Dreams Underfoot

by Charles de Lint

  “You’re nothing better than an animal yourself,” he told her.

  Strangely enough, Lorio took comfort in that remark. She looked up into his eyes and saw that they were as dead as Mahail’s had been in her nightmare. Nightmare. If Dorn was real, did that mean the road was too? Could she shatter this alleyway, as she had in her dream, to find the road lying underfoot—behind its facade?

  An old straight track…there for those who know to see it.

  Something sparked in his eyes. It wasn’t until he spoke that Lorio realized it had been amusement.

  “You don’t know, do you?” he mocked. “You couldn’t find a road if your life depended on it.”

  “I…”

  “Let me show you.”

  Before she could do anything, he grabbed her, one hand on either lapel of her bomber’s jacket, and slammed her against the wall of the alley. The impact knocked the breath out of her and brought tears to her eyes.

  “Watch,” he grinned, his face inches from hers.

  He held her straight-armed and slowly turned from the wall. He made one full circuit, then dumped her on the ground. Lorio’s legs gave way from under her and she tumbled to the dirt.

  Dirt?

  Slowly the realization settled in her. He’d taken her back into her dream.

  The silence came to her first, a sudden cessation of all sound so that her breathing sounded ragged to her ears. Then she looked around. The city was gone. She was crouching on a dirt road, under a starry sky. The hills of her dream were on either side, the road running between them like a straight white ribbon.

  Dorn grabbed a handful of her hair and hauled her to her feet. She blinked with the pain, eyes tearing, but as she turned slowly to face her captor she could feel something shift inside her. She had no more doubt that magic was real, that the road existed, that Elderee had offered her something precious beyond compare. There was no way she was going to let Dorn with his dead eyes take this from her.

  On the heels of that realization, knowledge filled her like a flower sprouting from a seed in time-lapse photography. Eye to eye, mind to mind, Elderee had left that seed in her mind until something—the promise of this place, the magic of this road, her own understanding of it, perhaps—woke it and set it spinning through her.

  There was not one road, but a countless number of them. They made a pattern that webbed not only her own world, but all worlds; not only her own time, but all times. They upheld a fragile balance between light and dark, order and chaos, while at the center of the web lay a sacred grove in that valley that Elderee had called Lankelly.

  And I know how to get there, she realized.

  I know that Wood. And it was home.

  Her understanding of the roads and all they meant took only a moment to flash through her. In the same breath she knew that the magic that Elderee and others like him used was drawn from the pattern of the roads. A being like Dorn was a destroyer and gained his power from what he destroyed. It was a power that came quickly, draining as it ravaged, leaving the user hungry for more, while the power Elderee used worked in harmony with the pattern, built on it, drew from it, then gave back more than it took. It was a slower magic, but a more enduring one.

  Dorn saw the understanding come into her eyes. Its suddenness, the depth of it filling her, shocked him. His grip on her hair slackened for a moment and Lorio brought her knee up into his groin. His hand dropped from her hair as he folded over.

  Lorio stood over him, staring at his bent figure. She raised her hands and gold sparks flickered between her fingers. But she didn’t need magic to deal with him. She brought doubled fists down on the nape of his neck and he sprawled face forward in the dirt. He turned pained eyes to her, hands scrabbling at the surface of the road. His magic glimmered dully between his fingers, but Lorio shook her head.

  He wouldn’t look at her. Instead he concentrated, brow furrowed, as he called up his magic. Whatever spell he was trying to work made the light between his fingers gleam more sharply. Lorio stepped quickly forward and stamped down hard on his hand. She was wearing boots tonight. Bones crunched under the impact of her heel.

  “That’s for Elderee,” she said, her voice soft but grim.

  Dorn bit back a scream and glared at her. He sat up and scuttled a few paces away, moving on two bent legs and one arm, sideways like a crab. When he stopped, he cradled his hurt hand against his chest.

  Silently they faced each other. Dorn knew that she was stronger than he was at this moment. Her will was too focused, the cloak of knowledge that Elderee had given her was too powerful in its newness. She’d hurt him. Among humanoids, hands were needed to spark spells—fingers and voice. She’d effectively cut him off from the use of his own spells, from calling up a polrech, from anything he might have done to hurt her. In her eyes, he could see that she knew, too.

  She took a step toward him and he called up the one magic he could use, that which would take him from the road to safety in any one of the myriad worlds touched by the roads.

  “There will be another time,” he muttered, and then he was gone.

  Displaced air whuffted where he’d stood and Lorio found herself alone on the road.

  She let out a long breath and looked around.

  The road. The Chinese called it a dragon track. Alfred Watkins, in England, had discovered the old straight tracks there and called them leys. Secret ways, hidden roads. The Native Americans had them. African tribesmen and the aborigines of Australia. Even her own people had secret roads unknown to the non-Gypsy. In every culture, the wise people, the shamans and magicians and the outsiders knew these ways, and it made sense, didn’t it? It was by following such roads that they could grow strong themselves.

  But not like Dorn, she thought. Not the kind of strength that destroys, but rather the kind of strength that gives back more than it took. Like…like playing on stage with No Nuns Here. Having something to say and putting it across as honestly as possible. When it worked, when something sparked between herself and the audience, a strength went back and forth between them, each of them feeding the other, the sensation so intense that she often came off the stage just vibrating.

  Lorio smiled. She started to walk the road, giving herself to it as step followed step. She walked and a hum built up in her mind. Time went spilling down other corridors, leaving her to stride through a place where hours moved to a different step. The stars in their unfamiliar constellations wheeled above her. The landscape on either side of the road changed from hills, to woodlands, to deserts, to mountainsides, to seashores, until she found herself back in the hills once more.

  She paused there. A thrumming sensation filled her, giving her surroundings a sparkle. Rich scents filled her nostrils. The wind coming down from the hills was a sigh like a synthesizer, dreamy and distant. And underfoot, the road glimmered faintly as though in response to what she’d given it by walking its length.

  There’s no end to it, she realized. It just goes around and around. Sometimes it’ll be longer, sometimes shorter. It just goes on. Because it wasn’t where she was coming from, nor where she was going to that was important, but the road itself and how she walked it. And it would never be the same.

  She ruffled through the knowledge that Elderee had planted in her and found a way to step off the road. But when she moved back into her own world, she didn’t return to the alleyway where it had all begun. Instead she chose a different exit point and stepped toward it. The road and surrounding hills shimmered around her and then were gone.

  * * *

  It was more a room than a cage, the concrete floor and walls smelling strongly of disinfectant and the unmistakable odor of a zoo’s monkey house. The only light came through the barred front of the cage, but it was enough for Lorio to see Elderee glance up at her sudden appearance. A look of fatherly pride came over his simian features. Lorio stood self-consciously in the middle of the floor for a long moment, then after a quick look around to make sure they were alone, she walked over t
o where Elderee lay, her boots scuffing quietly on the concrete.

  “Hi,” she said, crouching down beside him.

  “Hello, yourself.”

  “How’re you feeling?”

  A faint smile touched his lips. “I’ve felt better.”

  “The doctors fixed you up?”

  “Oh, yes. And a remarkable job they’ve done. I’m alive, am I not?” He paused, then laid a hand gently on her shoulder. “You found the road?”

  Lorio smiled. “Along with everything else you stuck in my head. How did you do that?”

  She didn’t ask why. Having walked the road, she knew that someone had to assume his responsibility of it. He’d chosen her.

  “I’ll show you sometime—when I’m better. Did you go to the Wood?”

  “No. I thought I’d save that for when I could go with you.”

  “Did you have any…trouble?”

  Her dream of Mahail flashed into her mind. And Dorn’s very real presence. The hounds that he could have called down on her if he hadn’t been so sure of himself.

  “Ah,” Elderee said, catching the images. “Dorn. I wish I’d been there to see you deal with him.”

  “Are you reading my mind?”

  “Only what you’re projecting to me.”

  “Oh.” Lorio settled down into a more comfortable position. “He folded pretty easily, didn’t he? Just like the polrech that attacked us in the alley.”

  Elderee shrugged. “Dorn is a lesser evil. He could control one hound at a time, no more. But like most of his kind, he likes to think of himself as far more than he is. You did well. As for the polrech—you were simply stronger. And quicker.”

  Lorio flushed at the praise.

  “And now?” Elderee asked. “What will you do?”

  “Jeez, I…I don’t know. Take care of your part of the road until you get better, I guess.”

  “I’m getting old,” Elderee said. “I could use your help, even when I’m better. There are more of them—” he didn’t need to name Mahail and his minions for Lorio to know whom he meant “—than there ever are of us. And there are many roads.”

  “We’ll handle it,” Lorio said, still buzzing from her time on the road. “No problem.”

  “It can be dangerous,” Elderee warned, “if a polrech catches you unaware, or if you run into a pack of them. And there are others like Dorn, only stronger, fiercer. But,” he added as Lorio’s humour began to drain away, “there are good things, too. Wait until you see the monkey puzzle tree—there are more birds in it, and from stranger worlds, than you could ever imagine. And there are friends in the Wood that I’d like you to meet—Jacca and Mabena and…”

  His voice began to drift a bit.

  “You’re wearing yourself out,” Lorio said.

  Elderee nodded.

  “I’ll come back and see you tomorrow night,” she said. “You should rest now. There’ll be time enough to meet all your friends and for us to get to know each other better later on.”

  She stood up and smiled down at him. Elderee’s gaze lifted to meet hers.

  “Bahtalo drom,” he said in Romany. Roughly translated it meant, follow a good road.

  “I will,” Lorio said. “Maybe not a Gypsy road, but a good road all the same.”

  “Not a Gypsy road? Then what are you?”

  “Part Rom,” Lorio replied with a grin. “But mostly just a punker.”

  Elderee shook his head. Lorio lifted a hand in farewell, then reached for and found the road that would take her home. She stepped onto it and disappeared. Elderee lay back with a contented smile on his lips and let sleep rise up to claim him once again.

  7

  The Sacred Fire

  No one lives forever,

  and dead men rise up never,

  and even the longest river

  winds somewhere safe to sea.

  —from British folklore;

  collected by Stephen Gallagher

  * * *

  There were ten thousand maniacs on the radio—the band, not a bunch of lunatics; playing their latest single, Natalie Merchant’s distinctive voice rising from the music like a soothing balm.

  Trouble me…

  Sharing your problems…sometimes talking a thing through was enough to ease the burden. You didn’t need to be shrink to know it could work. You just had to find someone to listen to you.

  Nicky Straw had tried talking. He’d try anything if it would work, but nothing did. There was only one way to deal with his problems and it took him a long time to accept that. But it was hard, because the job was never done. Every time he put one of them down, another of the freaks would come buzzing in his face like a fly on a corpse.

  He was getting tired of fixing things. Tired of running. Tired of being on his own.

  Trouble me…

  He could hear the music clearly from where he crouched in the bushes. The boom box pumped out the song from one corner of the blanket on which she was sitting, reading a paperback edition of Christy Riddell’s How to Make the Wind Blow. She even looked a little like Natalie Merchant. Same dark eyes, same dark hair, same slight build. Better taste in clothes, though. None of those thrift shop dresses and the like that made Merchant look like she was old before her time; just a nice white Butler U. T-shirt and a pair of bright yellow jogging shorts. White Reeboks with laces to match the shorts; a red headband.

  The light was leaking from the sky. Be too dark to read soon. Maybe she’d get up and go.

  Nicky sat back on his haunches. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

  Maybe nothing would happen, but he didn’t see things working out that way. Not with how his luck was running.

  All bad.

  Trouble me…

  I did, he thought. I tried. But it didn’t work out, did it?

  So now he was back to fixing things the only way he knew how.

  * * *

  Her name was Luann. Luann Somerson.

  She’d picked him up in the Tombs, about as far from the green harbour of Fitzhenry Park as you could get in Newford. It was the lost part of the city, a wilderness of urban decay stolen back from the neon and glitter. Block on block of decaying tenements and rundown buildings. The kind of place to which the homeless gravitated, looking for squats; where the kids hung out to sneak beers and junkies made their deals, hands twitching as they exchanged rumpled bills for little packets of short-lived empyrean; where winos slept in doorways that reeked of puke and urine, and the cops only went if they were on the take and meeting the moneyman.

  It was also the kind of place where the freaks hid out, waiting for Lady Night to start her prowl. Waiting for dark. The freaks liked her shadows and he did, too, because he could hide in them as well as they could. Maybe better. He was still alive, wasn’t he?

  He was looking for the freaks to show when Luann approached him, sitting with his back against the wall, right on the edge of the Tombs, watching the rush hour slow to a trickle on Gracie Street. He had his legs splayed out on the sidewalk in front of him, playing the drunk, the bum. Three days’ stubble, hair getting ragged, scruffy clothes, two dimes in his pocket—it wasn’t hard to look the part. Commuters stepped over him or went around him, but nobody gave him a second glance. Their gazes just touched him, then slid on by. Until she showed up.

  She stopped, then crouched down so that she wasn’t standing over him. She looked too healthy and clean to be hanging around this part of town.

  “You look like you could use a meal,” she said.

  “I suppose you’re buying?”

  She nodded.

  Nicky just shook his head. “What? You like to live dangerously or something, lady? I could be anybody.”

  She nodded again, a half smile playing on her lips.

  “Sure,” she said. “Anybody at all. Except you’re Nicky Straw. We used to take English 201 together, remember?”

  He’d recognized her as well, just hoped she hadn’t. The guy she remembered didn’t exist anymore.


  “I know about being down on your luck,” she added when he didn’t respond. “Believe me, I’ve been there.”

  You haven’t been anywhere, he thought. You don’t want to know about the places I’ve been.

  “You’re Luann Somerson,” he said finally.

  Again that smile. “Let me buy you a meal, Nicky.”

  He’d wanted to avoid this kind of thing, but he supposed he’d known all along that he couldn’t. This was what happened when the hunt took you to your hometown. You didn’t disappear into the background like all the other bums. Someone was always there to remember.

  Hey, Nicky. How’s it going? How’s the wife and that kid of yours?

  Like they cared. Maybe he should just tell the truth for a change. You know those things we used to think were hiding in the closet when we were too young to know any better? Well, surprise. One night, one of those monsters came out of the closet and chewed off their faces….

  “C’mon,” Luann was saying.

  She stood up, waiting for him. He gave it a heartbeat, then another. When he saw she wasn’t going without him, he finally got to his feet.

  “You do this a lot?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “First time,” she said.

  All it took was one time….

  “I’m like everyone else,” she said. “I pretend there’s no one there, lying half starved in the gutter, you know? But when I recognized you, I couldn’t just walk by.”

  You should have, he thought.

  His silence was making her nervous and she began to chatter as they headed slowly down Yoors Street.

  “Why don’t we just go back to my place?” she said. “It’ll give you a chance to clean up. Chad—that’s my ex—left some clothes behind that might fit you….”

  Her voice trailed off. She was embarrassed now, finally realizing how he must feel, having her see him like this.

  “Uh… That’d be great,” he said, relenting.