Someplace to Be Flying

by Charles de Lint

  "How about your developing equipment?"

  "It seems to have survived," she said. "The bulb's broken on the enlarger, but it's pretty sturdy so I think it'll be okay."

  "You've got insurance?"

  She nodded. "Two hundred deductible. I suppose that should make me feel better, but it doesn't. It's going to take so long to get everything fixed up again. And the worst thing is, I don't even know if I want to live here anymore. This used to be my home; now it's more like some Tombs squat and I don't feel at all safe in it."

  There were dents and holes in the drywall from having had computer components and the like thrown against it. Deep gouges in the wooden floors. Lily and Hank had replaced all her files in the file cabinet, but it was going to take days to put them back in order—not to mention the weeks it would take to reorganize all her file photographs. And that was just this room. Her darkroom smelled so strongly of spilled chemicals that it was hard to stay in it for any length of time. The kitchen still reeked even though they'd had it airing for hours now.

  "We don't have to stay here," Hank said. "We could find a hotel room. Maybe you'd feel safer there."

  "But all my things would still be here. If they were to come back …"

  "I don't think they'll be back. They went through this place pretty thoroughly and didn't find what they were looking for."

  He hesitated then and Lily knew what he was leaving unspoken.

  "It's me they want now, isn't it?" she said.

  "Hard to say," he told her. "We don't know what they're looking for."

  She appreciated the way he was downplaying the danger, but they both knew that anyone who'd gone to this much trouble wasn't about to give up. Whatever they wanted from her, the state of her apartment was proof that they wanted it badly. Sighing, she swiveled her chair so that she was facing her computer screen again.

  "I got an email from a friend of mine," she said. "Here. Read it."

  He came into the room and looked at the screen over her shoulder. When he'd finished, he pulled a straight-backed chair over and straddled it so that he could fold his arms across the back.

  "Do you remember this Professor Dapple?" he asked.

  "Not really. But it'd be worth stopping by the library in the morning to see if they have the book, wouldn't it?"

  Hank nodded. "The more we know, the better off we'll be."

  "Oh, I've got something to show you," Lily said. "Wait here a sec."

  She went into the living room and brought back the knapsack she'd taken with her to Arizona. From the open top she took out a small soft leather pouch and passed it over to him.

  "What's this?"

  "Look at it. I found it in my knapsack when you were putting the garbage out."

  Hank opened the pouch and shook a handful of silver jewelry onto his palm. There were three bracelets, one a smooth solid band almost an inch wide, the other two braided. A fourth was inlaid with a vibrant piece of polished turquoise holding dark red-brown veins that made an almost recognizable pattern. Half-formed pictographs. Maybe a fossilized bird track. The same turquoise was in a couple of the rings and the brooch. The earrings were spiraling silver designs.

  He looked up at her. "When you say you found it … ?"

  "I mean, I didn't pack it," Lily said. "Margaret must have put it in there. She's the only one who could have."

  "Because she helped you pack."

  Lily nodded. "I got my camera gear together while she put everything else in the knapsack."

  "So …" Hank looked down at the jewelry in his hand, then slid it back into the pouch. "What are you saying? You think whoever trashed your place was looking for this?"

  "No. I mean, how could they? I didn't have the jewelry—I hadn't even met Margaret yet when my place got trashed, or when we first met in that alleyway."

  "These must be worth a lot."

  "I'd say so. This woman I sat with on the plane paid a fortune for the jewelry she'd bought while she was there and none of it was nearly as nice as this."

  "I don't get it."

  "Me, neither." She gave him a sudden smile. "Maybe it's her hoard—you know how magpies are supposed to collect bright objects? I never saw anyone wear as much jewelry as she did. But on her it wasn't, like, overkill or anything. It worked."

  Hank hefted the pouch. "Maybe you're supposed to wear them … or carry the pouch around with you. For protection or something."

  "You think?"

  "Well, don't talismans come up in those stories of Jack's?"

  "The only one I can think of is that pot of Raven's that Cody's always stealing."

  "I remember one where someone was given a bone flute," Hank said. "And there were others. Black stones that were pieces of the first land. Fetish bundles filled with seeds and animal teeth and feathers. Things like that."

  "I probably haven't had the chance to hear as many of those stories as you have."

  Hank nodded. "I guess. But I'd keep these close by anyway—just to be on the safe side."

  "I will," she said as he passed the pouch back to her.

  She tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a yawn.

  "One more thing before you head for bed," Hank said. "A friend of mine came by while I was taking that last load of garbage out and we talked about some of this."

  "I thought you were gone awhile."

  "The upshot is, he knows somebody who might be able to set up a meet for us with the Couteaus."

  Lily couldn't suppress a shiver. "Is that such a good idea?"

  "Funny. That's exactly what he said."

  "I'm serious."

  "So was he. But like I told him, the way I see it is, we have a choice: We can either meet them on safe ground and see if we can work something out, or we wait for their next move."

  "There's no third option, like running away?" Lily asked.

  "Sure. But if they're determined enough, they'll find you."

  "You've already asked your friend to set this up, haven't you?"

  Hank nodded. "I can be patient about a lot of things, but not this. Not where there's the chance someone's going to get hurt."

  How had her life drifted so far from the safe, normal existence it had been just a week or so ago?

  "I don't understand," Lily said. "If you've already arranged for this, what is it that you're asking me?"

  "I just need to know—are you in or out?"

  "You mean do I want to come along?"

  Hank nodded. "I don't have to tell you it could be dangerous. We don't know anything about these guys. But you're involved, so I thought it was only fair to give you the option."

  "I don't want anything to do with them."

  "Okay."

  Lily took a deep breath. She had to be nuts and Donna would kill her if she found out.

  "But I'm in," she said.

  His look of approval warmed her, but didn't make her feel any braver or more sure of her sanity.

  "We won't be hearing anything until sometime in the morning at the earliest," he said. "You should probably take the opportunity to grab some rest."

  For the first time since they'd discovered that her apartment had been torn apart, Lily found herself wondering again if they were going to end up sleeping together.

  "You'll stay?" she asked.

  "If you want me to."

  It was like he was always giving her the option to gracefully back off, and Lily couldn't figure out why, but she wasn't going to spend time tonight worrying at it. She looked him directly in the eye.

  "I want you to," she said.

  This time he leaned close and kissed her.

  12.

  Ray thought of Jack as he stood in the lane behind the crow house that night, wearing his new skin.

  The lonesome dark.

  That's what Jack called a night like this. When you were distanced from everything and everybody. Out on your own and there was nobody to care if you were happy or sad. If you lived or died.

  The lonesome dark hadn't existed in t
he old days. That was something people invented. Like time. Parcel up the days, parcel up the seasons. Add a minute here, a day there when it doesn't quite fit. Trim the square peg so that you could slide it into the round hole. In the old days the night was as open as the day. It wasn't a better place to hide because there was nothing to hide from. You weren't outside, looking in, because there was no in.

  In the lonesome dark it was easy to agree with Cody. Put everything back to the way it was before that first big mistake of his. 'Cept it wouldn't happen. Jack was right. Pretty much anything Cody touched had a way of screwing up, and that was something that was never going to change.

  The thing Ray needed to work out now was, how was it going to mess up this time?

  There was a gathering tonight, up in the Tombs somewhere, a murder of blackbirds. Corbae and their little cousins. Ray had been out tracking elusive cuckoos when he first heard the crows squawking and carrying on. So he headed back to the crow house to finish what he'd started this morning: grab Kerry and make a run for it. Except once he got there he found that they hadn't left her unguarded. Raven was inside—like he'd do much good, the state he was in—but Chloë was perched up on the roof. Neither of them seemed to pay any notice to him, but you never knew.

  Everybody else was gone.

  Ray'd had a lot of time to think today. What he finally came up with was that the crows had a use for Kerry, the same as Cody and the cuckoos did. And that was as far as he could get. His granddaughter was so innocent—to the world and to her blood—that it made no sense. She'd spent half her life as a child, the other half cloistered away from the world like a nun, numbed with drugs instead of married to God. What did they think she could do?

  Did Cody expect her to reinvent the world for him? Did the crows think she could stop Cody and the cuckoos from getting their hands on Raven's old pot? Or maybe …

  His eyes narrowed suddenly and he studied the crow house with new interest as he considered Raven's pot. Perhaps the crows had no more idea where the pot was than Cody did.

  Was that possible? Had they gone and lost the damn thing again? Set it down someplace and the next thing you knew, nobody remembered where? It wouldn't be the first time, though you'd think by now they'd start paying a little more attention to where they stored it, considering what you could do with that old shapeshifting cauldron. Maybe Raven wasn't actually enough in this world to pay much attention to where it should be, but you'd think Chloë would be keeping a close eye on it.

  The way the crows were carrying on now, they'd either lost the pot and were organizing a search for it, or they were preparing an attack against the cuckoos that Cody had supposedly brought into the city as a diversion—something to keep the crows busy while he snatched the pot. But if the pot was lost …

  He knew nothing about his granddaughter, didn't know if she had a finder's gift. Some humans had it. Not like the hawks or cuckoos did, not so focused and strong, but if she did, her corbae and canid blood would make it all that more potent. And if she did have the gift, that would explain why Cody was so interested in her and the crows were protecting her.

  It made so much sense, Ray couldn't understand why he hadn't seen it earlier. But now he was sure he'd figured it out. Why else would Cody have been so interested in Kerry? Cody couldn't use the cuckoos to help him find it because they'd just grab the pot and cut him out of the deal. And the crows didn't have that kind of tracking gift. If they did, they wouldn't keep losing the damn thing in the first place.

  So if Kerry did have that gift, they'd both have a use for her.

  Trouble was, that brought up the big question: What should he do with this knowledge? There had to be some way he could use it to keep Kerry safe because if either party tried to get her to find the pot, it was going to put her right in the line of fire.

  Maybe it was time to hook up with Jack again. Kerry might be his granddaughter, but she was the old jackdaw's daughter.

  He gave the crow house a last thoughtful look, then set off into the night still wearing his new skin. The height and red hair were gone along with the long narrow face. He was crow girl-sized now, with hair and skin as dark as any corbae. He probably wouldn't fool most crows for long, not the ones that knew him, not once they got his scent. But they'd be so busy with their gathering he figured he could slip in and take Jack aside for a few words before anyone was the wiser.

  It was worth a try. At this point he didn't have anything to lose.

  13.

  Paris sat on an overturned pail outside Moth's trailer, a half-dozen dogs sleeping in the dirt around her. She'd pinched a pack of cigarettes from a carton in the trailer and smoked one, but the nicotine hit hadn't helped calm her nerves. All it did was put a bitter taste in her mouth that the tea she was drinking couldn't seem to wash away. The hot day had finally cooled off, but she was still in short sleeves. Holding her tattooed arms near the fire in the oil drum, she moved them back and forth so that the flickering light made them seem less like her familiar journal, more like some obscure movie filmed by a Dadaist.

  She was in an odd mood, brought on as much by the proliferation of crows in the Tombs tonight as by their lack of success in finding Katy. Though she was trying to ignore them, she could still hear the birds, loud and raucous though they were at least a half-dozen blocks away. They'd been flying over the junkyard since late afternoon, heading deeper into the Tombs, singly, in pairs, in flocks of a hundred or more. It was just too weird.

  One of the dogs lying by her foot lifted his head and suddenly they were all alert, staring down one of the narrow lanes separating the junked cars. The eerie feeling the crows had put in her made Paris twitchier than usual. She reached down and picked up a stick that was on its way to the fire, ready to use it as a makeshift billy club, then relaxed when she saw it was only Anita.

  "Any luck?" she asked as the older woman drew near and settled in the lawn chair beside her.

  Anita shook her head. "Wherever that girl is, she hasn't come back to that nest she made in the Volvo last night."

  The word "nest" made Paris think of the crows again.

  "What do you think they're doing?" she asked. "There's got to be a couple of thousand crows over there by now."

  "Damned if I know." Anita's eyes seemed to hold a strange light, but it was only the fire reflecting in them. "Jack'd know. Hell, Jack's probably over there in the thick of them. We could waltz over and ask him."

  "Not me," Paris told her. "All those crows are starting to give me the creeps."

  "I know what you mean. It's too much like one of Jack's stories." Anita gave her a tired smile. "You know, like they could be true."

  Paris thought of what had happened to Hank.

  "They are true," she said.

  "Don't you start. I'm spooked enough as it is without starting to believe there's more to them than Jack passing the time around a campfire."

  "We can't pretend they're not true."

  Anita sighed. "You ever see one of those animal people of his?"

  "No. But Hank has."

  "Jesus. Are you serious?"

  Paris nodded. "He saw the crow girls."

  They both looked in the direction of the noisy gathering. If anything, it seemed to keep getting louder.

  "Did you ever see that Hitchcock movie?" Paris asked. "You know the one where—"

  Anita cut her off. "What're you trying to do, girl? Make me a complete nervous wreck?"

  "Sorry," Paris said. She only managed to stay quiet for a few moments. "But still …"

  Anita sighed again, heavier this time. "Yeah. There's some kind of trouble brewing over there all right. Let's just hope they keep it to themselves."

  Only they hadn't, Paris thought. Jack and Katy were still missing, Hank was involved in … something, and now there were who knew how many crows gathering in the Tombs. If all of that didn't add up to something, then what did?

  But this time she kept quiet. She reached down, dug her fingers into the thick fur of the d
og lying closest to her. It didn't help that despite the animal's apparent disinterest, under its fur, the dog's muscles were as tense as hers.

  "You staying the night?" Anita asked after a while.

  "No. I thought I'd crash at Jack's bus. You know, just in case one of them shows up."

  "I'd take a couple of the dogs with me, if I were you."

  Paris nodded after a moment. "I guess maybe I will."

  14.

  Ray had managed to get within a block of the crow's gathering without being noticed when a familiar voice suddenly called out to him from the shadowed doorway of a nearby building.

  "Hey, Ray. Nice skin. What're you supposed to be—a boy or a girl?"

  Cody. Just about the last person Ray was hoping to run into tonight.

  "I'm through doing business with you," he said to the shadows.

  For a long moment there was only silence from the doorway. Then a piece of the darkness stepped away and took Cody's tall, lean shape. Ray backed up a couple of paces. He started to reach under the ragged jean jacket he was wearing, letting his hand fall back to his side when he saw Cody was unarmed.

  Cody caught the movement and smiled. He looked as handsome as ever. You'd never think he'd gotten his nose broken this morning. There was no swelling, no bruises, anything.

  "I'm disappointed," Cody said. "I thought we were friends."

  "And here I thought you were just using me."

  Cody's gaze went hard. "Drop the attitude, Ray," he said. "It doesn't suit you."

  Ray sighed and shook his head. Turning away, he looked farther down the street past the abandoned car that was rusting by the curb close to where they were standing. You could see the ledges and rooftops were thick with crows. Thousands of them, black-winged and dark-eyed. Not corbae, but their little cousins—just as the small red foxes running in the woods were his. The birds had been noisy as hell for hours, setting up a racket that you wouldn't believe could get any louder, except it did. They were finally quieting down now.

  "Whatever happened to the good times we used to have?" he asked. "We traveled a lot of long roads together and it wasn't always this way. We weren't always planning and scheming and screwing up."