Widdershins

by Charles de de Lint

  First I thought it was Raylene. Then I found out about Mattie.

  What if there’s another shadow? And then another and another and . . .

  “Jilly?” Geordie says.

  I blink and look at him.

  “Right,” I say. “Time to stop stalling.”

  So we get dressed.

  “Maybe we should call room service and ask for a couple of bowls of sugar,” he says while I’m struggling with my T-shirt.

  Sometimes it’s just so hard for me to get my arms up over my head—especially in the morning when I’m the least flexible.

  Geordie comes over and gives me a hand.

  “Or sugar packets,” I say. “I bet they’d love little sugar packets.”

  Geordie ends up going downstairs and comes back with a coffee for each of us and a handful of chocolate bars for them.

  “Well?” he says when we’ve finished our coffees.

  I nod and set my empty cup on the windowsill. I look out the window at the hills, the sun gleaming bright on the spruce and pine, shadows pooling under their heavy boughs. The light’s amazing, still so focused and almost primal, the way it can be at the beginning or end of the day.

  There was a time when I’d be just itching to get it down on paper with a pencil or pastels, yearning to capture that light before it changes, but these days, when the impulse comes to me, the first thing I do is push it away.

  There was a time when I’d look out the window and feel the weight of the winter just past ease away because it’s so beautiful outside and if it’s not quite blossoms-spring-forth spring, it’s not deep-drifts-of-snow winter anymore, either. I’d insist on us going out and tramping through the woods. I could be out there all day and relish every moment.

  That’s another impulse I push away, when it comes.

  But if I could have it all again . . .

  So I call their names.

  Maida and Zia. Zia and Maida. Crow girls.

  I feel kind of stupid, sitting in my wheelchair, calling to them. Geordie waits quietly on the bed, nodding encouragingly when I glance in his direction.

  I call them again. The third time.

  There’s no response.

  I look at Geordie.

  “Once more,” he says.

  I nod and do it again, my gaze on him, watching him mouth their names with me.

  And then suddenly they’re here.

  One moment, it’s just Geordie and me, sitting in our hotel room, and in the next a tumble of black hair and black clothes lands on the bed in a tangle of limbs, squirming and giggling on the bedclothes, their eyes bright with laughter.

  “Hello, hello,” Maida says.

  She flops onto her back and looks at me from an upside-down vantage. Zia, sprawled across her stomach, spies the chocolate bars.

  “Oh, look,” she says. “Bribes.”

  Maida sits up and grabs one.

  “Don’t be rude,” she tells Zia.

  “They’re not bribes?”

  “Why would our veryvery good friends Geordie and Jilly ever need to bribe us?”

  Zia shrugs. “So that we’ll behave?”

  “Don’t mind her,” Maida says to me. “She was brought up in a tree by an old magpie.”

  Zia nods. “Oh, yes. Ancient and decrepit.”

  “Wheezing and bony.”

  “With long grey hair, tangled like a bird’s nest.”

  “And there,” Maida says, throwing out her hand in a dramatic flourish, “is where we lived.”

  They each open a chocolate bar and eat them in what seems like two bites. But while they obviously relish the chocolate, something about them changes when they’re done. Sitting on the edge of the bed, kicking their heels against the box spring, they face me with suddenly serious eyes and solemn faces.

  “So, is it time?” Maida asks.

  “Of course, it’s time,” Zia answers before I can. “Look how she glows. All the shadows have been burned away.”

  Maida nods. “Except for that one.”

  She points at me, but I have no idea what she’s pointing at.

  “But that’s only a shadow of a shadow,” Zia says. “A memory, nothing more.”

  Maida slides off the bed and walks over to my wheelchair.

  “This will probably hurt,” she says as she stands on my right.

  Zia joins her, standing on the other side of the chair.

  “Not because we want it to,” she adds.

  Maida nods. “Because we don’t.”

  “But because they are old hurts.”

  “Skin and bone and muscle has to be pulled back into shape.”

  “Fresh hurts are much easier.”

  “But messier.”

  They each hold one of my arms against the chair. Maida puts a hand against my chest, pressing me back.

  “This is for the screams,” Zia tells me, which is hardly comforting.

  I don’t know what she means until she puts her hand across my mouth. That’s even less comforting.

  I decide I want to talk about this a little more, but I can’t move my mouth. They might look like skinny little teenage girls, but they’re shockingly strong. Their faces lean in close to mine.

  “Here we go,” Maida says.

  A sudden sharp pain, like someone chipping at the raw nerve of a tooth, tears through my whole body. My back tries to arch, but it can’t move because of Maida’s hand pressing me back. But I’m only dimly aware of that. Just as I’m only dimly aware of their murmured, “Sorry, sorry.”

  There’s only the pain.

  It feels like my arms and legs are being torn apart and whenever I think it can’t get worse—that it has to end now—it only gets worse.

  I don’t think I can bear it.

  I know I can’t.

  If Zia didn’t have her hand over my mouth, I’d be screaming my throat raw.

  I don’t know how long it lasts.

  A few moments.

  Forever.

  I think I pass out for one blessed moment, then the searing pain spins to a crescendo. My ears pop.

  And then it’s gone.

  The worst of it’s gone.

  The crow girls continue to murmur their sorrys. They stroke my brow and push the wet hair back from my face.

  I’m soaked with sweat and trembling from head to foot. My temples throb with a headache that seems mild and soothing after what I’ve just been through. I feel nauseous and weak and if it wasn’t for them holding me, I’d fall right out of my wheelchair.

  I realize my eyes are tightly shut and I open them slowly, wincing as the light intensifies the pain in my head. But as the crow girls continue to stroke my brow, the headache begins to recede, then goes away. The nausea fades. I’m still trembling, but it’s for a different reason now. I feel filled with more excess energy than I know what to do with.

  I see Geordie standing in front of me wearing an expression that’s a weird mix of horror and worry.

  “I . . . I’m okay,” I tell him.

  “Of course, you are,” Zia says.

  Maida nods. “You’re veryvery brave. I’ve seen big old wolves wet themselves over less pain.”

  “I’m pretty wet,” I say.

  Though thankfully I didn’t pee my pants. But my clothes and hair are soaked and plastered against my skin.

  “Up you get now,” Maida says.

  She takes one hand, Zia takes the other and effortlessly, they pull me to my feet.

  I stand there feeling wobbly, trying to adjust my balance. Everything feels wrong until I realize why that is. There’s no more numbness. There’s no more pain. My bad leg takes my weight without wanting to give way from under me.

  The crow girls let go of my hands and I flex my fingers, delighting in the painless movement.

  “Oh, god,” I say.

  Zia shakes her head. “That wasn’t any old spirit that fixed you.”

  “It was a gift of the Grace,” Maida says.

  Geordie takes a step towar
d me, but I close the distance and throw myself at him, my arms wrapped around his neck. I swing there, banging my feet, first against the wheelchair, then against the end of the bed, but I don’t care.

  Geordie hugs me until I put my feet on the ground. He holds me a moment longer, to make sure I’ve got my balance, but he doesn’t need to. I’ve totally got my balance.

  “Oh, dear,” I say and lift a hand to wipe at the big wet spot I’ve put on Geordie’s shirt.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he tells me.

  His grin is as big as the one I can feel stretching my own lips.

  I turn to the crow girls.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” I begin.

  Maida steps up and lays a finger against my mouth.

  “Shush,” she says. “We’ve wanted to do this for ages, but we couldn’t.”

  Zia nods. “There was a veryvery dark thing in you, but it’s gone now.”

  “Gone, gone!” Maida cries.

  And she begins an impromptu dance. She takes one of my hands, Zia the other, and we bang some more around the room, giggling and laughing until we finally collapse on the bed. I look up to see Geordie shaking his head, but still grinning. He pulls me up into a sitting position. I’m still snickering when I turn to look at the crow girls again, but all the merriment has left their faces once more.

  They’re solemn and serious. Everything feels solemn and serious, invested with a gravitas that’s completely eluding me. The very air in the room seems to have an earnest weight to it.

  “You should spend some time in the otherworld,” Zia says.

  Maida nods. “You really should. Both of you.”

  “The air of the otherworld is closer to the long ago than it is here.”

  “It will keep enchantment strong in your blood.”

  “So that you stay strong and your light will never pale.”

  “This world of Raven’s . . . it has a funny hold on how things should be.” “Everything’s harder here.”

  “Magic.”

  “Kindness.”

  “Remembering the Grace.”

  Then Zia winks at me, a quick smile in her eyes. “But it has better sweets.”

  Maida gives a solemn nod of agreement, humour dancing in her eyes, as well.

  “This is veryvery true,” she says.

  They jump onto the bed and bounce up and down.

  “Time to go, time to go!”

  And just like that, as suddenly as they appeared, they’re gone.

  I feel breathless—the crow girls have the habit of making me feel that way. Only Lucius and Geordie ever seem truly calm around them.

  Geordie sits down beside me. He takes what was the Broken Girl’s hand and runs his fingers over mine. They’re as healthy and flexible as his own, without even a hint of numbness or pain.

  “Are you really okay now?” he asks.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever felt better,” I tell him. “Except maybe last night.”

  He blushes, just a little, but he grins.

  “I see they took the rest of the chocolate bars with them,” he says.

  I push him back onto the bed and straddle him.

  “Oh, who cares about a bunch of old chocolate bars?” I ask him.

  “Not me.”

  And he pulls me down, his hands going up the back of my shirt, his lips finding mine.

  Matthew Garner’s been my physical therapist since I got out of rehab, lo so many months ago. I don’t see him every day anymore. These days, I only have an appointment every two weeks. But he knows my case. He knows my body’s strengths and limitations. So when I come waltzing into his office, sans wheelchair or canes, a bounce in my steps and swinging my arms, he just stares at me with that classic slack jaw look that you’re forever reading about, but never seem to actually see in real life.

  It’s been like that since we came down for a late breakfast at the Custom House in Sweetwater through to seeing all my friends. Wendy and Sophie and Mona and just everybody. Even dour old Goon stared in surprise and then actually grinned when I came skipping into the Professor’s house after Geordie and I got back from Sweetwater.

  I don’t even have my scars anymore, and let me tell you, I don’t miss them. Not because of vanity, since I’ve never been one for shorts or dresses. But because every time I looked at them, all I saw was the road map of my pain.

  Geordie’s waiting for me now outside of Matthew’s office. He’s sitting on the balustrade leading down to the sidewalk, his fiddle case open beside him while he plucks out tunes on his fiddle. I give him a kiss—just because I can.

  “How’d it go?” he asks as he puts away his instrument.

  I smile. “He so totally has no idea what happened to me.”

  “And wanted to run a million tests.”

  “Which I politely declined.”

  “As is your wont.”

  I shake a finger at him. “I’m the one who comes out with words like ‘wont,’ Geordie, me lad. Don’t you go stealing my vocabulary.”

  “What’s yours is mine,” he says with a grin.

  “Except we’re not married.”

  “But we could be.”

  I stop and look at him, not quite sure what I’m hearing.

  “Did you just propose to me?” I ask.

  “I was kind of trying it on,” he says, “to see how it would take.”

  “I don’t know. It wouldn’t be very boho of us. Don’t all the good scruffs like you and me just live in sin?”

  “We don’t have to. I think it’d be nice. It would feel . . . complete.”

  “Plus it would let us avoid the whole girlfriend/boyfriend and significant other conundrum.”

  “And I love you.”

  I can’t get enough of hearing those words.

  “Say that again,” I ask.

  “Hove you.”

  “You said it twice,” I tell him, “but I still love you more.”

  Okay, so we’re a couple of saps, but who cares? I’ve been in an endless freefall of happiness for days now and after the last couple of years I put in, I’m reveling in it. I give him another kiss and we start off down the street, holding hands like a couple of school kids.

  “Do we have plans?” I ask.

  “Not until tonight.”

  “Right. Dinner at Christy and Saskia’s.”

  Geordie nods. “Christiana’s supposed to be coming, too.”

  “That’ll be fun. But I was thinking a little more long term.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, maybe we really could spend some time in the otherworld. I’ve only ever been there under duress. I’d like to just be able to explore it for once without having to think that my life’s in danger.”

  “What about what Joe’s always saying—you know, about how that shine of yours is going to attract trouble on the other side.”

  “We can go with Sophie and Wendy at first—or with Christiana. They can show us the ropes and keep us safe. Especially Christiana.”

  “No kidding. I think she’s the definition of capable.”

  “And then there’s always Joe.”

  He nods. “Except I can’t go right away.”

  “Because you’re still doing those gigs with the Knotted Cord.”

  “I promised, didn’t I?”

  I have to smile. The Riddell boys are like cousins and fairy in that way. When they give their word, you can take it to the bank and count on collecting the interest.

  “Of course, you did,” I say.

  “It’s only until Siobhan gets the full use of her arm back again.”

  I nod, but I could have kicked myself that morning in Sweetwater when we came downstairs and I saw her with her arm in a sling.

  “We were so stupid to not ask the crow girls to help her, as well.”

  “I don’t think it works like that,” Geordie says. “I think it’s got to be more serious than a sprained arm, or a cure for a hangover.”

  “We still shou
ld have asked.”

  “There’s a lot of should-haves in both our lives,” he says. “If we stop and worry about them too much, we won’t have time to appreciate what’s happening now.”

  I punch him in the arm.

  “Don’t go getting all philosophical on me,” I say. “You know what I meant.”

  “Ido.”

  “And Geordie, me lad?”

  He turns to look at me.

  “I’d love to be married to you.”

  That quick grin of his is so endearing that I have to pull him to a stop and kiss him again.

  Like I said, we’re a couple of saps. But we’re loving every minute of it.

  It’s later that same night.

  We’re staying in my old studio on Lee Street because—hello? Stairs are no longer a problem for the new and improved All Mended Girl. I can get up and down the steep flight at the loft even better than I could before the accident. I have so much energy it’s almost scary. I was never the quiet and demure type in the first place, but now there’s a constant buzz in my every muscle and vein.

  Maybe it’s the light everybody’s always talking about. I still can’t see it, but maybe I can feel it now.

  I sure feel something.

  We picked up a DVD on the way back from dinner at Christy’s apartment and started to watch it, except Geordie fell asleep halfway through. I turn off the DVD player and TV and sit there on my old Murphy bed for a while, watching him sleep. Finally, I lean down to give him a kiss, then scoot off the bed. I walk over to the window in my bare feet and look down at the street for a long time, feeling so blessed that there aren’t the proper words to express my thanks.

  But I send out thanks all the same. To the crow girls, to Joe, to the Grace, to Geordie and Raylene and everybody who helped bring me to this point where I’m so healthy and happy and alive. Right at this moment I’m not carrying any baggage. I feel vibrant and ready to be filled with new experiences.

  After awhile I take the phone to the far end of the studio where I won’t disturb Geordie, and call my sister.

  I called her once as soon as I got back, just to let her know I was okay and say that I’d call her back later. This is the first chance I’ve had.