by Tanya Huff
Back on the roof, she fed half her banana walnut muffin to the pigeons, but refused to share her coffee.
The call she expected never came.
Neither did Jack.
That evening she told the boys stories about their bears. They rode the wooden train set to protect it from bandits. They climbed the sofa mountain and planted two small socks at the summit claiming it for the twins. They cushioned Edward’s fall when he threw himself off the kitchen counter although it remained unclear how he’d gotten onto the kitchen counter in the first place.
Katie stayed over another night.
Charlie woke up every hour feeling empty.
Jack was still gone the next morning.
The Courts continued to keep a low profile.
By eight, Charlie was on the roof throwing pieces of cold cereal at . . . to the pigeons, listening to the Virgin Morning Show on 98.5 wafting up through the air vents off the apartment over the eco store on the corner. At ten seventeen, her phone rang, the ringtone proving that the universe had a crap sense of humor. No matter how empty she felt, she’d never have used “I Can See Clearly Now.” “Morning, Auntie Catherine. What did you See?”
For a moment she thought the older woman was going to play games, but she only sighed and said, “I Saw a baby playing with two worn-out and remarkably ugly teddy bears.”
“Describe them.”
“Excuse me?” The subtext informed her that the end of the world was no reason to indulge in bad manners.
“Could you please describe the teddy bears?”
“Better. Solid colored bodies, striped arms and legs, most of the fuzz had been chewed off them . . .”
“Wait . . .” No doubt about the bears, but . . . “. . . don’t you mean babies?”
“If I’d meant babies, Charlotte, I’d have said babies. I mean baby. Singular. Now, ask me why I called to tell you.”
“Okay. Why . . .”
“None of your business. Honestly, this family.”
“This family what?”
“If you have to ask, Charlotte, I’m certainly not going to be the one to fill you in.”
“About what?” But the connection had been terminated. Probably with extreme prejudice, if Charlie knew Auntie Catherine. “Okay. That was weird. Er. Weirder. Weirder than usual.” Not that it mattered; she had what she needed.
It was Sunday. Ritual was Wednesday.
As long as she went before the ritual, it didn’t really matter when she left. If Jack had gone to the Courts to get the proof he’d need to convince her to take him back four years and, therefore, keep them out of ritual, he’d return Tuesday at the latest. If all he’d discovered was that they couldn’t teach him . . . Would he remain in the UnderRealm until the ritual was over? Or would he risk what the ritual would do to them in order to combine their power in the hope of stopping the asteroid? Did he even realize what it was that ritual would do to them or was he thinking like a seventeen year old and seeing it as a way around the rule? Would he wait until the last minute, when the boys had antlered up and it was too late?
“Screw it. This is like trying to play Tchaikovsky on the bagpipes, I don’t have enough notes.”
The pigeons gave her a collective dubious look.
“What? I like Tchaikovsky. He used cannon as percussion.” She tapped out the signature measure of The 1812 Overture against her thigh as her background music switched to full orchestra. “Okay. Forget Jack. For all the talking we’ve been doing, I’ve got bugger all in the way of actual information. Given the given, what do I do?”
An argument about homework drifted up from a trio of girls down on the street. A trio of girls who weren’t family and wouldn’t survive if the asteroid hit. Family would. They wouldn’t. One of them was thrilled that calculus had finally gotten them into applied math. Charlie’s personal relationship with math ended with perfect fifths and diminished thirds, but that was no reason math geeks should die.
“I step up to the mic, that’s what I do.” She’d never gotten stage fright, not from her first school pageant to the last thrown beer bottle. This was no time to start.
Could she slip into the Wood between the indignant noises the pigeons made as they searched the roof for more muffin?
As one, the pigeons took to the air, circled once, and landed across the street on the roof of the bank.
Apparently not. Or at least not yet.
Probably best to head to the courtyard and out between the viburnums, avoiding questions and answers both.
It was easy enough to get her guitar from her room, and although she could hear the twins in the living room, she slipped out of the apartment without being spotted.
Unfortunately, Allie was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. “Where are you going?”
Second circle was all about connections. It was possible, Charlie realized, that Allie’d felt her decision to leave. That she’d felt all of her decisions to leave but, until now, had chosen to let her go. She remembered what she’d told Jack about Allie needing to keep people close and smoothed the edges off her response. “I’m going to the park.” Not a lie. And the park was only ever and always would be Nose Hill.
“Why?”
“I want to try something.”
And years of it’s a Wild thing paid off as Allie shook her head without asking what that something was. “Charlie, we need you to help with the real estate listings. Not everyone is going to want to sell. A charm and a fair price will only go so far.”
“Wait until after ritual.”
“After is four days away. If it doesn’t work . . .”
Charlie twitched before realizing Allie had been referring to the ritual. Allie had no idea of what she was about to attempt.
“. . . or Jack doesn’t come back with the solution, I want to hit the ground running. I need to know how much of the city I can protect. And if it doesn’t work, you’re going to be needed after to ferry family to Aus . . .” It took Charlie a moment to realize Allie was frowning at a dull patch on the guitar’s headstock where the varnish had peeled off. “Is that the guitar you bought in Cape Breton? The one that helped you chase the storm?”
“Yes.”
“And deal with the oil rigs?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
Doubt that, Charlie thought as Allie stepped aside and she pushed past. She was not going to ask what Allie saw.
The mirror reflected a solid sheet of gold and a set of antlers—twelve point buck. If the gold represented Jack, and it always had, the mirror might be anticipating the ritual. Or warning her about the ritual. Or being deliberately obscure just for shits and giggles. She rested her hand against the glass, and a reflection of a hand rose out of the gold to meet it. It wasn’t a reflection of her hand, but Charlie had too much on her plate to identify it now.
“Are you going after Jack?”
She wondered what reflection Allie saw. “Going after Jack? No.”
And because it was the truth, Allie believed her. “Then you need to stay and . . .”
“Let her go, Alysha.” Auntie Gwen descended the last three steps and took hold of Allie’s arm. “Charlotte is clearly heading out to attempt . . . something.” When their eyes met, Charlie wondered how many pieces Auntie Gwen had managed to gather up and put together behind that . . . something. “You know you can’t hold her.”
“Yadda yadda Wild,” Allie sighed. “If you love something, let it go.” Auntie Gwen met Charlie’s gaze and jerked her head toward the door.
Charlie leaned in and brushed a kiss against Allie’s cheek, then shifted her grip on the guitar case and headed out into the courtyard. It occurred to her that she hadn’t told them how she’d left Jack’s room. And they hadn’t asked. Gales weren’t interested in the mechanics of leaving.
“Is she going Wild?” Alli
e’s voice slipped out around the edge of the closing door.
Charlie was gone before Auntie Gwen answered.
She stepped out of the Wood in one of the isolated, rocky areas of the park.
When she traveled into the past, she traveled through place as well as time. From Calgary back ten days to Cape Breton. From Cape Breton back three hours to Vermont. This time . . . She fought down the nearly hysterical desire to laugh and tried again. This time, no matter how far she traveled in time, she wanted to remain in the park because the park would exist as long as her family did. The trees she planned to step between would grow and die and new trees would grow, but the bones of the earth wouldn’t change. This place, this specific three square meters of alluvial soil would continue to exist, as it had always existed, long enough for her to save it.
She was going to save it. All of it. All of them. She wiped damp palms on her jeans. Everyone.
If she could follow a song into the past, then she should be able to follow a song into the future.
“You know the future happened.” Jack’s voice in memory.
A baby and two ugly bears. The future had been Seen. It existed. Or it would exist, at least. It was real. She’d been counting on the bears.
If you go into the Woods today . . .
The seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale. Important, impossible . . .
Gales were adults at fifteen, admitted into ritual. Whatever Seven-seven-seven-Gale could do by virtue of what he was, he’d be able to do it then. So if Allie was eight weeks along now, it’d be thirty-two weeks to the birth of the next set of twins. Two years to the birth of the set after that if the universe continued interfering on the same schedule. Add two years more before number seven shows up. Add fifteen years for him to grow up. Charlie had a calculator on her phone but she used her fingers. Thirty-two, two, two, fifteen . . . twenty years, give or take.
The furthest she’d ever gone into the past was ten days.
The rock underfoot vibrated as David’s hooves drummed out an approaching rhythm; percussion she could feel through the soles of her boots. He couldn’t know what she had planned because she didn’t know what she had planned, exactly, but he had to know she was going to try . . . something, and he wasn’t happy about it.
In fairness, she wasn’t overjoyed either. She took a step forward but stayed in the park. Stepping into the Wood would mean she’d committed. Which she was. Committed. Just not . . . Anyway, he was closing fast, but she still had time.
Rim shot.
“Okay. Don’t think of it like twenty years. You didn’t leap out of the Woods ten days in the past, you exited, stage left, during a rousing chorus.” A rousing chorus was a rousing chorus. If it was rousing enough, that should be all that mattered.
As long as she didn’t turn around and look at the world outside the park, as long as she didn’t know for sure that she’d succeeded or failed, there was a chance.
You’re in for a big surprise . . .
Schrödinger’s future.
She’d be making it up as she went along.
With David a single stride away from the clearing, Charlie stepped into the Wood.
THE WOOD HADN’T CHANGED. The Wood never changed.
In the perpetual late summer afternoon, the aunties’ percussion threaded in and around the rustling of the leaves, a staccato busy busy busy touched intermittently by the certainty of pie. Allie’s worried minor key supported by Graham’s bass pushed through the underbrush, rising now and then amid the rowans to wind around the boys’ simpler melody. Her sisters’ song, sharp and edgy, ducked in and out of shadow, the sound muffled then distinct. Her mother’s raced from note to note. Katie’s was a base to build on. The rest of the family laid in harmonies and descants and counter rhythms. Over near where the oaks gave way to the aspens and then the willows, Gary’s distinctive touch picked out “The Rain Song” on the bouzouki. A Cape Breton fiddler played “Gooden Well” by a copse of Norfolk pine.
Together the songs were a map of people and places, a way for her to get to anyone. Anywhen.
Charlie listened to the silence where Jack’s song should be as she settled the guitar strap on her shoulders. No more wallowing. If the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale could stop the asteroid, then Jack wouldn’t have to pay the Courts in pain and the two of them could continue avoiding ritual while developing the slightly pathetic relationship the rules allowed.
“And the world won’t end,” she added after a minute. “That’s good, too.”
Allie’s song first. Charlie’s fingers pulled the melody from the strings, her voice adding wordless harmonies, finding the place Allie held for her. Not defining herself by that place, but anchoring herself within it. Allowing everything else to fade away. She touched the two lives wrapped in love beneath Allie’s heart, careful to only Sing what she knew would happen. Adding only the verses that would occur. Music was not random—notes and chords and chord progressions were never tossed out into the universe and expected to miraculously coalesce into Song. The mathematics behind music were known, studied, explored. Art happened when head and heart sat down and jammed.
And sometimes, sometimes magic happened. Sometimes it happened in dark bars where her shoes stuck to the floor. Sometimes it happened in the secret places between worlds. Sometimes it happened as cells divided and twin parasites became people.
Still Singing, Charlie felt power flare.
Heard two new voices separate, no longer adding depth to Allie’s song but beginning their own.
Charlie Sang the family gathered round—in the park, on the hill, in the circle. David on four feet, the men in full horn. Blood and pain and welcome.
There was a future. Auntie Catherine had seen it.
Charlie squared her shoulders, and stepped out of the Wood.
She stopped Singing in time to hear a baby cry. A moment later, his brother joined in, raising their voices in the indignant protest of newborns suddenly shoved from protected warmth and exposed to the great, wide world.
“Okay, then.” It seemed safe to start breathing again.
The weather was no longer definitive October. The trees around her were in full leaf and the air warm enough she started to sweat under her jacket. Allie had been a day or two over eight weeks along when Charlie’d stepped into the Wood. Thirty-two weeks remaining. Eight months give or take. That meant this was June and it was still a little over a year to the impact.
She knew that if she listened, really listened, she’d be able to hear what the aunties were saying. Hear Allie and Graham rejoicing in their sons. Divide the murmur of family into individual voices and learn what was . . .
Hoofbeats.
David.
Charging.
In this place, at this time, he had to know it was her. But this wasn’t her time and he knew that, too.
Charlie stepped back and froze as a familiar current lifted the hair off the back of her neck. The vantage point she’d chosen eight months ago stood immediately inside the fourth circle, the protective barrier the family raised around the park to separate their workings from the city. No one wanted a stranger to stumble into ritual, least of all the stranger—although, that said, it was the aunties who wouldn’t shut up about how much harder it had become to hide a body.
Harder, not impossible. And if David felt he had to protect the circle from her, he wouldn’t leave much of a body to hide.
Backing through the barrier, a barrier that she’d helped build, would announce her presence with authority. Given that she was already on the hill, it would lead to questions she—the she of this time, the her of later—shouldn’t answer. The aunties heard I can’t tell you as I haven’t told you yet. Feel free to nag incessantly.
Of course, there was always the chance that this whole thing had gone tits up in a major way and she w
asn’t already on the hill because she was singing with the choir eternal, in which case hitting the barrier would evoke a completely different line of questioning and . . .
Time travel gave her a migraine.
She had a chance of succeeding only as long as she didn’t know she’d already failed and while she couldn’t stop David from sensing. . . .
Shit! David!
Her heart pounded in time with his approach; his hooves pounded into the sod, her heart against her ribs. Underbrush crushed or flung aside, mangled foliage marked his path.
Charlie’s eyes widened as the first prongs breached the clearing. “Holy shit, that’s pointy!” Horns were an accessory Gale boys sported. She’d seen the scars they left behind all her life, had acknowledged the aunties who’d died during the Hunt for Allie’s grandfather, but had never internalized the danger.
She couldn’t stop David with her voice, not here, not now and she couldn’t step backward into the barrier.
Right hand keeping her strings from sounding, fingers on the left crossed, she stepped forward between the sound of hoofbeats as the full and deadly spread of David’s rack thrust into the clearing, the massive bulk of his shoulders fading to insubstantial even as the weight of his presence tried to drag her back as she slipped into the Wood.
“Too close.” She should’ve known David would charge to protect the family. Next time, she’d be prepared. Relaxing into the familiar sounds of the Wood, she . . .
“Crap on a cracker.”
More than familiar, the songs were the songs of her time. The aunties, Allie and Graham, the twins; nothing had changed. The whole mess was even more like opera than she’d realized. She half expected to hear the Rhinemaidens singing.
“And here we are,” she sighed, pushing her hair back off her face, “fifteen hours later, right back where we started from.”
Anna Russell aside, the trip hadn’t been a total disaster. She’d proven she could move forward in time, following the path of a Song during its creation. She hadn’t yet crossed the impact point, but as long as she kept her attention on the park, on the family, the impact shouldn’t matter.
