by Tanya Huff
A warning about footsteps.
Footsteps?
“Technically, they’re footprints and I don’t think we have to worry about CSI Vermont,” she muttered, glancing back to make sure she hadn’t left a trail. Tucking her hand up into the sleeve of her jacket, she opened the door and slipped outside. Somehow, she managed to get across the yard and back into the cemetery without slicing her boots on pieces of broken glass or leaving too obvious a trail and, fortunately, the loud speculation from the crowd now inside the house and gathered around the old man covered any noise she might have made.
She barely heard her phone ring.
“Well, you’ve been a little busy, haven’t you, Charlotte.” Auntie Jane, however, came through loud and clear.
The fieldstone wall around the cemetery was about hip-high. Charlie planted her ass on a spot free of moss and lichen and swung her legs over. “You felt that?”
“Did I feel you poking into things that were none of your business, releasing certain energies without discovering if those energies were vicious or benign, not to mention being directly responsible for the snuffing out of a power without ever considering if that power might possibly be a guardian protecting the people you profess to be so concerned about rather than a jailor illicitly confining the innocent?”
“He was a guardian?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Charlotte; he was a nasty piece of work. Once his sort’s started on stuffed toys, the world is a better place without them. But he was neither family nor bothering family and should have been left alone. Why are you in Vermont?”
“I’m here to see a friend who’s playing at a street fair.”
“You’re in Vermont for the music?”
“Have you met me? It’s why I go anywhere.”
“Only for the music?”
“And, apparently, the teddy bears.”
“I see. So given this was clearly a case of a Wild Power assuming she knew best . . .” When Auntie Jane hesitated, Charlie frowned. The aunties liked to pause and allow their listeners a chance to really realize just how much trouble they were in. This didn’t sound like that kind of a pause. It sounded, strangely enough, like Auntie Jane was unsure. “. . . have you spoken with Catherine recently?”
“Auntie Catherine?” Charlie couldn’t see a clear path from teddy bears to Auntie Catherine, but that didn’t mean Auntie Jane couldn’t. “This morning in Vegas. Why?”
“Vegas again.” As disapproving snorts went, Auntie Jane could give Dan a run for his money. “Of course. Drink some tea with honey, Charlotte, your voice sounds like you’ve been gargling glass.”
“Funny that,” Charlie muttered. Given the emphatic click as Auntie Jane hung up, she’d either called from one of the farmhouse’s old rotary phones or Auntie Phyllis had created a new app.
Auntie Jane and Auntie Catherine didn’t get along, although, Charlie realized, being able to see random bits of the future would put a strain on most relationships, and Auntie Jane’s expectations had never been particularly flexible. That said, this was the first time Auntie Jane had ever assumed that Charlie and Auntie Catherine were in contact because they were Wild. Did Auntie Jane want Auntie Catherine to call home? Was Charlie supposed to pass on the message?
“A little less obscure in my life would help,” she pointed out to a squirrel watching her from the top of a gravestone. “So I need to ask Gary what specifically sent him out on the road and I need to ask Auntie Catherine to call home and I need to ask Jack to be less . . . Jack.”
The squirrel’s response sounded distinctly rude.
“You’re right. My problem, not Jack’s. I will try to own my own shit. Because who else would want it,” she added as the squirrel bounded away. “Okay, we’re here for Gary. Focus.”
Safely behind the church, out of sight from the road and what seemed like the entire population of Carter gathered out in front of the ex house of bears—minus those who’d managed to cram inside—Charlie settled her guitar strap and decided she really needed to learn more songs on the penny whistle. A penny whistle weighed next to nothing, it could be used as a splint should the circumstances demand, and a simple thing like freeing a couple of hundred teddy bears wouldn’t throw it out of tune. As she worked to bring her B and G back, she swallowed and realized gargling glass had been an accurate observation.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to sing in the immediate future.
A moment later, she walked out of the graveyard like it was the first time she’d done it, fingerpicking Dan Mangan’s “Not What You Think It Is.” The bearded man who’d spoken to her before she’d gone inside to free the bears still stood by the fabric art stall, so she hummed a little reinforcement toward him.
People had begun to pick the fallen bears up off the lawn, clearly believing they weren’t disturbing a crime scene and that they, personally, were immune to shards of glass. Charlie could hear multiple sirens coming from the south. Given the number of nicks and cuts she could already see on the people posing for cell phone pictures, not to mention the loud argument about the proper way to perform CPR coming from inside the house, emergency responders would be too busy to immediately worry about what exactly had gone on.
Once she broke out onto the open road, Charlie stopped playing, shook her thumb pick off into her pocket and tucked her guitar back into her gig bag. She’d always thought that approaching a stage with an instrument out reeked of desperation.
The band, tethered to the stage by their instruments, were watching the crowd, not her, and she was watching Gary, not the rest of the band, so she was less prepared than she might have been when the keyboard player launched himself off the stage.
“Charlie? Charlie Gale?”
“Toby! Toby Sum . . .” Before she could finish, Charlie found herself caught up in a hug that drove the air out of her lungs. She’d hooked up with Toby Summers while they were playing in Further Demented, a Montreal band with delusions of punk revival. He was tall, talented, and he made her laugh, but when the band broke up seven years ago, so had they. No regrets.
“What are you doing in Vermont?” Toby demanded, steadying her when she wobbled upon release.
“Passing through,” she gasped. “As one does.”
Gary waved from the stage, his smile managing to express small world and the hell? simultaneously. Not a bad trick.
“I see you got some blues back.” One arm around her shoulders, Toby ruffled his other hand through her hair. “Last pics you posted, you were au natural again.”
Given Auntie Catherine, Dan, falling rocks, millions who might or might not be dying, and Jack, Charlie’d forgotten all about the color she’d streaked into her hair. “Something, something about swearing a blue streak; I can’t be arsed to find the clever.”
“Well, if you’re heading back to the hard stuff, for God’s sake, take me with you. I love Frosty like a brother, but he thinks “Whiskey in the Jar” is rock and roll. Do you know what keyboards involve in a folk/Celtic/roots/trad band, Charlie?” They’d reached the edge of the stage, and Toby nodded toward the Excalibur Double Crown tucked up against the side of his amp stack. “I am white America’s worst nightmare; a big black man with an accordion. The only way it could be worse was if I was also Muslim and played the banjo. Hey, Frosty!”
An older, heavyset man with the ubiquitous gray ponytail and a Fender bass turned toward them.
“George Frost, of Frost on the Windows, Charlie Gale just passing through. Charlie plays killer lead, doesn’t suck on vocals, and when she was twenty-two, she drank Benji Cheung under the table.”
“In fairness,” Charlie pointed out. “Benji was stoned at the time.”
“When wasn’t he?” George snorted. “You looking for a job, Charles?”
“No, like Toby says, I’m just passing through. Heard the music, thought I’d come see what was up.” Gary had knel
t to put his bouzouki in the case. He was listening, but he hadn’t come any closer. Charlie couldn’t figure out a graceful way of blowing Toby off or, more significantly, blowing George off to go talk to him. Burning bridges with someone who actually managed to put a band together and find paying gigs in the current economy would be beyond a stupid idea.
“You know what pulled our audience?”
She shrugged, shoulders moving under Toby’s arm. “Looks like all the windows blew out on an old house.”
“Gas leak?”
“How should I know? Freaky thing is, there’s teddy bears all over the lawn.”
“Freakier when they were in the windows,” Toby muttered.
“True that,” George allowed. He checked his watch. “Well, we were supposed to go to four and then on again at eight for the street party—looks like that’s fucked. I think I’d better go find Morris Winchester and find out what’s what. Toby, you’re with me.”
“Should I bring the accordion?”
“Dear lord, man, no; we’re just going to talk to him.” George set down his bass, sat on the edge of the stage, and pushed off. “I don’t need you to go all Sam Jackson on his ass.”
“Okay, first, Sam?” Toby gave Charlie’s shoulder’s one last squeeze and murmured, “Do not leave without saying good-bye. And second,” he continued, raising his voice as he fell into step beside George, “Samuel Jackson has never been in a movie with an accordion.”
“On the plane . . .”
“That was an anaconda.”
“So . . .” Charlie turned to Gary as the argument shifted to background noise. “. . . fancy meeting you here.”
“I’m working.” He smiled as he came closer and dropped to sit on the edge of the stage. “Looks like you haven’t made it home yet.”
“It’s complicated.” Charlie grinned. “This is me not telling you the road is my home. So, where’s Sheryl?”
“She was at the art fair, so I expect she’s trying to find out what happened at the house. You know, when it blew . . .” He swung his legs and rubbed one hand over the back of his neck. “. . . I thought I heard the last few bars of ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.’”
“That’s weird.” Charlie’d stopped playing when the windows blew, so Gary’d heard the music continuing on its own. As a rule, she had no problem with music taking on a life of its own—it happened often enough even without her help—but the memory of the bears’ awareness sizzling over her skin added a little emphasis to her reply.
“Yeah.” They considered weird together for a moment, then Gary shook his head and said, “Listen, I want to thank you for giving me Dave’s number. I’ve barely been on the road for twenty-four hours and I’ve got work for the next month.” Brows dipping in, he waved a hand at the crowd ignoring the stage. “Hopefully. Anyway, I owe you.”
“Good.” She hadn’t decided how she was going to do this, but, now he’d admitted he owed her, blunt and to the point seemed like the best idea. She’d had a long day and she just wanted it to be over. “Want a chance to pay me back?”
“Sure.”
“Tell me why you think that millions are going to die?”
“What?”
Oh, yeah. It was Gary. She could hear both the initial panic and the gone a little bit crazy in his voice.
“Specifically, you thought . . .” Charlie tapped her fingers against her thigh, the rhythm jogging free the exact words Dan had overheard. “. . . can’t tell people the sky is falling, millions will die in the panic. Then you thought: . . . don’t find a solution in six months, millions will die in the panic anyway.”
His eyes wide, he licked his lips and leaned away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He was such a terrible liar it was kind of cute. “You’ve got a secret that’s big enough it pushed you away from your old life, convincing you there was no reason not to follow a dream. It’s so big, you can’t tell anyone, not even Sheryl, about it. So, why do you think that millions are going to die?”
“I can’t . . .” Fingers clutching the arms of his glasses, he shook his head. “I gave my word.”
Choice, she reminded herself. “And I bet it would take something pretty extraordinary to convince you to break it.” One of the things Charlie loved about Vermont was the number of trees. National, state, and town forests aside, even new builds were careful of old growth. The Wood was as close in Vermont as it had been back in Darsden East where the family had been settled for over a century. “Walk with me.”
“No.”
“I guarantee that what I have to show you is extraordinary enough you’ll want to tell me everything.”
“No.”
His head shaking had gotten a little frantic, so Charlie said the magic word. “Please.”
Releasing his glasses, he took a deep breath and ran the fingers of his right hand through the hair over his ear, repeating the motion over and over. “Walk where?”
“That’s a little hard to explain, but I swear on my mother’s cherry pie that you’ll be back before you know you’re gone.”
“You swear on your mother’s cherry pie?” Gary’s laugh wobbled a little as he slid off the stage. “Must be one amazing cherry pie.”
“You have no idea,” Charlie told him, getting out her guitar.
“Should I bring the bouzouki?”
She could hear the unease under every word. “No, we’re good. But bring a jacket . . .” She nodded toward one end of Gary’s instrument case and the clothing in question. “. . . just in case.”
“In case of what?” he asked, reaching back.
“Weather.”
After a dubious glance at the brilliant pinks and oranges the sunset had seared across the sky, he shrugged into his jacket and fell into step beside her.
THE STAGE FOR THE STREET FAIR had been built just before the corner of Adam’s Crescent and Main, so Charlie led Gary across the street to the trees at the east side of the T-junction—enough behind the stage they wouldn’t be seen, close enough to the stage that Gary wouldn’t balk. She played a soft arpeggio, using the guitar to carry them forward rather than her voice in case Gary needed reassurance. “Put your hand on my shoulder.”
“Is this . . .” He let the question trail off as Charlie started to play. His grip tightened. He jerked forward as she stepped between two chestnuts, nearly treading on her heels. When she stopped playing, he gasped, “Where are we?”
“In the Wood.”
“I can see that, where . . .”
“Between.”
“Between what?”
“B and C on the chromatic scale.” Charlie spread her hands, allowing the guitar to hang by the strap. “Or E and F.”
“There isn’t anything between B and C or E and F.”
“That’s what they want you to think.”
He let go of her shoulder, made a sound that stopped just short of being a whimper, and grabbed hold again. “This can’t be real.”
“Real is subjective.”
“No, it really isn’t!”
“That’s the engineer talking, not the musician.” A fiddle started up in the distance, and Charlie grinned. She couldn’t take him to either Calgary or Darsden East; it wouldn’t be safe. “Come on.” Two steps. Three. Four. And . . .
The gray of the sky reached down to touch the gray of Northumberland Strait, Port Hood Island barely visible in the distance like a floating Brigadoon. A strong breeze ruffled the tops of the waves, and half a dozen gulls banked and dipped and screamed insults at each other in the last of the light. Charlie’s knee sank into damp sand as she dropped down to slide her guitar into the gig bag out of the damp. Another hour east of Vermont, it was almost dark and not quite raining.
“This,” Gary said, his voice free of doubt, “is real.”
“You seem very sure. Not th
at that’s a bad thing,” she added, twisting to face him as she closed the zipper. “What convinced you?”
He snorted. “The smell of dead fish.”
“Welcome to Nova Scotia.”
“Canada?”
Charlie stood and waved a hand. “Specifically, Cape Breton, just outside Port Hudson. You can see the end of the pier if you look to the right.”
“This is nuts.” He looked to the right. “Completely insane.” Back at her. “What are you?”
“That’s a long story. And not particularly relevant.”
“I disagree. While I’m willing to grant this as being extraordinary enough to break my word, I’ll tell you what you want to know if you tell me what I need to know, because if you think you can change my perception of the world, then . . .” Both hands up, he stepped back, stumbling as the sand shifted. “You’re not going to kill me after I tell you what I know, are you? In order to keep your secret?”
Why would he think that? “If I say yes, that’s pretty poor motivation.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“No, I’m not going to kill you. Nor,” she added when he opened his mouth, “am I going to dump you in Antarctica where the climate will kill you for me. Nor, off the top of my head, into a nest of rattlesnakes where you technically die of snake bite. Nor in the middle of the north Atlantic where your bones can drift down to rest by the remains of the Titanic. Nor . . .”
“I get it. You’re not going to kill me. Also, the top of your head is a little terrifying.” He sat down heavily on a log, the upper curve polished smooth by countless pairs of jeans. “Okay. The secret. There’s an asteroid . . .”
“I know about the asteroid.” Charlie cut him off. “What I need to know is how you know and why you think millions are going to die.”
Gary stared at her for a long moment. “How do you know about the asteroid?”
“I have an auntie who can see the future.”
“Okay.” He pushed damp sand into a pile with one foot. “All things considered, it seems a little pointless to argue about that. So, why don’t you think millions are going to die?”
