The Ivory and the Horn n-6

by Charles de Lint

  So Brenda filled her in.

  "Then when I got home on Friday," she said as she finished up, "there was a message from him on my machine. But I decided to take Wendy's advice and play it cool. Instead of calling him back, I waited for him to call me again."

  "Well, good for you."

  "I suppose."

  "And did he?"

  Brenda nodded. "We made a date for Saturday night and he showed up at my door with a huge box of chocolates."

  "That was nice of him."

  "Right. Real nice. Give the blimp even more of what she doesn't need. You'd think he'd be more considerate than that. I mean, all you have to do is look at me and know that the last thing I need is chocolate."

  "Jesus, Brenda. The last thing you are is fat."

  "Oh, right."

  Jilly just shook her head. "So what did you do?"

  "I ate them."

  "No, I meant where did you go?"

  "Another movie. I can't even remember what we saw now. I spent the whole time trying to figure out how he felt about me."

  "You should try to just relax," Jilly told her. "Let what happens, happen."

  "I guess." Brenda butted out her cigarette and lit another. Blowing a wreath of blue-grey smoke away from the table, she gave Jilly a considering look, then asked, "Do you believe in wishing wells?"

  Wendy took that moment to arrive in a flurry of blonde hair and grocery bags. She dumped the bags on the floor by the table and pulled up a chair.

  "Better to ask, what doesn't she believe in," she said. "This woman's mind is a walking supermarket tabloid."

  "Ah," Jilly said. "The poet arrives— only fifteen minutes late for her shift."

  Wendy grinned and pointed at Jilly's tangle of brown ringlets.

  "You've got paint in your hair," she said.

  "You've got ink on your fingers," Jilly retorted, then they stuck out their tongues at each other and laughed.

  Their easy rapport made Brenda feel left out. Where did a person learn to be so comfortable with other people? she wondered, not for the first time. She supposed it started with feeling good about yourself— like losing a little weight, getting out of debt, putting your love life in order. She sighed. Maybe it started with not always talking about your own problems all the time, but that was a hard thing to do. There were times when Brenda thought her problems were the only things she did have to talk about.

  "Earth to Brenda," Jilly said. Under the table, the point of her shoe poked Brenda's calf to get her attention.

  "Sorry."

  "Why were you asking about wishing wells?" Jilly asked.

  "Oh, I don't know. I was just wondering if anybody still believes that wishes can come true."

  "I think there are magical things in the world," Wendy said, "but hocus-pocus, wishes coming true—" she shook her head "— I doubt it."

  "I do," Jilly said. "It just depends on how badly you want them to."

  7

  Most wishing wells started out simply as springs or wells that were considered sacred. I found this out a while ago when I was supposed to be researching something else for the paper. I had just meant to look into the origin of wishing wells, but I ended up getting caught up in all the folklore surrounding water and spent most of that afternoon in the library, following one reference which led me to another...

  All the way back to primitive times, a lake or well was the place that the sick were taken to be healed. Water images show up in the medicinal rites of peoples at an animistic level, where those being healed are shown washing their hands, breast and head. At the water's edge, reeds grow and shells are found, both symbols of water as salvation— something that Christian symbolism took to itself with a vengeance.

  But even before the spread of Christianity, the well of refreshing and purifying water had already gained all sorts of fascinating associations. It was symbolic of sublime aspirations, thought of as a "silver cord" which attached a human to the center of all things. The corn goddess Demeter or other deities would often be shown standing beside a well. The act of drawing water from a well was like fishing, drawing out and upward the numinous contents of the deeps. Looking into its still waters, like looking into a placid lake, was seen as equivalent to meditation or mystic contemplation. The well symbolized the human soul and was considered an attribute of all things feminine.

  It's no wonder the Christians came to include it in their baptismal rituals; Christianity has had a long history of taking popular older beliefs and assimilating into its own— even I knew that. But there was so much here that I had never heard of before; fascinating stuff, even though it ended up taking me way off my initial topic. And anyway, the idea of making a wish at a well is tied up in all those tangled stories.

  Throughout Europe sacred wells were given new names after various saints. But as the centuries passed and religious beliefs changed, many of these saints' wells became less esteemed and pilgrims no longer approached them with the same feelings of devotion they once had. People stopped offering prayers to the saints and made a wish instead.

  And the associated rituals often survived. In some places the wish-maker had to dip her bare hands into the water up to her wrists, make a silent wish, then withdraw her hands and swallow the water held in them. Other places, one left a pin, often bent, or the ever-popular coin. In some ways, wishing wells are a reversion to paganism, the serious wishes made at them being reminiscent of when people approached the sacred water to make an offering or benediction to some god or other, or to the spirit of the water.

  Of course water wasn't seen just as the home of benevolent spirits. Folklore throughout the world relates the dangers of water witches and sirens, kelpies and other malevolent creatures whose sole existence seems to rely on drowning those they manage to snare with their various wiles. Everybody knows the story of how Ulysses confronted the sirens and most have probably heard of the Rhine maiden Lorelei— although, oddly enough, she entered folkloric tradition through Clemens Brentano's ballad "Lore Lay." He was so convincing that people just assumed it was based on true folklore.

  Among the creepiest of the water witches are the Russian rusalki. They're lake spirits in female form— very beautiful and very deadly. They were supposed to bring a weird kind of ecstatic death when they drowned their victims, although some stories said it wasn't actually death they brought, but rather passage to another world. Another book I read said that before their current place in folklore tradition, they were considered to be fertility spirits. I found one reference where some Russian peasants were quoted as saying that "where the rusalki trod when dancing, there the grass grew thicker and the wheat more abundant."

  That's the weird thing about folklore. Everything gets stirred up so you don't know which story's the original one anymore. Whatever comes along, be it a church or a new government, usually assimilates into their own the traditions and beliefs that existed before they came, and that's what creates the tangle.

  This bit with the rusalki being psychopomps— leading human souls into the afterworld— makes them reminiscent of angels or Valkyries. Certain birds and animals could also act as "good shepherd" spirits. All of which might make the rusalki seem less scary, except I saw a representation of one in a book, and it gave me a serious case of the willies. The picture showed a tall, scowling woman dressed in a tattered green dress, with claw-like hands and burning eyes. In another book I ran across a painting of a Scottish waterwraith that could have been the rusalka's twin sister.

  It's funny how the same inspirational source can make for opposite beliefs. Fertility goddess from one point of view, harbinger of death from another. Benevolent spirit or collector of souls. Weird.

  Anyway, through all my reading, I never did discover anything interesting about the wishing well at the motel. It wasn't erected on some sacred site; it wasn't the central crossroad of a bunch of ley lines or the home of some Kickaha corn goddess. It was just a gimmick to get people to stop at the motel. But that makes for another funny
thing— funny strange, still, not ha-ha. Jilly once told me that if you get enough people to agree that something is a certain way, then it becomes that way.

  It almost makes sense. For one thing, it would explain how Elvis or JFK can be as much a spiritual avatar for some people as Jesus is for others. Or how a gimmicky wishing well could really grant wishes— just saying it did. Doesn't do much to explain the voices, though.

  Or the ghosts.

  Here's something I've never told anybody before: One day, about a month or so ago when I'm at the well, I get this weird compulsion to close my eyes and try to imagine the faces that once went with those long-lost voices I now hear.

  All I want is for Timmy to look at me the way he looks at Jennifer.

  That girl— was she pretty, or fat like me?

  Please make Daddy stop shouting at Mommy the way he does.

  That child— I can't tell, is it a boy or a girl?

  We'll love each other forever.

  Did they? They sound so young, that couple. Don't they know that nothing ever lasts? Nothing is forever. Except maybe loneliness. Or does being lonely just feel as though it lasts forever?

  The air is thick with the scent of rose blossoms, the hum of bees. I look down at my legs and see them crisscrossed with the shadows of rose thorns and tiny jagged leaves. The faces rise easily in my imagination, but later I realize that maybe it wasn't such a good idea, calling them up the way I did.

  Lying in bed that night, it's as though I've actually summoned their ghosts to me by imagining them. I dream about them, about their lives, about wishes that were granted and ones that weren't. About how the wishes some received weren't what they really wanted, how others are happy they never got theirs...

  It all seems so real.

  I learn to put them aside in the morning, but lately it's gotten harder. These last few days I can feel my life tangling with theirs. They're not dead people, I think, but then I realize some of them might be. The Wishing Well closed its doors twenty years ago. A lot can happen to a person in twenty years. I really could be living with their ghosts— if there really were such things.

  Jilly believes in ghosts. As Wendy says, Jilly believes in all kinds of things that nobody else would. Not exactly tabloid fodder, but close. Everything's got a ghost, she says. A spirit. And if you look closely enough, if you pay attention and really learn to see, you'll be able to recognize it.

  While Jilly can be persuasive, I don't think I can quite believe in ghosts. But I do believe in memories.

  Jilly's friend Christy Riddell— the writer— made the connection between ghosts and memories for me. He told me it's not just people that have memories; places have them, too.

  "If you think of ghosts as a kind of recording," he says, "a memory that's attached itself to a certain place or an object, then they don't become quite so farfetched after all."

  "So why don't we see them everywhere?" I ask. "Why doesn't everyone see them?"

  "People's minds are like radio receivers," he explains. "They're not all capable of tuning into every station."

  I still don't believe in ghosts and I tell him so.

  "Look at the stars," he says.

  This is happening in the middle of a party at Wendy's house. Christy and I are having a smoke in the backyard, thrown together because we're the only ones with the habit in Wendy's circle of friends.

  "What about them?" I ask, my gaze roving from star to star in the darkness overhead.

  "Did you ever think about how many of them are ghosts?"

  "I don't get it."

  "We're not seeing the stars as they are right now," he says. "We're seeing them as they were thousands of years ago, maybe millions of years ago— however long it took their light to reach us. Some of them don't exist anymore. What we see when we look at them right now aren't the stars themselves, but the light that they gave off— images of themselves, of what they once were."

  "So...?"

  "So maybe that's what ghosts are."

  I hate to admit it, but I can almost buy this.

  "Then how come ghosts are so scary?" I ask.

  "They're not always," he says. "But memories can be like wounds. They're not easily forgotten because they leave a scar as a constant reminder. It's the moments of strongest emotions that we remember the most: a love lost or won; anger, betrayal, vengeance. I think it's the same for ghosts, the strength of their emotions at the time of their death is what allows them to linger, or go on."

  If strong emotions can linger on, I think, then so might desperate wishes.

  8

  "So I met this woman at the Carlisle," Scotty said as he and Jim were having lunch on Monday, "and she's stunning. She's so hot I can't believe she's interested in me."

  "Really?" Jim asked, looking up from his soup with curiosity.

  "Oh, yeah. Tight red leather miniskirt, legs like you wouldn't believe, and she snuggles right up next to me at the bar, rubbing her calf against my leg. And let me tell you, the place is not crowded. I'm thinking, if we don't get out of this place soon, she's going to jump me right here on the bar stool."

  "So what happened?"

  A sheepish look came over Scotty's features. "Turns out she's a hooker."

  Jim laughed.

  "Hey, it's not funny. I could've caught a disease or something, you know?"

  "So you didn't take her up on her... offer."

  "Get real. What about you?"

  "No hookers for me, thanks all the same."

  "No, I mean with what's-her-name, Brenda. Did you see her?"

  Jim nodded. "She was different this time," he said. "A little cooler, I guess."

  "What? Now she's playing hard to get?"

  "I don't think that's it. She just wasn't all that up. I asked her if something was bothering her, but she just changed the subject. After the movie she perked up, though. We stopped for a drink at the Rusty Lion and she had me in stitches, talking about some of the weird people she met back when she was a reporter, but then when I took her home she was all withdrawn again." Jim toyed with his spoon for a moment, slowly stirring his soup. "I'm not really sure what makes her tick. But I want to find out."

  "Well, good luck," Scotty said. "But just before you get in too deep, I want you to think of two words: manic depressive."

  "Thanks a lot, pal."

  "Don't tell me the thought hasn't crossed your mind."

  Jim shrugged. "The only down side I see is that she smokes," he said, and then returned to his soup.

  9

  Jim calls me on Tuesday night and he's really sweet. Tells me he's been thinking about me a lot and he wants to see me again. We talk for a while and I feel good— mostly because he can't see me, I guess. After I get off the phone, I take a bath and then I look at myself in the mirror and wonder how he could possibly be interested in me.

  I know what l see: a cow.

  What's he going to think when he sees me naked? What's going to happen when he realizes what a fuck-up I am? He hasn't said anything yet, but I don't think he much cares for me smoking, and while he's not stingy or anything, I get the feeling he's careful with his money. What's he going to think about my finances?

  I'm such a mess. I can't quit smoking, I can't stick to a diet, I can't stop spending money I don't have. Where does it stop? I keep thinking, if I just lose some weight, everything'll be okay. Except I never do, so I keep buying new clothes that I hope will make me look thinner, and makeup and whatever else I can spend money I haven't got on to trick myself into thinking things'll be different. I decide if I get out of debt, everything'll be okay, but first I have to lose some weight. I think if I get a man in my life... it goes on and on in an endless downward spiral.

  I'd give anything to be like Wendy or Jilly. Maybe if I had a wish...

  But while I might be starting to believe in ghosts, I side with Wendy on the wish question. Hocus-pocus just doesn't work. If I want to solve my problems, I'm going to have to do it by myself. And I can't keep putting i
t off. I have to make some real changes—now, not when I feel like it, because if I wait until then, I'll never do it.

  First thing tomorrow I'm going to make an appointment with my bank manager. And I'll start a serious diet.

  10

  "Frankly, Ms. Perry," the manager of the Unity Trust said, "your finances are a mess."

  Brenda nodded. The nameplate on his desk read "Brent Cameron." He'd given her That Look when she came into his office, the one that roved carelessly up her body before his gaze finally reached her face. Now he didn't seem to be interested in her looks at all.

  She'd been upset when he gave her the once-over; now she was upset because, he'd obviously dismissed her. She knew just what he was thinking. Too fat.

  "But I think we can help you," he went on. "The first thing I want you to do is to destroy your credit cards— all of them."

  He gave her an expectant look.

  "Um, did you want me to do that now?" Brenda asked.

  "That might be best."

  He handed her a pair of scissors and one by one she clipped her credit cards in two— Visa, Mastercard, gas and department store cards. The only one she didn't touch was her second Visa card.

  "You can't keep any of them, Ms. Perry."

  "This isn't mine," she explained. "It's from work. I'll hand it in to them when I get back."

  He nodded, "Fine. Now I know this isn't going to be easy, but if we start with making a list of all your monthly requirements, then I think we can come up with a plan that will..."

  The rest of the meeting went by in a blur. She got the loan. She also came out with a sheaf of paper which held her financial plan for the next three years. Every bit of her income was accounted for, down to the last penny. God, it was depressing. She was going to have to do all her shopping in thrift shops— if she could even afford to do that. To make things worse, she hadn't even mentioned the six-hundred-dollar repair bill she owed her garage for work they'd done on her car last month.

  What she could really use right now was a cigarette, she thought, but she hadn't had one since last night and this time she was determined to quit, once and for all. She was starving, too. She'd skipped breakfast and all she'd had for lunch was a bag of popcorn that she'd eaten on the way to her interview with Mr. Cameron.