Moonheart

by Charles de Lint

  She glanced at her nightstand and was glad that she’d left the painting in the Postman’s Room. She wasn’t quite ready to look at it just now. Then slowly, as her pulse steadied, she began to calm down. The rush of adrenaline drained away and she leaned weakly against the headboard for a long time before she felt ready to try closing her eyes again. She was lonely lying there in her big bed tonight and wished Stephan was with her.

  Stephan Greer was her last boyfriend, a dark-haired potter with solemn dark brown eyes and strong hands. They’d broken up in September because of an old argument that finally came to a head. Stephan wanted them to live together, and not in the House, while Sara wasn’t quite ready for either that close a relationship or a move‌—at least not with him, or not just then. Patience hadn’t been one of Stephan’s strong points. Nor understanding, when she thought about it. She was probably better off without him, but right now none of that seemed to matter. She just wanted someone to hold her and say that everything was all right.

  She tried not to think of her dream, nor the weird connection it had with this afternoon’s find, but it didn’t do much good. She tossed and turned and thought a whole lot more about it all until she was too wide awake to lie in bed and try to sleep anymore. She turned on her bedside light and the latticework shadows fled. Propping up a pillow against the headboard, she thought some more, felt stifled, opened the window, which didn’t help, and decided to go for a walk in the garden.

  She changed from her flannel nightgown into jeans and a sweater, dug up a pair of running shoes and a woolen jacket. Feeling well-prepared to meet whatever the November night might throw at her, she left her bedroom, her runners making squeechy noises on the hardwood floor of her workroom that the carpets of the sitting room and the halls outside swallowed.

  Passing the Firecat’s Room, she could hear Blue and Sally conversing in quiet tones, with soft laughter spilling in between the sentences, and another pang of loneliness ran through her. They were playing a John Renbourn record and the gentle guitar music followed her further down the hall than their voices. She named the rooms to herself as she continued on. One summer she and Jamie had tried to name all the rooms, but they had given up before they were halfway through, deciding that it was better for them to acquire names on their own rather than being fitted with them in such a haphazard manner.

  When she reached the garden she chose a path at random, knowing that for all its twists and turns it would ultimately bring her to the knoll in the center. As she walked, she went back to considering her dream and what, if any, meaning it might have. Jamie always said that you could find one if you tried hard enough.

  Lost in reflection, she turned a corner and came face to face with a statue of a minotaur. The moon was bright on its polished marble and for a moment she froze, recalling the beast-headed figures from her dream. Then she recognized it for what it was.

  “Hi,” she said softly, lifting her hand. “How’s tricks?”

  The minotaur kept to its stony silence and, smiling, Sara walked on.

  Through the same trick of acoustics that let a window be open but none of the outside street sounds in, she could still hear Blue’s record. It was a far-offish sound that had as much volume as the last of autumn’s leaves rustling overhead, but was clear enough so that she could follow the melody. Humming along with it, she ambled on, nodding to statues when she came upon them, going where her feet led her and trying not to think anymore. The walking and humming were easy. Stopping herself from thinking was less so.

  She reached the center of the garden and sat down on one of the benches. It was quiet here. Not even the guitar music reached this far. The fountain was still, turned off with the coming of colder weather. She looked up into the night sky, found Orion, Canis Major and the Little Dipper without much effort. The moon was too low for her to see now, lost somewhere in the west.

  Gazing skyward helped calm her. Or at least it put things into perspective. She went over the day’s events, from finding the painting and medicine bag through her evening in the House to her dream. Laid out before her like that, she saw that she’d been letting herself get carried away. Or at least letting her imagination run a little too freely. Which explained her nightmare.

  There was something special about this afternoon’s find. She twiddled the ring on her finger as she pondered it. There was no denying that this was one of those treasures that Jamie was always harping on about. The painting was a prize. The bag was a fascinating riddle. Its contents were both curious and, in the case of the ring, valuable. But that was as far as it went.

  Still, she couldn’t shake the niggling thought that it was all connected and that something else was about to happen, that some final key would appear to join all her half thoughts into something that, while it might not be understandable, would at least be in its entirety. Remembering her dream-monster, she had second thoughts about how desirable that might actually be. Now she understood a little better what kept Jamie at his studies. There was always that moment of sensing that an answer lay just within reach. Was it worth trying for?

  Back in her bedroom, she exchanged her clothing for a fresh nightgown and climbed into bed. Was it worth trying to understand? She remembered a line of Francis Bacon’s that Jamie loved to quote: “Whatever deserves to exist, deserves to be known.” Well, she thought sleepily as she curled up against her pillow, what she had to find out was whether anything did exist in the first place. Then she could go about trying to understand it.

  She knew that in the morning everything would be, if not clearer, at least not so intense. Too tired to worry about a repetition of her nightmare now, she searched for sleep and found it with a suddenness that dissolved any further thought. And, thankfully, it was deep and dreamless.

  Chapter Three

  Kieran Foy woke just as his train pulled into Ottawa Station. He gathered up his knapsack, bedroll and guitar case, and propped them up on the seat beside him. Shrugging into his old pea jacket, he waited patiently for the hiss and clatter of the train to stop and the announcement that they’d reached their destination to crackle over the train’s intercom.

  He hoped Jean-Paul had driven out to meet him like he’d said he would. He didn’t feel like taking a bus and didn’t think he had enough for cab fare left over after the price of his ticket. That was the trouble with not paying attention to money. It was never there when you needed it. If it was nice tomorrow, he’d go up to the Mall and busk for a few hours. If the Mall was still there. Lord lifting Jesus, how long had it been since he’d been in Ottawa? Only three, four years? How come it seemed like a place from another life?

  Rolling a cigarette, he had just enough time to light it and stuff his tobacco pouch back into his pocket before the announcement came. He shouldered his pack and roll, picked up his guitar case, and swung into the aisle, going down it with the long, loose gait of someone more used to open country than the city. He nodded to the Jesuit priest he’d shared the car with all the way from Halifax and studiously ignored the scattering of other passengers.

  Outside, he looked up at the sky. The stars weren’t much different here, though the sky didn’t have the same clarity as a Nova Scotian night. He missed the smell of the sea already, the raucous cries of gulls and terns, the Maritime scents, the feeling that the world was real‌—stone and wood instead of plastic and metal and Lord knew what else they made buildings out of these days. Nom de tout. He was only gone a day and a half and it felt like a year.

  He found Jean-Paul waiting for him in the reception area and set down his guitar to return his friend’s embrace.

  “Hey, Kieran!” Jean-Paul said, stepping back. “Ça va?”

  “Ça va.”

  “Ton voyage, ç’est bien passé?”

  “Oui.” Kieran grinned. “You’ve put on weight.”

  Jean-Paul Gagnon was basically a compact man in his late thirties, thickening a little around the waist, black-haired and smooth shaven, and dark of complexion. He was weari
ng tan trousers, a heavy knit sweater and a dark blue ski jacket.

  “And what would you expect?” Jean-Paul asked, patting his stomach. “I sit around my office all day doing important government work. I have no time for frivolities such as exercise.”

  “But time enough for the beer, non?”

  Jean-Paul shrugged eloquently. “Certainement. But look at yourself. Are you a musician still, or a fisherman? And your French! Your accent is atrocious.”

  Kieran eyed his reflection in a window. His blue woolen touque pushed down a mat of black hair in desperate need of a wash; two days worth of stubble darkened his cheeks and chin, and his clothing had seen better days. His old pea jacket was patched at the elbows, his corduroys were worn threadbare at the knees and on the rear, and in another month or so his workboots would probably give up the ghost and die. As it was, when it rained they let in more water than they kept out.

  “I’ve been working the boats as much as the clubs,” he said, switching to English.

  Jean-Paul took his hands and regarded the calluses critically.

  “You have ruined your hands, n’est-ce pas?” he said. “Your hands, your French‌—ah, what is to be done with you? Had I known the East would do this to you, I would never have let you go. You said nothing in your letters!”

  Kieran laughed. His first feelings of alienation dissolved as Jean-Paul fussed over him. It was people that made a place, he decided. So long as he had a friend like Jean-Paul here in Ottawa, he could never feel too out of place.

  “Allons-y,” Jean-Paul said, taking Kieran’s guitar case and steering him towards the door. “We should stand here, chatting like homeless sparrows, when we could be comfortable at home? Come, come.”

  “Are you still living on Powell?” Kieran asked as they stowed his gear in the backseat of Jean-Paul’s old Volkswagen.

  He admired the bug, which was becoming as rare these days as it had been plentiful five or six years ago. Most of the old VW drivers had traded their bugs in for Rabbits, or switched to Hondas.

  “Mais oui,” Jean-Paul replied. “Why should I move?”

  “Why indeed?” Kieran murmured as the VW roared into life.

  After Kieran had showered, shaved and changed into a new set of clothes which, while no less threadbare than what he’d been wearing, were at least clean, the two of them sat down to a midnight meal of mushroom omelet and beer. Not until the plates were swabbed clean with the last chunks of toast and pushed aside, and Kieran had a cigarette rolled and lit, did their conversation turn to what had brought him back.

  “What has it been?” Jean-Paul asked, opening a second beer.

  He offered it to Kieran who shook his head. Kieran was still nursing his first. Jean-Paul smiled.

  “Three years?” he wondered aloud. “Four? Nothing but a few letters and cards, then a cable comes yesterday and voila! You are here. The cable said the matter was urgent, but not what the matter was. Will you tell me of it?”

  “Bien sûr, mon ami.”

  Only where did he begin? He tapped some ash from his cigarette and took a pull from his beer.

  “Do you remember Tom Hengwr?” he asked at last, setting the bottle back on the table.

  “That man? Mais oui. He was a strange one, non? Always so mysterious. So calm seeming, but his eyes. . . . He could be dangerous, that one, he was like . . . like that Don Juan in those books you sent me last Christmas. Un sorcier.”

  Kieran hid his surprise. Castaneda’s books were vague at best, alluding to mysteries rather than revealing them. So much so that Kieran had wondered while he read them if Castaneda really knew anything about the Yaqui Way. He preferred the Wilson book he’d sent Jean-Paul the previous year, but hadn’t really expected his friend to read any of them. Jean-Paul hadn’t spoken of the books in his letters except to thank Kieran for them.

  “You believe in such things?” he asked, regarding Jean-Paul in a new light.

  “A little.” Jean-Paul shrugged. “There is much in the world for which there is no explanation, n’est-ce pas? I do not say that such things exist, but I am willing to be convinced. Mais, ça ne fait rien. We spoke of Thomas Hengwr, not of sorcery.”

  “The two are, perhaps, more entwined than you might imagine, my friend.”

  Jean-Paul settled back into his chair and regarded Kieran steadily.

  “Then it seems,” he said, “that the time has come for me to be convinced.”

  Kieran sighed. He knew, from his own experience, that there was only one way to convince someone and that was by showing them. Only the thought of doing so made him uneasy. From across a span of years, it seemed he could hear the old man scolding him.

  “You want to impress people with tricks?” Tom had demanded. “Then take up juggling oranges or something. A mage has no time for conjuring and parlor tricks. Let me tell you what happens when you piss away your powers on them: First you lose respect for your skills and that debilitates them. And then, when a time comes that you really need them, you lose control and there’s hell to pay. And let me tell you one more thing: secrecy in itself is a source of power.”

  “But what’s the point of it all, then?” Kieran had asked.

  “What you really want to know is why can’t you use these powers to lift yourself to great heights in the eyes of the world, isn’t it?” The old man spat and stared out across the Gatineau Mountains for a long moment, green eyes glittering with anger. Then he sighed. “You follow the Way to ennoble yourself so that you can do some good in the world, Kier. The powers are secondary‌—more defense than anything else. For as you come into contact with benevolent forces, so you come into contact with malevolent ones as well. Your powers are to protect you against the latter‌—not to make your journey any easier. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “I think so,” he’d replied, not really understanding then.

  But in the years that followed, the old man’s little speech stayed with him, clearer in his memory than many other incidents that had, at the time of their occurrence, seemed of far greater import. And in the end he had come to understand. Following the Way was a responsibility, not only to himself, but to the harmony he strove to create in his relationship with the world.

  Weighty words, he thought, looking up to find Jean-Paul still regarding him curiously, but filled with truth all the same. In light of them, perhaps he’d been too harsh on Castaneda. If Castaneda knew the secrets, he hid them well, in between the lines of his books. Just as Kieran knew he had to hide them in between the lines of what he said to Jean-Paul now. There were times when truth was too dangerous‌—especially to the uninitiated. For they had no defense.

  He stubbed out his cigarette and rolled another.

  “I guess I was exaggerating,” he said as he lit the cigarette.

  “Oh?”

  “There was a bond between us,” Kieran explained, not wanting to lie to his friend, but not wanting to touch on matters best left unspoken either. “It was . . . mystical. No matter how far apart we’d be, I’d always know that he was . . . all right, I suppose. It was like we were in constant contact. You know what they say about twins? Tom and I were like twins, despite the age difference between us. I’d never met anyone like him before.”

  “You speak of him in the past tense,” Jean-Paul said.

  There was an intent look hidden behind the Frenchman’s casual attitude, but Kieran was too caught up in what he was saying to notice it.

  “I was working on a boat in Fox Point,” he said. “That’s a little village on St. Margaret’s Bay. I knew Tom was in Ottawa‌—there was that bond between us, you see. Then two days ago . . . nothing. It was like he’d vanished from the face of the earth or . . . or . . .”

  “That he’d died?”

  “He can’t be dead. I’d know if he was dead.”

  Jean-Paul shook his head. He pointed to the phone on the kitchen wall.

  “You could call him, non?”

  “He doesn’t have a phone. I don’t ev
en know where he was staying. He was never one to have a home or to own things. . . .”

  “You two sound much the same,” Jean-Paul said. “What was he doing here in Ottawa?”

  “Looking for something. An answer to an old riddle.”

  Jean-Paul’s eyebrows lifted quizzically.

  “I know. It doesn’t make much sense. I just don’t know how to explain it. I said he didn’t own things, only he did. He collected information in here.” Kieran tapped his temple. “That was his wealth. I don’t know exactly what he was looking for in Ottawa‌—not specifically. But whatever it was, he knew it was here.”

  Jean-Paul sighed. “I don’t pretend to understand, mon ami. It all sounds too fantastic. This bond between you. Some mysterious quest. Your friend’s disappearance. I would help you if I could, n’est-ce pas? But I don’t know what help I can give.”

  Kieran looked around the kitchen.

  “This is help enough,” he said. “If I could stay here while I look for him. . . .”

  “Bien sûr! That is little enough for me to do. But what will you do? Where will you begin? It seems to me that you have set an impossible task for yourself. If all you have to go on is this‌—what? A broken bond?”

  “I’ll start by asking around. He had other friends in town.”

  “From what I remember of him, he knew many people, but had few friends, non?”

  “There’s that,” Kieran agreed, but he remembered something else the old man’d told him once.

  “I have enemies,” Tom had said. “Not many, but the few I have are powerful. It’s a regrettable thing, but when you follow the Way. . . .” He shrugged. “The deeper you delve, the more chance there is that you’ll make enemies. Not all mages seek the same knowledges, nor do we all wish to share what we’ve found with each other. Where there is light, there is also darkness. As it is in the souls of mankind, so it is in the soul of a mage. For are we not all men and women as well?