Someplace to Be Flying

by Charles de Lint

  "It's a confusing subject. Judging by your interest in Dapple's book, I take it you're specifically interested in the legends of the crow shapeshifters in the Kickaha Hills?"

  "I'm interested in anything I can find out about these animal people. Donna tracked down the title of Professor Dapple's book for me, so I thought I'd start with it."

  Christy nodded. "It's a good collection, but it only skims the surface. Most of that sort of thing is still more in the oral tradition—and not simply that of the Kickaha, though theirs is the most thoroughly documented. The problem is, the stories aren't entirely consistent. There appear to be two main schools of thought here."

  "Which are?"

  "Well, Jilly—have you ever met her?"

  Lily shook her head. "I've just heard you talk about her."

  "I should introduce you to her sometime. Anyway, she's got a friend named Bones who talks about beings that are part people, part animal. According to him, they originate in the spiritworld—which he says we can visit when we dream. In turn, the spirits visit our world and sometimes inhabit the bodies of people or animals. And sometimes they all get mixed up—people, spirits, animals—and you end up with these odd mythological sorts of creatures. You know, the kind that populate folktales?"

  Lily nodded.

  "So that's one take on these beings. But then there's Jack—you know him, right?"

  "Sure," Lily said. "The storyteller."

  "That's him. Lives in a school bus on the edge of the Tombs. He says that the animal people were here first—everybody else came later. Regular animals, people, all the trappings of the world. Where exactly these first people came from isn't so clear, but their existence makes a tidy explanation for the similarity of so much folklore throughout the world, the way certain stories keep turning up in the most unlikely of places, all courtesy of these animal people. He even claims to be one himself." Christy smiled. "Maybe that's why he calls himself Jack Daw."

  "So which version is true?" Lily asked.

  "I don't think they're mutually exclusive. Keep an open mind, I always say. Drives sensible people mad, I know, but what did we ever get from sensible people? Not poetry or art or music, that's for sure."

  Lily wasn't so sure she agreed with that. Why couldn't an artist be both inspired and sensible?

  "Anyway," Christy finished up. "I could probably be of more help if you explained what exactly it is you need to know."

  "I …" Lily could feel her cheeks redden under his curious gaze and had to look away, across the room. "I need to know if they're real."

  "The animal people."

  She nodded, gaze still fixed on a painting that hung on one side of the door. It was an odd piece, an abstract, all earth colors and subdued tones. Almost monochromic, except when you really focused on it and realized the subtle gradations of color. When Christy didn't speak, she finally turned to look at him.

  "Could they really exist?" she asked. "I mean, not just in stories, but for real. Could creatures like that be sharing the world with us right now?"

  Christy regarded her thoughtfully for a long moment. "You've experienced something, haven't you?"

  She nodded.

  "And now you're hoping to rationalize it away. What you really want is for someone with some authority in the subject to tell you that this sort of thing is hopelessly romantic and impossible."

  "No," Lily told him. "I think they could exist. The real problem is, if they do exist, what do they want from me?"

  "I think we'd better backtrack a little bit here because I have no idea what you're talking about now."

  Lily glanced at her watch. She wondered if Hank had finished his errands and was back at her apartment waiting for her. It was sweet, the way he was so worried about her this morning—though she appreciated the seriousness of the situation. When she looked back at Christy he was smiling at her.

  "Is it that long a story?" he asked.

  "Yes and no," she said. "I'll try to give you the Reader's Digest version."

  "That bit of rhyme about cuckoos," Christy said when she'd finished outlining the strange turn her life had taken in the last week or so. "Geordie's got a better head for that sort of thing than I do, but I'm pretty sure it's a bastardization of a traditional ballad. English, I think. And when you put the words up against each other—cuckoo, Couteau—there's a similar resonance."

  Geordie was Christy's younger brother, as absorbed with traditional music as Christy was with literature and folklore.

  "But what could they want from me?" Lily asked. "I'd never heard of either of them before that night. Jack's stories were what got me interested in these animal people in the first place, but he never mentioned anything about cuckoos or this family of New Orleans gangsters."

  "Well, the answer's not in the professor's book," Christy said. "I know that, because I've read it. But he might know."

  Lily shook her head. "I can't just go up to him, introduce myself, and then tell him all this."

  "Well, if you knew him, you'd realize that you could, but if the idea makes you uncomfortable, I could go with you."

  Lily still wasn't convinced.

  "He'd think I was nuts," she said.

  Christy laughed. "You really don't know him. He thrives on this sort of a puzzle."

  He stood up. Folding his paper, he laid it on the table, then gave her an expectant look.

  "I feel really awkward about this," she said.

  "You shouldn't. Trust me."

  "Yes, well that's easy for you to say because …"

  Her voice trailed off as someone entered the room. It took her a moment to make sense of the familiarity she felt looking at the woman in the dove-gray suit who was now standing in the doorway. She cut an impressive figure, tall and sleek, fine-boned features, short-cropped ash-blonde hair, eyes a dark, penetrating gray and wide-set like a bird's. It was impossible to guess her age. She might have been from anywhere in her early twenties to her late thirties.

  When Lily did place the woman, her throat went dry, her pulse jumping into overdrive. It was the newcomer's being a woman that had initially confused her. But now she—

  The woman moved out of the doorway, into the room, and a man who could've been her twin stepped in behind her.

  Looking at him, Lily couldn't breathe. It was Philippe Couteau. Except it couldn't be. She'd seen him die. She'd seen a small punky girl stick a knife in his side and drop him to the pavement where he'd lain in a pool of his own blood.

  And then she'd seen him alive again in the Tucson airport, except Margaret had said he was the dead man's brother. Gerard. Unless this was yet another of them. The man closed the door behind him and leaned against it, arms folded across his chest.

  "We are not a patient family," the woman said. Her voice held the faint hint of a French accent.

  Christy took a step forward, stopping when the man straightened up from the door, one hand going under the tailored jacket of his suit. Dove-gray. Like the woman's. Like the one worn by the dead man in the alley.

  "What's going on here?" Christy said.

  The woman gave him a dismissive glance. "Don't speak unless you're spoken to—it'll simplify everything."

  "Who do you think you—"

  Lily cleared her throat. "It … it's them," she said.

  "I like that," the woman said. " 'Them.' It's so anonymous." She gave Christy another glance. "Why don't you sit down."

  Lily thought he was going to argue the point. Before she could warn him not to get them mad, the man brought his hand out from under his jacket. Christy stared at the automatic weapon the man was now holding, then backed slowly toward the chair he'd so recently vacated. Sat down. The man lowered his arm, the muzzle of his automatic pointing at the floor.

  "That's better," the woman said.

  She returned her attention to Lily. The full weight of her gaze made Lily feel like a small animal mesmerized by a snake.

  "Lily," the woman said.

  Lily didn't know if it w
as a question or a statement, but she quickly nodded in response.

  "My sons tell me that you've been most persistent in eluding them. It's been very annoying."

  Her sons? Lily had an eye for plastic surgery and she'd swear this woman had never been under a surgeon's knife. She looked more like the man's younger sister than his mother.

  "They … they scare me," Lily found herself saying.

  "Yes, and well they should. They're very serious boys. Very focused."

  "Look," Christy began. "I don't know what you think you—"

  He broke off when the muzzle of the automatic lifted and was trained on him.

  "This will go much more quickly if you will simply do as you're told," the woman said. "Sit. Hold your tongue. Do you think you can do that?"

  Christy nodded.

  "Good. Now, Lily. Would you please empty your bag on the table."

  Definitely not a question, Lily thought.

  Her hands shook as she picked up her bag and slowly brought it over to the table. Opening the top, she began to reach inside.

  "Don't!" the woman said sharply.

  Lily froze. Her gaze lifted to meet the woman's.

  "My son gets uncomfortable when he can't see your hands," the woman explained. "Simply hold the bag above the table and empty it."

  Lily did as she was told, wincing when her camera fell out and landed with a loud clunk on the oak surface. It was followed by plastic 35-millimeter film canisters, which went rolling. Some filters. The pouch of silver jewelry that Margaret had secreted in her luggage. A macro lens and a telephoto, her flash unit—all of which made her wince again as they banged against the tabletop. The small address book she used to note picture subjects, f-stops, lighting information. The small black tin that she kept exposed films in until she got home. A couple of pens. Her wallet. A handful of business cards—hers and other people's.

  "I swear I never took any pictures of you or your sons," she said as she shook a last few filters, business cards, and lint onto the tabletop.

  The woman gave her an odd look. "This has never been about photographs."

  "But what else could I possibly—"

  "Sit."

  Lily dropped her camera bag on the table and quickly returned to her chair. The woman stepped forward and picked up the black tin.

  "You see how simple it was to get it?" she said to her son.

  He regarded her, expressionless.

  "That's it?" Lily said. She knew she should keep quiet, but she couldn't help blurt it out. "That's what all of this has been about? A tin that would've gone into the garbage if I hadn't found a use for it?"

  The woman held it up, turning it in the light coming from the windows.

  "Is that what you see?" the woman asked.

  Lily began to nod, but it wasn't a tin the woman was holding anymore. As though her words had been a key, Lily's familiar tin, battered and dented, black as a coal except for where the paint had chipped away in places, shimmered in the woman's hands, became translucent, changed. … It was now an ornately decorated clear crystal goblet or stemmed vase that didn't so much catch the light from the window as absorb it and cast it back into the room. Stronger. Glowing. More golden. More intense.

  The goblet wasn't empty. At the bottom was a splash of color. Lily leaned forward in her chair and her mouth opened as she realized there was a tiny red-haired woman curled up in the bottom of the glass container. It didn't look like a sculpture. It was too lifelike. Lily could swear that the figure's hair moved as the woman turned the goblet about to get a closer look herself.

  "Now what have you put in here?" the woman said.

  Her dark gaze left the goblet and settled on Lily.

  "N-Nothing," Lily replied. "I just used it to keep films in, that's all. I never saw that … that … What is it? It almost looks real."

  "Perhaps it is," the woman said. "I must think about this."

  She took Lily's camera bag and carefully placed the goblet inside, zipped it closed.

  "If you are wise," she said, returning her attention to Lily, "you will make the most sincere effort you can to never cross our path again."

  "Mais, Dominique—"

  It was the first time the woman's companion had spoken. She turned on him, her voice dark with anger.

  "Ne vous permettez pas de me questionner. Si vous et vos frères n'étiez pas de telles brutes, toute cette histoire serait terminée depuis longtemps—et de façon moins désolante. Philippe serait encore vivant."

  "Oui, Maman," he said, gaze on the ground.

  Dominique Couteau faced Lily once more, anger still flashing in her eyes.

  "Be grateful that I decided to take a hand in this myself," she said.

  Lily nodded. "Yes. I am."

  "I hope we will not be meeting again," Dominique added.

  She swung Lily's camera bag to her shoulder and a moment later both she and her son had left the room.

  "Me, too," Lily said in a small voice, then she collapsed back into her chair, all her muscles turned to rubber.

  "I could have done without that," Christy said after a few moments.

  Lily nodded weakly.

  "Are you okay?"

  "I guess …”

  Lily turned to look at the door, half-expecting the man to come back and kill them.

  "Did you see what happened to that old black tin of mine?" she said. "I can't believe I've just been carrying it around in my bag for the past half year or so."

  Christy nodded. "It turned into a chalice." There was a haunted look in his eyes as he remembered. "It almost seemed to be made out of light."

  Chalice, Lily thought. That was the perfect word to describe it.

  "And in the bottom …," she said. "That little woman. She looked so real."

  "They weren't expecting to find her in it," Christy said.

  "No kidding. Like we were?"

  Christy didn't reply. When Lily turned to him he was wearing a thoughtful expression.

  "I don't like her having it," he said. "It doesn't feel … right, somehow."

  "I wasn't about to argue with her about it," Lily said.

  "No. Of course not. It's just …"

  "Did you understand what she said to her son—when she was so angry?"

  Christy nodded. "She was saying that he and his brothers had been acting like thugs. That the whole business could have been handled a lot more expediently. And if it had been, Philippe wouldn't have died—Philippe being the man you saw killed in the alley, I assume."

  "That's what Hank said his name was. God, talk about identical twins—or family resemblance, I guess, because she could have been their sister. And that guy with her, he looks exactly like his brother."

  "He wanted to kill us."

  Lily shivered. There was no doubt in her mind about that. He wouldn't have cared that they were in the middle of the library with people all around. All he'd wanted to do was pull the trigger.

  Christy glanced at her. "I think we were very, very lucky."

  "I guess you're right," Lily said. The rubbery feeling in her legs was starting to go away, but she still felt weak with relief. "Still, at least it's over now. They've got what they wanted from me." The memory of the chalice filled her mind's eye—less an exact representation of it as the feeling it had woken in her. "Except …"

  Christy gave her an expectant look.

  "How can I let them just take it away and keep it?" she said.

  It was impossible to keep a clear image of that glowing chalice in her mind. The harder she tried, the farther it seemed to slip away. But she couldn't forget it either. It was as though all the enchantment and mystery of the world had been bundled up into one magical object.

  "How can you stop them?" Christy asked.

  "I don't know. But I have to try. Is there a phone around?"

  "On the ground floor. Are you going to call the police?"

  Lily shook her head. "Like they're going to devote any effort to tracking down what for all int
ents and purposes is just an old tin. No, I'm going to call a friend of Hank's to see if he knows where he is, and then I'm going to talk to Jack again."

  "If you need some help," Christy began.

  "I'll ask," Lily said. "Never fear. Brave I'm not. But I don't think just talking to Jack is going to put me into any danger."

  "But you'll be careful."

  "Oh, I'll be very careful."

  She looked at the mess of her belongings on the table.

  "God," she said, thinking aloud. "How am I going to carry all of that?"

  "I'll come down to the circulation desk with you," Christy said, "and see if I can't scare up a shopping bag while you're making your call."

  Lily paused in the doorway as they were leaving and looked back into the room. The air still seemed to hold some of the golden glow cast off by the chalice. It even smelled like old mysteries in the room. The scent made her pulse beat more quickly—not from fear, as it had when the Couteaus had threatened them, but from awe.

  There was no way she could let them keep the chalice, she thought as she joined Christy. No way at all.

  Hank's friend didn't know where he was, so after saying good-bye to Christy and thanking Harriet again for her help, Lily decided to go talk to Jack on her own. She left the library carrying her camera equipment in a paper shopping bag, holding it against her chest, hands on the bottom to give it support. Shopping bags hadn't been made to safely transport precious camera equipment. She only hoped that nothing had been damaged from being dropped on the table earlier.

  Her car was where she'd left it and didn't seem to have been tampered with, nor did anyone appear to be paying undue attention to either it or her, but she still had to check the backseat before she unlocked the door and put the shopping bag inside. Dominique Couteau had seemed to make it clear that she and her sons were no longer interested in her, but Lily saw no reason to take any chances. For all she knew they could read minds. And if that was the case …