The Very Best of Charles De Lint
Page 14
Not where I come from.
“Where do you come from?”
There was a moment’s pause, then Arnold said softly, I’m not really sure.
Marguerite felt a little uncomfortable at that. The voice tickling her mind sounded too sad and she started to feel ashamed of being so greedy.
“Listen,” she said. “I didn’t really mean to…you know…”
That’s all right, Arnold replied. Just let me know when you’ve decided what your wish is.
Marguerite got a feeling in her head then as though something had just slipped away, like a lost memory or a half-remembered thought, then she realized that Arnold had just gone back to wherever it was that he’d been before she’d opened the egg. Thoughtfully, she wrapped him up in the faded velvet, then shut him away in the egg. She put the egg under her pillow and went to sleep.
* * *
All the next day she kept thinking about the brass egg and the clay crow inside it, about her one wish and all the wonderful things that there were to wish for. She meant to take out the egg right away, first thing in the morning, but she never quite found the time. She went fishing with her father after breakfast, and then she went into Perth to shop with her mother, and then she went swimming with Steve who lived two cottages down and liked punk music as much as she did, though maybe for different reasons. She didn’t get back to her egg until bedtime that night.
“What happens to you after I’ve made my wish?” she asked after she’d taken Arnold out of his egg.
I go away.
Marguerite asked, “Where to?” before she really thought about what she was saying, but this time Arnold didn’t get upset.
To be somebody else’s wish, he said.
“And after that?”
Well, after they’ve made their wish, I’ll go on to the next and the next….
“It sounds kind of boring.”
Oh, no. I get to meet all sorts of interesting people.
Marguerite scratched her nose. She’d gotten a mosquito bite right on the end of it and felt very much like Pinocchio though she hadn’t been telling any lies.
“Have you always been a wish?” she asked, not thinking again.
Arnold’s voice grew so quiet that it was just a feathery touch in her mind.
I remember being something else…a long time ago….
Marguerite leaned closer, as though that would help her hear him better. But there was a sudden feeling in her as though Arnold had shaken himself out of his reverie.
Do you know what you’re going to wish for yet? he asked briskly.
“Not exactly.”
Well, just let me know when you’re ready, he said and then he was gone again.
Marguerite sighed and put him away. This didn’t seem to be at all the way this whole wishing business should go. Instead of feeling all excited about being able to ask for any one thing—anything!—she felt guilty because she kept making Arnold feel bad. Mind you, she thought. He did seem to be a gloomy sort of a genie when you came right down to it.
She fell asleep wondering if he looked the same wherever he went to when he left her as he did when she held him in her hand. Somehow his ticklish raspy voice didn’t quite go with the lumpy clay figure that lay inside the brass egg. She supposed she’d never know.
* * *
As the summer progressed they became quite good friends, in an odd sort of way. Marguerite took to carrying the egg around with her in a small quilted cotton bag that she slung over her shoulder. At opportune moments, she’d take Arnold out and they’d talk about all sorts of things.
Arnold, Marguerite discovered, knew a lot that she hadn’t supposed a genie would know. He was current with all the latest bands, seemed to have seen all the best movies, knew stories that could make her giggle uncontrollably or shiver with chills under her blankets late at night. If she didn’t press him for information about his past, he proved to be the best friend a person could want and she found herself telling him things that she’d never think of telling anyone else.
It got to the point where Marguerite forgot he was a wish. Which was fine until the day that she left her quilted cotton bag behind in a restaurant in Smith Falls on a day’s outing with her mother. She became totally panic-stricken until her mother took her back to the restaurant, but by then her bag was gone, and so was the egg, and with it Arnold.
Marguerite was inconsolable. She moped around for days and nothing that anyone could do could cheer her up. She missed Arnold passionately. Missed their long talks when she was supposed to be sleeping. Missed the weight of his egg in her shoulderbag and the companionable presence of just knowing he was there. And also, she realized, she’d missed her chance of using her wish.
She could have had anything she wanted. She could have asked for piles of money. For fame and fortune. To be a lead singer in a band like 10,000 Maniacs. To be another Molly Ringwald and star in all kinds of movies. She could have wished that Arnold would stay with her forever. Instead, jerk that she was, she’d never used the wish and now she had nothing. How could she be so stupid?
“Oh,” she muttered one night in her bed. “I wish I…I wish…”
She paused then, feeling a familiar tickle in her head.
Did you finally decide on your wish? Arnold asked.
Marguerite sat up so suddenly that she knocked over her water glass on the night table. Luckily it was empty.
“Arnold?” she asked, looking around. “Are you here?”
Well, not exactly here, as it were, but I can hear you.
“Where have you been?”
Waiting for you to make your wish.
“I’ve really missed you,” Marguerite said. She patted her comforter with eager hands, trying to find Arnold’s egg. “How did you get back here?”
I’m not exactly here , Arnold said.
“How come you never talked to me when I’ve been missing you all this time?”
I can’t really initiate these things, Arnold explained. It gets rather complicated, but even though my egg’s with someone else, I can’t really be their wish until I’ve finished being yours.
“So we can still talk and be friends even though I’ve lost the egg?”
Not exactly. I can fulfill your wish, but since I’m not with you, as it were, I can’t really stay unless you’re ready to make your wish.
“You can’t?” Marguerite wailed.
Afraid not. I don’t make the rules, you know.
“I’ve got it,” Marguerite said. And she did have it too. If she wanted to keep Arnold with her, all she had to do was wish for him to always be her friend. Then no one could take him away from her. They’d always be together.
“I wish…” she began.
But that didn’t seem quite right, she realized. She gave her dyed forelock a nervous tug. It wasn’t right to make someone be your friend. But if she didn’t do that, if she wished something else, then Arnold would just go off and be somebody else’s wish. Oh, if only things didn’t have to be complicated. Maybe she should just wish herself to the moon and be done with all her problems. She could lie there and stare at the world from a nice long distance away while she slowly asphyxiated. That would solve everything.
She felt that telltale feeling in her mind that let her know that Arnold was leaving again.
“Wait,” she said. “I haven’t made my wish yet.”
The feeling stopped. Then you’ve decided? Arnold asked.
She hadn’t, but as soon as he asked, she realized that there was only one fair wish she could make.
“I wish you were free,” she said.
The feeling that was Arnold moved blurrily inside her.
You what? he asked.
“I wish you were free. I can wish that, can’t I?”
Yes, but… Wouldn’t you rather have something…well, something for yourself?
“This is for myself,” Marguerite said. “Your being free would be the best thing I could wish for because you’re my friend a
nd I don’t want you to be trapped anymore.” She paused for a moment, brow wrinkling. “Or is there a rule against that?”
No rule, Arnold said softly. His ticklish voice bubbled with excitement. No rule at all against it.
“Then that’s my wish,” Marguerite said.
Inside her mind, she felt a sensation like a tiny whirlwind spinning around and around. It was like Arnold’s voice and an autumn leaves smell and a kaleidoscope of dervishing lights, all wrapped up in one whirling sensation.
Free! Arnold called from the center of that whirlygig.
A sudden weight was in Marguerite’s hand and she saw that the brass egg had appeared there. It lay open on her palm, the faded velvet spilled out of it. It seemed so very small to hold so much happiness, but fluttering on tiny wings was the clay crow, rising up in a spin that twinned Arnold’s presence in Marguerite’s mind.
Her fingers closed around the brass egg as Arnold doubled, then tripled his size in an explosion of black feathers. His voice was like a chorus of bells, ringing and ringing between Marguerite’s ears. Then with an exuberant caw, he stroked the air with his wings, flew out the cottage window and was gone.
Marguerite sat quietly, staring out the window and holding the brass egg. A big grin stretched her lips. There was something so right about what she’d just done that she felt an overwhelming sense of happiness herself, as though she’d been the one trapped in a treadmill of wishes in a brass egg, and Arnold had been the one to free her.
At last she reached out and picked up from the comforter a small glossy black feather that Arnold had left behind. Wrapping it in the old velvet, she put it into the brass egg and screwed the egg shut once more.
* * *
That September a new family moved in next door with a boy her age named Arnold. Marguerite was delighted and, though her parents were surprised, she and the new boy became best friends almost immediately. She showed him the egg one day that winter and wasn’t at all surprised that the feather she still kept in it was the exact same shade of black as her new friend’s hair.
Arnold stroked the feather with one finger when she let him see it. He smiled at her and said, “I had a wish once…”
Into the Green
Stone walls confine a tinker; cold iron binds a witch; but a musician’s music can never be fettered, for it lives first in her heart and mind.
* * *
The harp was named Garrow—born out of an old sorrow to make weary hearts glad. It was a small lap harp, easy to carry, with a resonance that let its music carry to the far ends of a crowded commonroom. The long fingers of the red-haired woman could pull dance tunes from its strings, lilting jigs or reels that set feet tapping until the floorboards shook and the rafters rang. But some nights the memory of old sorrows returned. Lying in wait like marsh mists, they clouded her eyes with their arrival. On those nights, the music she pulled from Garrow’s metal-strung strings was more bitter than sweet, slow airs that made the heart regret and brought unbidden memories to haunt the minds of those who listened.
“Enough of that,” the innkeeper said.
The tune faltered and Angharad looked up into his angry face. She lay her hands across the strings, stilling the harp’s plaintive singing.
“I said you could make music,” the innkeeper told her, “not drive my customers away.”
It took Angharad a few moments to return from that place in her memory that the music had brought her to this inn where her body sat, drawing the music from the strings of her harp. The commonroom was half-empty and oddly subdued, where earlier every table had been filled and men stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the bar, joking and telling each other ever more embroidered tales. The few who spoke did so in hushed voices; fewer still would meet her gaze.
“You’ll have to go,” the innkeeper said, his voice not so harsh now. She saw in his eyes that he too was remembering a forgotten sorrow.
“I…”
How to tell him that on nights such as these, the sorrow came, whether she willed it or not? That if she had her choice she would rather forget as well. But the harp was a gift from Jacky Lantern’s kin, as was the music she pulled from its strings. She used it in her journeys through the Kingdoms of the Green Isles, to wake the Summerblood where it lay sleeping in folk who never knew they were witches. That was how the Middle Kingdom survived—by being remembered, by its small magics being served, by the interchange of wisdom and gossip between man and those with whom he shared the world.
But sometimes the memories the music woke were not so gay and charming. They hurt. Yet such memories served a purpose, too, as the music knew well. They helped to break the circles of history so that mistakes weren’t repeated. But how was she to explain such things to this tall, grim-faced innkeeper who’d been looking only for an evening’s entertainment for his customers? How to put into words what only music could tell?
“I…I’m sorry,” she said.
He nodded, almost sympathetically. Then his eyes grew hard. “Just go.”
She made no protest. She knew what she was—tinker, witch and harper. This far south of Kellmidden, only the latter allowed her much acceptance with those who travelled a road just to get from here to there, rather than for the sake of the travelling itself. For the sake of the road that led into the green, where poetry and harping met to sing of the Middle Kingdom.
Standing, she swung the harp up on one shoulder, a small journeypack on the other. Her red hair was drawn back in two long braids. She wore a tinker’s plaited skirt and white blouse with a huntsman’s leather jerkin overtop. At the door she collected her staff of white rowan wood. Witches’ wood. Not until the door swung closed behind her did the usual level of conversation and laughter return to the commonroom.
But they would remember. Her. The music. There was one man who watched her from a corner, face dark with brooding. She meant to leave before they remembered other things. Before one or another wondered aloud if it was true that witch’s skin burned at the touch of cold iron—as did that of the kowrie folk.
As she stepped away from the door, a huge shadowed shape arose from where it had been crouching by a window. The quick tattoo of her pulse only sharpened when she saw that it was a man—a misshapen man. His chest was massive, his arms and legs like small trees. But a hump rose from his back, and his head jutted almost from his chest at an awkward angle. His legs were bowed as though his weight was almost too much for them. He shuffled, rather than walked, as he closed the short space between them.
Light from the window spilled across his features. One eye was set higher in that broad face than the other. The nose had been broken—more than once. His hair was a knotted thicket, his beard a bird’s nest of matted tangles.
Angharad began to bring her staff between them. The white rowan wood could call up a witchfire that was good for little more than calling up a flame in a damp camp fire, but it could startle. That might be enough for her to make her escape.
The monstrous man reached a hand towards her. “Puh-pretty,” he said.
Before Angharad could react, there came a quick movement from around the side of the inn.
“Go on!” the newcomer cried. It was the barmaid from the inn, a slender blue-eyed girl whose blond hair hung in one thick braid across her breast. The innkeeper had called her Jessa. “Get away from her, you big oaf.” She made a shooing motion with her hand.
Angharad saw something flicker briefly in the man’s eyes as he turned. A moment of shining light. A flash of regret. She realized then that he’d been speaking of her music, not her. He’d been reaching to touch the harp, not her. She wanted to call him back, but the barmaid was thrusting a package wrapped in unbleached cotton at her. The man had shambled away, vanishing into the darkness in the time it took Angharad to look from the package to where he’d been standing.
“Something for the road,” Jessa said. “It’s not much—some cheese and bread.”
“Thank you,” Angharad replied. “That man…?”
“What sort of a night is this?”
“Full moon.”
Jessa pointed eastward. Rising above the trees there, Angharad saw the moon rising, swollen and round above the trees. She remembered a circle of old longstones that she’d passed on the road that took her to the inn. They stood far off from the road on a hill overlooking the Grey Sea, a league or so west of the village. Old stones, like silent sentinels, watching the distant waves. A place where kowries would dance, she thought, if they were so inclined.
“You should go,” Jessa said.
Angharad gave her a questioning look.
The barmaid nodded towards the inn. “They’re talking about witches in there, and spells laid with music. They’re not bad men, but any man who drinks…”
Angharad nodded. A hard day’s work, then drinking all night. To some it was enough to excuse any deed. They were honest folk, after all. Not tinkers. Not witches.
She touched Jessa’s arm. “Thank you.”
“We’re both women,” the barmaid said with a smile. “We have to stick together, now don’t we?” Her features, half-hidden in the gloom, grew more serious as she added, “Stay off the road if you can. Depending on how things go… Well, there’s some’s as have horses.”
Angharad thought of a misshapen man and a place of standing stones, of moonlight and dancing kowries.
“I will,” she said.
Jessa gave her another quick smile, then slipped once more around the corner of the inn. Angharad listened to her quiet footfalls as she ran back to the kitchen. Giving the inn a considering look, she stuffed the barmaid’s gift of food into her journeypack and set off down the road, staff in hand.