The Little Country

by Charles de Lint

  “Well, Owen,” Clare said. “A man called him and told him that if he didn’t give me the sack, he’d make sure that there wasn’t a publisher that would supply him with a single other book until he did.”

  “How can they do this?” Janey cried. “Where’s the bloody justice in it? I don’t doubt that first thing Monday morning, we can call up the bank to find that the bloody bastards have managed to do something to our bank accounts as well.”

  She started to pace back and forth across the room, kicking a stack of manuscript pages across the carpet before Felix got her to sit down. By then the Gaffer was off the phone, his face grim. Janey buried her face in her hands.

  “I don’t want to know,” she said, her voice muffled.

  “That was Chalkie,” the Gaffer said. “Someone killed Sara‌—his cat”‌—he added for Felix’s sake‌—“and nailed her body to the tree ’round back of his house.”

  “Oh, no!” Janey cried. “What if they’ve got Jabez?”

  She jumped from her seat and ran to the door. Flinging it open, she called out for the Gaffer’s cat who came sauntering in after a few anxious moments and gave Janey an uncomprehending look as she swept him up into her arms to give him a hug. Janey kicked the door shut with her foot and returned to her seat on the sofa, still holding the cat.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  Felix took charge. “There’s not much anyone can do until Monday morning,” he said, “so as I see it, we have to go on with our plan. We finish the book, then we hide it.”

  “But what’s the point?” Janey said. “Even if we hide it so well that no one could ever find it, that still won’t stop them from ruining our lives and that of every one of our friends.”

  “We’ll fight them,” Felix said.

  The Gaffer shook his head. “That will cost money, my beauty. They’ll take it to the courts and solicitors cost money‌—money that none of us have to spare. We’re not rich folk like this John Madden.”

  “If the book’s gone‌—gone forever,” Felix said, “then there’ll be nothing left to fight about, will there?”

  “Unless they just want revenge,” Janey said morosely.

  “I still don’t understand,” Dinny said. “What’s so special about this book? Why would a man want to ruin the lives of people he has never met, just for a book?”

  “Greed,” Clare said.

  “Spite,” Janey added.

  “We’ll stand up to him,” Dinny said. “All the Boyds will. And our friends will stand by us, just as we’ll stand by you.”

  “We appreciate that,” the Gaffer said.

  Dinny nodded, looking grimmer by the moment. “We should go to the police as well. There must be laws to protect us.”

  “But we can’t prove anything against these people,” Clare said. “We don’t even know what they look like‌—except for that Grant woman in Penzance.”

  Janey glared. “And don’t start me on her, either,” she said.

  “Then we’ll just have to maneuver them into a position where we can prove it,” Felix said.

  “What do you mean?” Dinny asked.

  Felix started to explain, but Janey shook her head.

  “Don’t talk,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  She pointed to the shadows that had been growing in the corners of the room as the day drew to its end.

  “Remember what we told you about what Mr. Goninan had to say about Madden and the shadows cast by man-made objects?” She shook her head. “We’ve been bloody fools. He’ll have heard everything we’ve already talked about.”

  “What’s old Peter have to do with this?” Dinny asked.

  “It’s too long to explain just now,” Janey said. She turned back to Felix. “Maybe it’s not true, this thing about the shadows and Madden; maybe it’s impossible, but the magic in the book’s real, isn’t it?”

  Dinny looked from one to the other in confusion. “Magic?” he said.

  “It’s a mad sort of a story,” Janey told him.

  Dinny stood up, obviously ill at ease.

  “Perhaps I should be going,” he said.

  Janey nodded and saw him to the door. “I’m sorry that any of this had to come on you and your family.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “We’ll try to get things sussed out,” she told him. “Don’t worry about the farm. We’ll think of something to stop this man before anything else happens.”

  “If you need any help . . .”

  “We’ll make sure to call you straightway,” Janey said.

  When she returned to the living room, the others were still arguing about magic and shadows and the like.

  “If Mr. Goninan wouldn’t talk about it in his house,” Clare said, “and this Madden isn’t even looking for him . . .”

  The Gaffer pointed to a spot just above the front door where a small brass figurine of a piskie stood on the door frame‌—placed there for luck.

  “Jan Penalurick will keep us safe from any kind of magical spying and harm,” he said. “So long as we stay in the house.”

  “It’s not really the same thing,” Clare said, but the Gaffer merely shushed her.

  “If you can accept unkind magics, my love,” he said, “then you’ll have to accept kindly ones as well.”

  Felix looked at Janey who simply nodded.

  “I suppose,” she said.

  She picked up a worn photo of William Dunthorn and looked at those familiar features that she knew only through other photos.

  It all centered around him.

  Oh, Billy, she thought. Didn’t you think about what you were doing when you magicked your book?

  The Man Who Died and Rose Again

  Christ’s image is just the perfect symbol for our civilization. It’s a perfect event for us‌—you have to die to survive. Because the personality is crucified in our society. That’s why so many people collapse, why the mental hospitals are full. No one can survive the personality that they want, which is the hero of their own drama. That hero dies, is massacred, and the self that is reborn remembers that crucifixion.

  ‌—LEONARD COHEN, from an interview in Musician, July 1988

  When Bett pulled the trigger of his automatic, the normal flow of time ceased to have meaning for Davie Rowe. He could almost see the bullet leave the muzzle of the revolver, the spark of light deep in the bore that had ignited the propulsion, the bullet’s passage through the air that left a streaming trail of afterimages in its wake. The report of the shot was like a clap of thunder.

  And then the bullet hit him, dead in the chest.

  The pain started‌—sharp and central, first just above his heart where the bullet impacted, then in his shoulder, then in a wave that exploded through the remainder of his body.

  He knew he was dead.

  The fall to the ground took an age to complete‌—time enough for a thousand regrets to flood his mind, riding the pain.

  That he’d never had a real friend.

  That he’d never had a sweetheart.

  That he’d never once looked in a mirror without cursing God or fate or whoever it was who was responsible for the ravaged features that looked back at him from his reflection.

  That he’d never had the strength of will to make something of himself, never mind the hand that fate had dealt him.

  That he’d never be the hero he’d imagined he could be, if he was just given half a bloody chance; a hero like those larger-than-life celluloid idols of his who stalked across the screen in the cinema down in Penzance.

  That he’d die and not be missed, not be grieved for.

  Except by his mother. And would she miss him, or merely the body that brought in what money it could to support them, the heart that was there for her to wound with her nagging and thoughtless words?

  “If you didn’t have such an evil mind, Davie,” she would tell him, “God wouldn’t have punished you with that face.”

  Davie Rowe didn’t be
lieve in God.

  But he couldn’t help but wonder if what she said was true. For he did have evil thoughts. Ugly thoughts of hurting those who mocked him. Of simply taking what he wanted because the world bloody well owed him, didn’t it? Of having his will with someone like Clare. . . .

  They weren’t the thoughts of a hero.

  There was no bravery in them. No decency.

  He had lived in a constant state of rage. All that let him suppress the worst of his impulses was the knowledge that giving free rein to them would put him right back in prison. Locked in a cage like the animal he was in the eyes of the world.

  It hadn’t been compassion that stayed his hand; it had been the simple fear of returning to that cage.

  And now he was dying.

  He lay here dying as meaningless a death as his life had been with no chance to make good. Shot down like a dog, lying here in his own pooling blood. Unable to move, unable to feel anything but the pain and the wash of regret that was drowning him.

  Like a dog; not a hero.

  Every dog has its day. . . .

  But, like all else in this world, he’d soon realized that the old homily was a lie as well, for this hound never got his day.

  Last night he’d done the one good and important thing he’d ever accomplished in his life‌—saving Clare from Michael Bett‌—and his only reward was this: lying here with Bett’s bullet in him, helplessly watching Bett approach to finish [him] off.

  Because of the odd change in Davie’s sense of perception, Bett appeared almost comical as he moved closer. It was as though the air had turned to honey and Bett could barely make his way through the cloying thickness of it that impeded his progress.

  But there was nothing humourous about the weapon in Bett’s hand.

  And dying was no joke‌—though maybe God, sitting up there in his great sky and looking down, was having a good laugh.

  Bett leveled his weapon‌—slowly, slowly‌—and Davie braced himself for the second bullet.

  It never came.

  Bett turned away, distracted, and then through that same endless drag of time, like a slow-motion sequence in a cinema, moved off, away and out of Davie’s range of vision.

  Relief came in a flood that washed away the regrets and pain. Davie felt as though he were floating. The blue of the sky had never seemed so sharp. His ears had never been so attuned to sound‌—the waves lashing the rocks below, the rustle of the ferns and couch grass in the wind, a bird’s call. . . all came to him with a clarity he had never experienced before.

  He glanced at a dried fern and knew that the fern was a part of the clifftop moor, which was in turn a part of the land, which was part of Britain, which crouched in the sea, a part of the earth, which was part of the sky, and beyond, beyond . . . the stars, the galaxies, the universes . . . all connected . . . each an integral part of the other. . . .

  And he was a part of it all as well. No better or worse than that singular frond of dried fern. As important as the queen in Buckingham Palace, as important as a vole rooting about at the base of a hedgerow.

  Dying, he had never felt more alive.

  And then he realized that he wasn’t dying.

  He lifted a hand to his chest and winced at the pain. But his searching fingers found no open wound. Instead, they connected with the small silver flask he carried in his inside jacket pocket. He had nicked it from a tourist at Land’s End this summer just past and, when he could afford to, liked to fill it with the dark rum he so loved.

  He wasn’t a tippler, nor a drunk, but there were times when he would sit out on the rocks, overlooking the bay, and have a swig or two, imagining himself to be one of those old smugglers who once haunted the coast, tippling a bit of his swag. The flask had been empty today‌—it often was‌—but he still liked to carry it about with him. And now it had saved his life.

  He could feel the dent in the metal from where the bullet had struck it and then careened off, leaving his chest bruised, but the skin unbroken.

  Then where did all the blood come from . . . ?

  He winced again as his fingers explored farther and found where the bullet had ricocheted up from the flask and gone through his shoulder.

  He could have shrieked with agony as his probing finger touched the wound‌—but the pain was sweet, for it carried a message that made his heart sing.

  He was going to live.

  But Bett. . . where was Bett and his revolver? Surely the man wouldn’t leave him here, still alive, with the possibility that he would survive to tell the tale?

  He reached for Bett’s presence‌—thinking that he was lifting his head‌—but then the oddest thing of all occurred, for he realized that it was his mind that was reaching out to Bett, not his physical senses. As he’d felt the connection with the whole of the world and the stars that lay beyond, a connection that he could not retain because it was simply too vast for one mind to encompass, he now felt a connection with his would-be murderer. He still lay there on the ground, but he knew exactly what Bett was about. It was as though he sat on the man’s shoulder, or rode along in the back of his mind.

  He followed Bett, crawling through the thick undergrowth, stalking . . . stalking . . . a hiker.

  He wanted to shout a warning to the unsuspecting man, but couldn’t get his throat to work properly. And then his own sense of self-preservation cut in.

  Get away, it told him. Get away while you can.

  So he crawled into the undergrowth on his own side of the path, burrowing deeply into its tangles, his mind still connected to Bett. The pain, as he moved, was so fierce that he fell in and out of consciousness. But the odd flow of time continued so that what he thought of as long minutes were only the briefest of seconds. He swept feebly at the trail he was leaving behind him with a stiff bit of brush that he managed to pull from a dead thorn thicket.

  And on he went, nesting deeper into the wild jungle of vegetation that ran riotously along the clifftop. He paused when Bett pushed the hiker from the cliff. His connection to Bett widened suddenly, encompassing the hiker as well so that he followed the man in his plummet to the rocks below. He almost shrieked when the hiker hit the rocks; he was left shivering afterward.

  His mind was slow in returning to his own head. His strength was waning. It took most of what remained to tear a strip from the bottom of his shirt, using his good arm and his teeth, and then awkwardly binding it about his wound.

  The bullet had gone straight through. If he could keep the wound clean and have it properly looked after . . .

  He sensed Bett looking for him and lay very still. Through his connection to the man, he could sense Bett’s puzzlement. Bett searched for a while, but his heart didn’t seem to be in the task. His mind was on other matters that Davie could sense‌—seething there in the turmoil that was Bett’s mind‌—if not quite grasp. But the connection remained, even when Bett finally walked back along the Coastal Path towards Mousehole.

  The connection remained.

  He followed Bett through the village, and out again along the road to Newlyn.

  I can find you, Davie thought as he laid his head wearily in the grass, too exhausted to move anymore. Wherever you go, I can find you now.

  And when he did . . .

  Every dog has its day.

  Willie had a stash in a crib that was part of a farm up back of the village. Davie had been up there with Willie often enough, and knew exactly under which floorboard Willie had hidden his spare handgun, wrapped up in plastic and oilskin to protect it from the weather.

  Davie would make his way up there and then he’d do his second good deed in as many days. He’d rid the world of one Michael Bett and bugger the consequences.

  Unconsciousness rose in a wave to cloud his mind and drag him down into its dark depths. Davie let himself go, but there was a smile on his lips when he finally let the darkness swallow him.

  So There I Was

  Under the earth I go,

  On the oak-leaf I
stand,

  I ride on the filly that never was foaled,

  And I carry the dead in my hand.

  ‌—SCOTS TRADITIONAL, collected by Hamish Henderson

  We can’t leave our land anymore,” Edern said, “except in dreams‌—our dreams, your dreams. . . .”

  “Seal dreams?” Jodi asked.

  Edern smiled and nodded. “Even seal dreams.” Then he sighed. “But dreams are not enough.”

  His smile and body language, like his voice, remained familiar. But it was odd for Jodi to see what she thought of as Edern’s mannerisms being used by a stranger. A familiar stranger, but a stranger all the same.

  They sat, the two of them, in the shade of the tolmen in the world to which the hole in the Men-an-Tol had carried her. Edern leaned against the stone, legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. Jodi was perched on another stone across from him where she sat swinging her legs lightly, kicking her heels against the rough granite.

  Edern had brought out a kind of old-fashioned leather knapsack from which he drew bread and a spread made from crushed nuts to go on it, sticky buns and cheese. For afters, there were candied fruits and something that tasted remarkably like chocolate, though Edern told her that it was actually made from another kind of nut. Completing the meal was a waterskin full of cold tea with which they washed it all down.

  “There was commerce once between our worlds,” Edern went on when they’d finished eating. “An interchange of poetry and song, of art and ideas. We were almost one world, divided only by a thin onion-skin thickness of wall. Passing through it was like stepping through a thick mist‌—a clammy feeling, but not unpleasant.

  “Still, that was long ago.”

  “What happened?” Jodi asked.

  “Cold iron.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Your world took to metalwork in a fierce fashion. The soft metals were no longer enough‌—gold and silver, copper, bronze and tin. You needed iron, for its strength. But iron was anathema to us, and remains so up to the present day.

  “That soft onion-skin border thickened. Layer upon layer was added to it until now only a poet’s dreams can cross from one to the other.”