And on and on, and faster and faster, as beautiful and terrible as the Fair Lady's kiss, which he had known once, as well.
SOMETIME
All your hungers there to sate
All your thirsts to slake
Look what you've been given,
You can't see what she'll take.
"THE FAIR LADY"
The sound of the spinning wheel in the next room is constant,and has been for a timeless time when the Fair Lady puts down Her knitting and removes Her feet from the fire. The liderc,which has been chewing on its goose leg, looks up. The midwife stops her song, which she sings to her own newborn babe that she killed, and she also looks up. The nora, which has been playing with its genitals in the corner, hobbles over as well.
"The Wolf is on the scent, " She announces. "And the Dove is taking to the air."
"What shall we do. Mistress?" says the liderc, in a voice that sounds like the hiss and pop of the fire in which the Fair Lady has been roasting Her feet.
"Well, you must get onto the track of the Wolf and sour the trail. You may let him follow you back here if you wish,but don't let him catch you or you'll be eaten."
"Yes, Mistress," and it leaves through the door.
"You," She continues to the nora, "must see to it that the Wolf is kept busy with other things. Go fetch me its cub."
"Yes, Mistress," and the nora leaves through the window.
"What about me. Mistress?" says the midwife.
"You must sing a song to catch a Dove by the wing."
"Yes, Mistress. Of what shall I sing?"
"Sing of cages that look like feather beds, and blood that smells like apple blossoms."
"Yes, Mistress. How loud shall I sing?"
"Sing so loud the nests shake in their trees, but not so loud the wolves howl in the hills."
"Yes, Mistress. How long shall I sing?"
"Sing until the snow falls up from the ground, but stop before the first note reaches your ear."
"Yes, Mistress," says the midwife, and she puts her face near the fireplace flue and begins to sing.
16 NOV 12:09
Keep them hounds off my trail,
And them jailers off my back.
Get these bracelets off of me,
A little rain to hide my track.
"HIDE MY TRACK"
He was very comfortable, except that something was jabbing him in the back of the head. He was warm,cuddled up in a blanket tucked all the way up to his chin, but a cool breeze was blowing against his face. He shifted, trying to move his head away from whatever was poking him, and remembered that he'd been hit; then he sat up, struggling to get his gun out of the holster he was half sitting on.
"Sit still!" hissed Madam Moria. "Do you think this is easy?"
Stepovich ignored her, twisting to stare wildly around him. He shook his head, trying to clear it of fogs, but the mist swirling and eddying around the coach and in through the open windows was real. So was the good calfskin upholstery under him, and the bright brass catches and handles and trims of the coach, and the brocaded lining of the coach's ceiling.ceiling.Aed coach blanket was tucked around him,with a large M embroidered in one corner. Nothing remained of the small park carriage he had jumped into. Nothing.
There was a small window facing forward, with a leather cover flap undone, and through it he could get a glimpse of the Coachman up on his box. Stepovich swayed with a sudden wooziness that was only part pain. He gripped the sill of the open window beside him, thrust his head out. Forward, he could see the dim shapes of dark horses, four perhaps,shrouded in fog. Around the coach, nothing. He could see no buildings, no lampposts, no parking meters, nothing. Stepovich had a sensation of movement, but it was a nasty, queasy sort of movement,as if the coach wobbled forward on wheels of Jell-O.There O. Theresound of hooves hitting pavement, no sound of wheels on asphalt. No normal sound at all,only the wind and Madam Moria's muttering, and other voices, giggling and gibbering at the very limits of Stepovich's hearing. "Stop the coach!" Stepovich roared, but the fog gulped his voice down whole, reducing his command to a pitiful plea.
"We're nearly there," Madam Moria said comfortingly.
"Nearly where?" Stepovich demanded. She ignored him, and went on with her muttering as she fingered something he could not see, for all the world like an old woman telling her rosary beads. He reached up to feel the lump on the back of his head.Wethead. Wet lump. It made him feel sick. Serve her right if he puked all over both of them. He knew he should be taking control of the situation; a good cop would have this situation completely under control.control.Heed the strap on his holster, but Madam Moria shot him a fierce glare.
"Cold iron and steel, oh, yes, fool, that would be a great help to us! Do you want to fall through completely? No? Then sit still!" The wind had fingered some of her hair free of her shawl and the black strands whipped across her face, veiling her brown eyes and high cheeks. Stepovich stared at the snap of command in her voice. He had heard it before. It was the obey-me-or-die voice of a commander in a life or death situation. Something in him bowed to it instinctively.
"Where are we going?" he whispered.
"I don't know. Back. Following the threads, back to before. She was hiding him."
"Who?" he asked helplessly.
"The worm. Hush. If She hears us. She'll cut the thread, and there'll be no following it forward nor back. There'll only be the mist and the Coachman."
"Trust me," said the Coachman, the first word she'd spoken, and folktales and violins shimmered in his voice, and Stepovich did. But Madam Moria laughed, the laugh of a skeptical old woman. "Trust you? Trust you right down the neck of a bottle!" Stepovich glanced at her blind but focused eyes and then away, clenching his fists. Good Christ, what the hell was happening to him?
He leaned forward to the window again. Mist and fog and clammy air, no more than that. Or was that glimpsed bit of facade, bared by the mist for only an instant, the decorated cornice of the old Masonic temple? If so, he knew where he was; but just as suddenly as it had come, his brief sense of orientation was swept away. They'd torn down the old Masonic temple six years back. The gooseneck street lamps that he could glimpse now had been gone since he was twenty-three. He remembered coming home from one of his attempts at a college education to find them gone.
Understanding broke over him like a cold wave and he refused it, clinging instead to his own reality. "Almost there, mistress," said the Coachman, and he leaned stiffly down and peered in to speak to them.He them.Hetop hat now, and a black wool greatcoat,but his face had not changed, not one line or hair of difference, except that now he smiled at Stepovich and his teeth were very white. Somehow that was the worst of all, and Stepovich felt his reasoning throwback its head and howl at the moon. Instead he turned back to his window and gripped the edge of it like a drowning man clutches at flotsam.
The mist was thinning around them, tattering away like cobwebs. Warmth suddenly filled the air and the sun broke through like a woman's smile; trees lined the suburban street of turn-of-the-century Victorian-style houses, children played and laughed, but Stepovich felt as if he saw it all through a dirty plateglass window. There was an echo of distance to the bark of the terrier chasing the ball a small boy threw,and neither child nor dog turned their heads to watch the horse-drawn coach pass. Big elms lined the street.Tstreet.The hadn't seen elms that size since the Dutch elm epidemic of '63 had left the suburbs near treelesstreeless. Then wasn't bothering with the street,either, hell, he wasn't even on the sidewalk; he was taking it across the lawns, through sprinklers that didn't wet them, down to an empty lot, overgrown with deep grass, littered with pop cans that weren't aluminum, and presided over by a live oak.
A ramshackle treehouse perched in its branches, a genuine kid's treehouse, all impossible angles and salvaged scrap, and a lively battle was going on for possession of it. Two boys in jeans and plain white tee shirts were in the upper level, energetically shaking a knotted rope that a smaller boy clung to. T
he smaller boy was dressed in clean pale blue corduroys and a button-up-the-front short-sleeved cotton shirt that matched the color of his pants exactly. His belt was white and his sneakers were black and low, like girl's sneakers, and new looking, not like the battered black hi-tops that Stepovich could glimpse on the other two boys. Everything about him screamed Mama's Little Precious, and Stepovich wasn't surprised to hear one of the older boys tease, "Go home to Mommy, little Timmy. She's calling you. She wants to wipe your nosey."
Timmy? Timothy DeCruz? No, they hadn't gone that far back.
"Naw, Josh, she wants to wipe his little baby butt!"jeered the other, and together they gave the rope one final shake that ripped it out of Timmy's hands. He fell awkwardly, not like a kid, but like a frightened old man, and landed badly, on his back in the dirt.Thedirt. Theoys snaked the ladder up quickly while little Timmy lay on his back, trying to wheeze back the air that had been knocked out of him.
"Lookit, little baby Timmy's gonna cry now!" one boy sneered, the same one who had made the remark about his butt. Stepovich thought the other boy looked mildly worried. He himself, powerless to intervene, stared at Timmy, feeling a sick sort of sympathy for him, one that was tempered with an innate understanding of how the older boys felt. Spray a sparrow with paint, and the other sparrows will peck him to death.
Timmy got up, his narrow shoulders still shaking with tears. No. Not tears. An unchildlike rage convulsed his round little face. "I'll get you sonsabitches," he vowed, his voice breaking on the words.
"Oh, he's gonna get us, oh. Josh, hold my hand,I'm so scared," mocked one of the treehouse boys,and he was laughing wildly, mouth open, when the rock hit him.
It was well aimed and flung with fury and it struck right between the boy's eyes. Stepovich saw his eyes roll up a fraction of a second before he fell from the treehouse. The boy landed with a force that made him bounce, his arms and legs flopping like a straw man."You killed him!" wailed Josh, and came snaking down the ladder to kneel by his friend. For an instant Stepovich feared it might be true, but then the boy on the ground stirred, and then began crying, the terrible sound of a child who thinks he is too old to cry but is hurt too badly not to. Little Timmy seemed to devour the sound, staring with his pale eyes round,his hateful little mouth drawn up in a bow of pleasure. "I gotcha, I gotcha!" he screeched gleefully, but the two older boys were too deep in shock to heed him. Josh tottered his friend off toward home, and the instant they were clear of the treehouse, Timmy was at the rope, doggedly and clumsily shinnying his way up the knotted length. Once up in the tree house,he pulled up the rope. He leaned out of it, his small face bright with hate and triumph. "I gotcha, and the treehouse is all mine now!" he shrieked after them.
Stepovich was willing to bet he was right. There was something in that boy's face that no sane kid would cross twice.
There was a thing then, a creature of flames and animal parts-goose leg, horse arm-coming at them,burning over the ground like a range fire. The Coachman cracked his whip at it, but it made Stepovich suddenly realize that none of this was real-that something very bad had been done to his head and he was probably even now in an ambulance, if Durand had it together at all. He wondered if the bullet was in his skull this time, and if the dream would stop when the doctors pulled it out. Madam Moria was shaking her fist at the creature and yelling what were probably curses, but the Coachman was shaking the reins and leaning forward, and suddenly he split the whole world, wide and black, with a piercing whistle.
ELEVEN
How the Owl and the Raven Sang
THURSDAY AFTERNOON
He said, "You can go back home
And never face the dangers,
Or continue toward a life
You will live among strangers…"
"RAVEN, OWL, AND I"
Daniel waited for the Coachman until he couldn't wait any longer-almost ten minutes. The Coachman's words about each city having its own rhythms had stayed with him, and now he wanted to taste this city's. He took his fiddle and went out to meet the fog in the air and the snow on the ground. He hardly noticed the cold; he'd been living in a place where winter was colder and lasted longer.
He wished the Coachman would find his little brother; both of his brothers, in fact. His big brother could sit and do nothing for hours on end and not seem to mind; he'd just smile with his little supercilious smile and nod from time to time. And his little brother, well, he never had to wait, because wherever he was, things was exciting. But he's, Daniel, always seemed drawn to the excitement, but he never quite knew what to do when he got there.
But no, that wasn't right; he'd never really been tested. All of these years of wandering and waiting,and, except for the first mistake of leaving his little brother, a mistake he shared with Owl, he'd never had the chance to learn what he was made of; never the test, never the hard choice, never the need to put everything into one, horrible, wonderful moment. He knew it, and he missed it, and he waited for it.
He sat down on a wrought-iron bench and waited for something flashy to catch his eye, but nothing came; there were few passersby. There was one tall young man who seemed very dangerous, and wore animal skins that had been dyed black. There was a woman who hurried by who had painted her face so heavily it was impossible to guess at the texture of her skin, except that her hands showed signs of age.
Daniel took out his fiddle, stood, and played waiting music. As he played, he thought of his little brother, and worried about him. "If my fiddle were a shield," he thought, "I'd play music to protect you,wherever you are." So he played to ward off the evil eye, and to baffle Luci's creatures, and he smiled from the pleasure the music gave him. After a while he drifted off to other airs, then, with an odd feeling of having accomplished something, he sighed and went back to the hotel. He finished what little brandy was in the bottle and tried to wait patiently for the Coachman.
NOVEMBER SIXTEENTH, AFTERNOON
… His eyes softened for a time,
I could barely hear his voice:
"It isn't easy to decide,
But few get the choice."
"RAVEN, OWL, AND I"
Raymond sat in the fog, a bit troubled by the chill,but not too much; where he came from winters were colder and lasted longer. He studied the vague shapes that passed in the fog, twenty-eight of them, noticing the way this one huddled into his coat, or that one clutched her purse tightly as she walked. And, more,he listened to the way they walked, and to the odd rhythms created by the tap-tap of high heels or the slap of shoe leather against the endless murmur of the city: A door slams, and another, closer; hisses; a small car with a standard transmission shifts from first to second; a larger car dopplers away, leaving a faint buzz which blends into the sound of a train that is sofar awso far is only a low moan.
He became aware of the Dove's presence; not near him, but that his brother had been in this city long enough to have an effect. There were lives the Dove had changed, somewhere, flowing and breathing. A tremendous longing to find both of his brothers filled him, but there was nothing he could do. He knew that, had he the powers of his youngest brother, he would be able to bring them together; he did not begrudge him those powers; with powers come burdens, and Raymond could not lighten them. His other brother-what had he been calling himself? Daniel,that was it, Daniel would have wanted to redraw the paths to suit himself, but Daniel was a doer, not a watcher; he could lighten the Dove's burden. Daniel,too, might be nearby; Raymond couldn't tell. They had each their paths, and perhaps their paths would cross.
He sat up straight, suddenly. Something has just happened, he thought. He frowned. It was like the trembling of a web, when the spider, far away on the other side, jiggles a strand. Raymond had a guess who the spider was, and wondered what strands She was jiggling. For a moment, he felt the frustration that Daniel must live with all the time-wanting to act, but being unable-but then old habits came back, and he relaxed, watching, listening, waiting.
At last, just to have somethin
g to do, he took out his tambourine, wrapped carefully in old towels. He tapped the head and winced at how lifeless it sounded in the damp weather; It must be proximity to the lake; cold weather was usually very kind to the calfskincalfskin.Nevertheless he sat in the park and tapped at it,playing with rhythms of the city, and finding counterpoints to a strange singing he almost fancied he heard, coming from the wind around him.
He sat for hours, playing his tambourine, neither noticing nor caring whether some passerby stopped for a while to listen before continuing on his way.Two way.Twoone dark and one fair, watched him for some time with that oddly bemused expression people get when they realize for the first time that the tambourine is a musical instrument. He felt a certain pride in getting this reaction, and then he noticed that they seemed frightened somehow. They spoke to each other of only the most inconsequential things; shoes that were too tight, hair that wouldn't behave, yet underneath it all they shared a common terror, which neither would admit to. He thought he saw an animal scurry past, but when he looked he saw nothing.nothing. Presentlynt on their way after giggling and putting a dollar in the pocket of his coat. They seemed not as frightened as they'd been a few minutes before.
He played until dark and the chill began to penetrate his fingers, then he put his instrument away, got up, and began to walk around the city, looking for nothing in particular.
16 NOV 13:15
You got your pen and paper.
You got your book of rules,
You got your little list,
Of kings and crooks and fools…
"IF I HAD THE VOICE"
Stepovich fell. His stomach told him so. Fell fast and hard and boneless, just like that boy coming out of the tree. He wondered if it would hurt when he landed, and then he wondered if this blackness had a bottom. Maybe the blackness was the surgeons taking the bullet out of his head. Or maybe the blackness was what came when they couldn't get it out. He could feel someone gripping his hand; maybe Jennie had come to be by his deathbed, maybe this blackness was the dying part. He'd heard there was supposed to be a light when you died, and that you'd want to go toward it. He strained his eyes, looking for it, but all he could see was blackness. He could feel the hand in his and smell cheap brandy and garlic mixed with horse sweat.
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