The Winter Oak

by James A. Hetley

  Then he reached up and unwound the scarf from his neck. It turned into a rope. Fresh shiny hemp, ending in a hangman's noose. "I've come to ask for help, with my life as the price."

  You had to give him points for drama. Maureen's stomach twisted in her belly, and she dropped her hand from the knife. The cat shoved his head under her fingers, and she scratched his ears and forehead reflexively. He purred again. She felt the vibration in her teeth.

  "What kind of help? For who?"

  "Long story. The short answer is, for slaves."

  Well, he knew the hot buttons. "Okay, you've bought the time for the long version."

  He eyed the knife and the cat. Did he prefer them to the rope? Faster? Maureen didn't know if she had the guts to hang a man. That took premeditation, and she wasn't strong on malice aforethought. Offering her the rope was a good choice. Psychology.

  He looked like he was picking words. "Slaves run away. Some of them even survive. There is a keep . . . was a keep, where they were welcome. A couple of Old Ones who treated humans like people. Like they say you do." He shrugged.

  "About three hundred of them, men, women, children. I got there just after it happened. A few of the neighboring Lords and Ladies decided we were powerful enough to be a threat. End of keep. End of village. End of a couple of hundred lives."

  He paused and shuddered, as if unable to talk for a moment. "Dougal had been part of the plot, another one of his games. That's how I knew about it, how I knew where to find them. Men burned to the bone but still walking, holding dead children but not knowing they were dead because smoke and fire had destroyed sight and their own pain kept them from feeling the cold seeping through the body. Women with empty faces and skirts soaked in blood. A child bound to a post by his own guts and left alive for the ravens."

  Silence hung between them, and the images he'd invoked, and lasted long. Maureen had read enough about ancient warfare that she could see it. Crude stuff, almost Biblical, and she'd bet that the Old Ones didn't pretty it up any.

  The shadows had darkened as the small fire died down to red coals shrouded in ash. Now Padric's face glowed faintly in the night, and the rope around his neck glistened like fresh blood. Screw the symbolism. "What the fuck you want me to do about it? Think I'm the Second Coming of Jesus, here to raise the dead?"

  He crossed himself. She remembered him crossing himself when he'd met her with Dougal's falcon on his wrist and her with the knife bare in her hand. But all he'd asked for was the time to release all the birds before he died. Freedom for them, nothing for himself. Instead, she'd set him free.

  Must be damned hard to hold your faith in God in a place like this.

  "Some survived. Some got away and others faked dead. Even one of the Old Ones made it out. She's a water witch. She would have stayed and fought the fires, but the magic took over and moved her."

  "And?" Although Maureen could see it coming.

  "And we need a place to hide. They need a place to hide." He picked up the charred rabbit and gnawed away with apparent relish, as if he hadn't just described scenes that would leave most men puking.

  She frowned. "They sent you to ask?"

  He shook his head, swallowed, and wiped his mouth again. "I volunteered. I doubt if anyone else could have gotten past Shadow or your other pets."

  "And why wouldn't your enemies just follow you here?"

  He glanced at the black leopard warming her ankles like a housecat. "Because they're afraid of you." The cat blinked lazy eyes and continued to purr, as if he'd understood every word.

  Maureen flowed to her feet and the cat suddenly tensed, heavy against her knee as if her slightest wish would launch him across the fire at Padric's throat. That could become a problem. But then, so's the magic. Learn to keep your temper, girl.

  "Screw it. Bring them in. You can have the fucking dump."

  Padric stood, slowly, cautious, eyeing the cat. "Something you need to know. Fiona was there. So were some Fair Folk we've always connected to the Pendragons. Conservatives, people who really like the status quo." He paused, still staring at Shadow.

  "You bring change." Then he vanished into the darkness, as if he were a leopard himself.

  Probably doesn't want to give you time to change your mind.

  She needed a drink to wash away the stench of his story. But she'd sworn off that stuff. And now she had to walk back into temptation. She had to walk under the keystone of the arch back into Dougal's lair, before a bunch of strangers crowded in and muddled every trail.

  The trail to Brian. Those cellars might give a clue as to where he went. He'd found someplace where her bond didn't reach.

  Thunder rumbled again, closer. She turned until she felt the keep in front of her and strode off into the dark between the trees. The cat padded along beside her, a moving pool of black among black shadows and against black rocks and trunks. Fresh rain drowned the dying campfire behind her, and she didn't worry about coals eating down into dead roots and duff and surfacing again in flames twenty feet and five weeks away. This forest could take care of itself. She'd made sure of that.

  Shadow froze and then inched forward paw by careful paw, glaring up into the blackness of a tree, tail-tip twitching, and Maureen touched the trunk. Smooth bark, beech, rejoicing in the rain washing its leaves and soaking down to its roots. Sean's ghost perched on an upper limb, cold and afraid. Maureen shrugged. Any ghost that was afraid of a leopard was no concern of hers. She waved the cat on.

  Why does he follow me? I don't command the beasts like Dougal did. Maybe he'd gotten so used to people that it was habit. Or maybe he senses a fellow killer and is looking to clean up the scraps.

  And then they were on the edge of the forest, with the keep's stone walls and jagged towers outlined against forked purple lightning. Frankenstein's castle, and the monster was coming home. Rain poured down out of the thunder, around her but not on her. She gritted her teeth and stalked across open rock and grass to the open gate. The cat waited behind, under the shelter of the forest and away from her personal thundercloud.

  Through the empty courtyard until lightning strobed off the top of the burned tower right in front of her and she felt the tingle in her feet, into the empty kitchen and down into the empty cellars, grabbing a flashlight from the shelf behind the door. Doors, servants hiding behind locked doors.

  Evil things walk the storm winds. The Mistress is angry. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For I am the evilest son-of-a-bitch in the whole fucking valley.

  Her heart started to race again, and her palms turned slick. She stalked on, moving fast to get something done before she ran screaming from the weight of stone crushing down on her shoulders. Down past the cell door with its melted hinges. Stupid waste of energy, should have just had the smith chisel the damn thing off for scrap. But she felt better with it behind her. Down through the ironbound oak doors that marked the end of the spaces that were used and into dust and must and darkness. The stones glowed faintly in the beam of her flashlight.

  Footprints in the dust. One pair led on, close-spaced as if they were walking slowly and checking everything for traps as they went along, farther apart as they returned through passages they'd cleared already. She could see Brian and decades of soldiering in the methodical way of them, into and out of connecting doors. She checked empty rooms and cellars choked with ancient trash, finding nothing that gave a clue as to where he'd gone.

  Another pair of feet, smaller, came out of one wall and went into another. Hidden passages? She thumped on one wall and then the other and got a bruised hand for her trouble. Pixies?

  Brian's footprints led into a doorway to the left, into bare living stone. She pushed against the door and it creaked on its hinges, not barred or locked or even latched. She pushed through into the wood-yard at Great Northern Paper's pulp mill, cords of wood as far as her flashlight beam could reach, stacked solid under a stone ceiling.

  Except along one wall. The f
ootprints led on. She followed them. She trailed one hand along the wood, identifying bark, drawing strength from the dried-up corpses of old friends. Make a project, work out dendrochronology from the rings and find out how long ago this fuel was cut. Oak. Oak. Beech. Maple. Oak. Walnut? Some brainless fool was cutting up walnut for firewood? Even if the tree had been storm-killed, they should have made boards and furniture out of it.

  And then she faced another door, also a hand's-breadth ajar, and pushed through it. Her flashlight picked out a crucifix under stone vaulting, and she dropped to one knee out of habit, crossing herself before she entered. A chapel, hidden for centuries.

  Brian's footprints led on, through the dust, circling the room as he scouted it and coming to rest at a pattern on the floor. Smears showed where he'd knelt and studied the thing, then shuffled along on hands and knees to brush the dust away and show the extent of it. Some kind of maze, set into the stone flooring. He'd followed it, she could see the traces in the thin film of dust his cleaning had left behind. And then his footsteps turned and headed back. No clue.

  She squatted on her heels, eyes blurry. He left me. He came down here to get as far away from me as possible and finally worked up enough mad thinking about what kind of bitch I am and then he found a better choice and left me.

  She felt the tons of stone overhead, the vaulted roof and the cubic yards of fill and the castle towers. The walls inched closer. Something rustled behind her, a rat or ghost or magic guardian, and she turned and Dougal stood just inside the door, livid scar across his throat from the blade of her kukri where she'd hacked his head from off his shoulders.

  The blade flashed between them, spinning hilt for tip and whacking point-first into the wooden door. The thump echoed away through empty corridors before her hand and arm even thought about drawing the knife and whipping it across the room and the ghost vanishing the instant cold steel entered its space.

  She stared at her hand. Yes, she could do that again -- you held the knife so and whipped your wrist so and the knife made exactly this many turns in that many feet and she could choose to strike with point or edge or pommel if she wanted. Her hand and the knife loved each other.

  The walls inched closer. The ceiling sagged above her. She backed away from the altar, crossed herself again, wrenched the kukri from the door where it had buried itself two inches deep in solid oak, and whimpered. Small footprints led straight into the wall.

  What kind of ghost leaves footprints?

  Brian had told her of the Old One's powers to heal themselves. She hadn't actually seen Dougal's body burn. She had seen Brian chop Liam's body into pieces in that alley in Naskeag Falls, and seen a hand finger-walking across slush trying to find its wrist and rejoin it.

  Cold terror ran down her spine. She pushed back through the door and the tunnel beside the firewood and the narrow, narrow spaces under low ceilings and the crushing weight of stone. Sweat greased her hands around the tube of the flashlight and the grip of the kukri. She heard her own screams and curses echoing from the cell.

  And then she stood in the wine cellar, corkscrew at her feet, with the astringent ambrosia of fine burgundy in her throat. She took another swallow, long throat-pulsing chug-a-lug really, and let the fire spread through her body from her belly out to the rigid muscles of her shoulders and the tips of her cramped fingers.

  She slid the kukri back into its sheath, picked up the corkscrew and another bottle, and climbed the cold stairway back to the kitchen. She found people there, strangers with white faces drawn with pain and memories, strangers with eyes that probably matched her own for madness. They moved like mannequins and showed about as much awareness of the world around them.

  She handed her bottle to a woman and started to open another. Padric's face loomed across the room, the only familiar one, and the wine loosened her tongue and brain.

  "Hey, Torquemada!" He turned, puzzled. "Yeah, you, fuckwad! Find out where Mairéad is hiding and drag her ass out of her bomb shelter. We need food and bandages and a bunch of beds and crap." He nodded and vanished.

  Maureen took another gulp of Chateau DeFeat, giving the finger to wine-lovers everywhere because she wanted the alcohol, not the sublime blend of French sunshine and rain and soil. Who the fuck needed sobriety? She didn't have anyone to stay sober for. Not like Jo and David.

  Chapter Eleven

  David flexed his aching fingers and stared at them as if they'd betrayed him. Actually, he knew it was the other way around. He hadn't touched his guitar for a couple of weeks -- months, if you went by the calendar they used in Naskeag Falls -- and any little problems he had with chording and finger-picking were his own damn fault.

  But his fingertips felt like they'd ballooned to twice their legal size, been sandpapered raw, and then spliced to red-hot wires for tendons. Playing a good riff depended on muscle memory, notes heard in the brain and expressed through the strings without an intervening thought. His hands refused to do that.

  He set the worn Gibson on the sofa beside him, wincing as his shoulders joined the chorus of complaints. He'd been playing tense, hunched over the axe as if somebody stood behind him with a whip. That was the real problem. He had to get a gig somewhere, connect with a group and earn some eating money. Either that, or ask Jo to swipe some fairy gold from a Leprechaun's hoard.

  The way things had been going, it would just vanish when it touched cold iron. His bank account had shrunk to the point where he'd need a microscope to find the balance, and Jo wasn't any better off. They'd been fine when there was money coming in each Friday. They'd neatly balanced income and outgo, blissfully ignoring that strange concept known as "savings."

  Catching up on two month's rent and mid-winter utilities had been the killer. At that, they were damned lucky the landlord hadn't just dumped their stuff on the sidewalk while they were gone.

  He stood up, trying to stretch the kinks out of his back, and walked to the window. Of course, the scene out there just matched his depression, all mud and filthy snow and rusty cars. It was raining again, a nasty spitting half-sleet. To hell with the calendar -- winter just wouldn't let go.

  This part of Naskeag Falls was a dump at the best of times, peeling paint and empty storefronts and old warehouses with the roofs caving in. Mud season made it worse, hard as that might seem, nothing but dark potholed streets robbed by ice storms and Dutch elm disease of even the slight softening touch of bare winter trees.

  But any time he started longing for the fresh green magic of Maureen's fantasies, he remembered dragon teeth and claws. He remembered strangling briars that sank rootlets into his flesh and drank his blood. He remembered cold-eyed heartless soulless Old Ones who would torture or kill him on a moment's whim.

  David squeezed his eyes shut against the memories. That didn't help, of course. The images were inside his head, not out that window.

  And they all lived happily ever after. The End.

  Well, at least Maureen had her prince and her castle and her household full of servants. She got something out of the fairy tale. All he had to show for it were the persistent nightmares.

  And the professional attention of the cops. That was a weird scene, however you looked at it. Maureen and then Brian had shown up and gone to the cops like good little girls and boys. They'd arrested Brian. Maureen had gone to bail him out. Now the cops seemed more interested in talking to both of them than before, and both of them had vanished.

  He wrinkled his nose and scanned along the street in both directions. No light-bars or two-way radio whips showing, no idling black-and-white cruisers from the city or tan specials from the county sheriff, no unmarked Crown Victorias or Caprices that looked out of place in the neighborhood because they didn't sport rust-eaten fenders and cracked windshields. Must be time for a donut run.

  Or they were following Jo, not bothering to hide, giving her a gentle reminder that they still wanted answers. Answers no cop would believe even if David or Jo had felt inclined to give them. "Yes, we know where Mau
reen and Brian are. No, you can't call up the local police to question them. Not even Interpol. The Sidhe don't use telephones, and the feds don't have an extradition treaty with Camelot."

  He didn't want to think about that scene. Instead, he wondered where Jo had gone. "Errands," she'd said. After a breakfast-table "discussion" about finances. "Fight" would be more accurate. David wondered what percentage of divorces hid "discussions" over money. Empty cupboards and refrigerator sure added to the tension factor. And Jo wasn't stuck with him, wasn't even married to him. Any time she wanted, she could just take three steps and be warm and dry and rich.

  A key scratched in the lock, and Jo walked in. He glanced out the window. Yep, black-and-white cruiser idling to a stop right next to the "No Parking This Side of Street" sign. Didn't they have anything better to do with their time, like hand out summonses for littering? Looked like Barnes behind the wheel. David made a habit of asking all of them for identification. Politely.

  Jo dumped a fistful of mail on the kitchen table, ads and bills most likely, tossed her soaked jacket over the coat rack, and slumped into a chair. She looked tired and bedraggled, and David noticed the knife-edge crease between her lowered eyebrows that meant she had turned into a ticking bomb. Whatever she'd been doing all morning, it sure hadn't turned out well.

  "I stopped by Dom's on the way back from the nursing home. Start tomorrow, breakfast shift."

  David blinked and then stared at her. "Dom's? Doing what?"

  She glared back at him and then shrugged. "Waiting table."

  Dom's. Dominic's Café. "God, the health inspector let them open up again? Hey, nobody but winos and day labor eats there. Breakfast shift, your high-rollers are going to tip a quarter."

  Jo shrugged again. "Hey back at you. Right now, I've got twenty-three dollars and seventy-six cents to my name. Just counted it to make sure. Supper tonight is stone soup. What're you tossing into the pot?"