie scattered. The twigs and leaves, rattling across stone outcrops and dropping into arroyos. The dirt turning to dust and blowing from one end of the horizon to the other.

  The painting’s real. It’s there whether I close my eyes or not.

  Once upon a time . . .

  I was going to do better than all the king’s soldiers and put him back together again.

  I was going to spin straw into gold and buy him back from the underworld.

  I was going to weave a nettle coat and wear it until the end of my days in trade for his life.

  I would have done anything.

  Once upon a time . . .

  But that hope’s gone now. I can’t possibly gather up all the debris that went skittering down the side of the mesa. The dirt and leaves and twigs.

  I’m not aware of Lizzie and Honey coming back to where I’ve fallen until Lizzie touches my arm.

  Oh, Jilly, she says.

  I can’t speak. I can’t do anything but stare at that tiny pail far below. Some of the dirt that spilled from it is close at hand, dark and moist where it lies on the red sand and rock. The heat’s so intense that I can watch it dry out and turn into dust while I crouch here, one arm around the rock that saved me from falling as well.

  We need to keep moving, Honey says. We need to get out of the sun.

  She’s right. We do. Or at least they do.

  I don’t care anymore.

  I could take being the Broken Girl and losing my art. Just like I took the horrible years of Del hurting me and the foster homes and then my running away and living on the streets. I could even take the nightmare of being stuck somewhere in my own head, reliving it all over again.

  But I can’t take losing Geordie.

  Not like this.

  If he were in love with another woman again, or had just moved away . . .

  But he isn’t and he didn’t.

  He came to rescue me and got turned into dirt and crap that I’ve now managed to dump all over the side of this mesa.

  Once upon a time . . .

  Fairy tales saved my life as a kid, but they can’t help me anymore.

  Rabedy

  Rabedy managed to change hack into his bogan shape, fully clothed, though the clothes were a poor fit. The trouser legs were too short, the shirt tight around the shoulders, its tails far too long. But for the moment, it was the best he could do. It was much harder to speak. He couldn’t even get one word out to respond to the cerva spirit’s question, to explain why he had summoned her.

  “Uh . . .”

  Seeing her in her human form, her killing seemed far more a mur
der than it had when she’d been a deer.

  He knew there were bogans who would as happily cut a flank steak from a human as they would from an animal, but he wasn’t one of them. Even Big Dan wasn’t. Truth was, Rabedy would just as soon live on vegetables and fruits and nuts. He rarely ate meat and never cared for hunting. But he’d been out there in the green and the wild all the same, out with Big Dan and the rest of them, Odawa’s protection keeping them safe, though the same couldn’t be said for the green-brees they’d been hunting.

  “There is something familiar about you, little man,” the cerva said.

  Anwatan, Rabedy remembered hearing somewhere. Her name had been Anwatan. It wasn’t some nameless beast they’d murdered in the forest, but a cerva with a name and a family and a spirit that lived on.

  “Why are you familiar?” Anwatan asked.

  “I . . . I . . .”

  Now was the time to use his new-learned talent, to change into a dog and flee, flee, flee . . .

  Except he couldn’t. He couldn’t think of himself or his fear or what was going to happen to him. He could only try to set things right before he had to pay for his part in her murder.

  “I killed you,” he said.

  The cerva spirit frowned and studied him for a long moment.

  “I don’t remember you,” she finally said. “They were little men like you, but their scents were different.”

  “I didn’t shoot the arrows—at least not any that even came close to hitting you. But I was there. I was in that stupid company of murderers.”

  She continued to study him, then slowly nodded.

  “I remember now,” she said. “You stood back from the others when they ran in to finish me off. But you lifted no hand against me.”

  “I was still with them.”

  “And if you were,” she said, “why do you call me up now?”

  “To . . . to make repayment.”

  “You can bring me back to life?”

  “No, I . . . did you know that the cerva are going to war over your murder?”

  She gave a slow nod. “Not all the cerva. Only the buffalo clans.”

  “A lot of innocents will die—your people, as well as fairy.”

  “I know.”

  Rabedy couldn’t tell from her simple response if she thought that was a good or a bad thing.

  “It doesn’t seem right,” he quickly went on. “Killing them won’t bring you or anyone else back. It’ll only make things worse between fairy and your people.”

  “And yet amends must be made.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “You said as much,” Anwatan said. “So tell me, how were you planning to make amends?”

  “I was there,” Rabedy told her. “I was part of it. I want to give myself up to your people so that they can hang me or stab me or do whatever it is that your people do to your enemies. That way, justice will be served, and there’ll be no need for a war.”

  “But you didn’t kill me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I was with them. I didn’t stop them. And you weren’t the first they killed.”

  She nodded. “And what part am I to play in this?”

  “I thought you could come with me. I know they won’t listen to me. They’ll probably just kill me before I can explain, and the war will still go on. But if you speak for me, they’ll listen. They have to listen to you.”

  She looked away, her gaze going beyond him into the dark woods above the cove where they stood.

  “What makes you think that will be enough?” she asked.

  “I . . .”

  “We would have you, but the rest of you little men—the ones who actually killed me—they would continue to run free, able to kill again.”

  Rabedy shook his head. “The Queen will see that they’re punished. She must know by now and no matter what you think, she would never let something like this go unresolved.”

  “You can promise this?”

  How? Rabedy thought. Even if he could ever gain an audience with the Queen, nothing bound her to the promise of some Unseelie bogan. And besides, he’d already be dead anyway.

  “You seem uncertain now,” Anwatan said.

  “It’s just . . . I’m nobody. I know the Queen will do the right thing when she has the facts—she’s not stupid or malicious—but I can’t make her. No one’s going to listen to this bogan. I can only promise what I’m already doing: offering myself up to your people so that justice of some kind can be done.”

  “What is your name, little man?” the cerva spirit asked.

  Rabedy shivered. Give her his name and she could command him. But for this he didn’t hesitate.

  “Rabedy Collins,” he told her.

  She repeated it after him, then nodded.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That is your true name.”

  She fell silent and Rabedy waited for what she would do to him now. He got a nervous tick in his cheek, and he had to plant his weight on his right leg to stop it from shaking. It didn’t help.

  “This is my death,” she said, “so I should have some say in how amends are made.”

  She looked at Rabedy as though expecting a response, and he quickly nodded.

  “So this is what we will do,” she said. “We will go to my kin and your Queen. We will give them the names of the guilty. If we can make Minisino see reason, there will be no war, but there will be justice.”

  “Will the buffalo wait?” Rabedy asked.

  “We won’t know until we ask them, will we?”

  Oh, this didn’t feel good, Rabedy thought. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. Why should the buffalo listen to some useless bogan’s story any more than the Queen would?

  But Anwatan was right. It was her death. So it should be her decision to make.

  “I’m ready to take my punishment,” he said.

  “I don’t include you in this,” she told him. “If I have my way, your punishment will be to live with knowing how you stood aside while evil was done. It’s not a mistake you’ll make again.”

  “No, I won’t. But—”

  “I won’t argue this,” Anwatan said. “Yes, you stood by while I was killed, but you raised no hand against me, and you have enough honour to come to me to make amends.”

  “No, I was going to say something else. You should know that while it was bogans who killed you, it was one of your own who gave us safe passage through the wild and the green.”

  “Was it now.”

  “His name is Odawa—Odawajameg, of the salmon clan. He appears to be blind—I think he really is—but he doesn’t seem to have much trouble getting around when he needs to.”

  “He gave you safe passage?”

  Rabedy nodded. “And taught us to shapechange the way your people do, although I was the only one with any luck at actually learning the trick.”

  “Show me again,” she said.

  So he did. He changed from bogan to dog, as he had done earlier from dog to bogan when she’d spoken to him. Effortlessly. So effortlessly he couldn’t understand why it had ever seemed hard.

  Anwatan nodded when he stood before her as a bogan once more. This time he’d managed to get his clothes to fit better.

  “There’s no scent of fairy on you after you changed,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “This makes it worse.”

  Rabedy knew just what she was thinking. With this knowledge, bogans could go where they wanted in the wild and the green. They could creep up on unsuspecting cousins without the need of being shielded by someone like Odawa.

  “We will deal with him, too,” Anwatan said. “But first we must find my father.”

  “Your father?”

  “He is the clan chief of the deer.”

  “ I . . . I didn’t know that.”

  Rabedy’s heart sank. So, not only had he been a part of murdering a person, now it turned out she was also a princess. No wonder war was on the horizon. He was only surprised that her own cl
an wasn’t standing shoulder to shoulder with the buffalo clan.

  Carefully—because he didn’t want to appear to be slighting her kin—he asked her about that.

  “We are a people of peace,” she said. “My father would have seen that reparation was made, but not this way. The buffalo have always been the warriors among the cerva, and they have old grievances with your people that go beyond the death of a few of the deer people.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I took no insult from your question,” she said. “They have their way and we have ours. We are not without anger or defenses. But we prefer the peaceful solution. Two wrongs will never make a right.”

  “But still . . .”

  She nodded. “Yes, amends must still be made so that those such as your erstwhile companions won’t feel that they can do whatever they wish without fear of punishment.”

  “People can be so horrible, can’t they?”

  “But they also have the potential inside them for great good, too, Rabedy Collins. It’s true we cannot make them turn from doing wrong. But we can set an example by how we live our own lives.”

  “Do you think it makes a difference?”

  “Everything we do makes a difference,” she told him. “The onus is upon us as to whether the difference we make is for good or evil.” She paused a beat, then added, “I will go find my father. Wait for me here.”

  And then she was gone.

  Rabedy stared down at the fire, then let his gaze drift out across the open water of the lake.

  He knew they were doing the right thing. Giving up Big Dan and the others would stop so many innocents from dying. But if he was doing the right thing, why did he feel so guilty? Why did it feel so wrong?

  Timony

  After he had called up a half-dozen knives out of the sand, Timony knew it was well past time to stop. He looked at the weapons lined up in front of him, six razor-sharp blades that gleamed brightly, even in this dull light. Six of them were enough. More than enough, considering that he only had two hands. But cajoling and teasing the sand to take these new shapes had at least kept him busy while he waited. Now there was nothing to occupy him except the enveloping fog, his own worried thoughts, and just out of his view, the morose sound of the waves falling upon the shore.