Trader

by Charles de Lint

  Nia turned to Zeffy. Part of her wanted to go home, right now, but having come this far already...

  “So what are we waiting for?” Zeffy asked. “Let’s replace that busted tire and start driving.”

  Joe kept to a more sedate pace this time. It was still hot and dusty in the cab of the truck, the terrain was still bumpy, bouncing them around on the seat, but it didn’t seem so frantic, now that they were taking it at a slower speed.

  “So can you really talk to Buddy?” Nia asked.

  She had her hands in the dog’s wiry fur, twirling it around her fingers while he slept contentedly with his head on her lap.

  “Let’s say we came to an understanding,” Joe told her.

  “Could I learn to talk to him?”

  “First you have to learn to focus.”

  “And then you have to believe it’ll happen,” Zeffy said.

  Joe shot her a quick grin. “Now you’re getting it.”

  “I can focus,” Nia said. “Just because I screwed up getting us here, doesn’t mean I can’t.”

  “I screwed up, too,” Zeffy said.

  Nia gave her a grateful look.

  “So what’s the problem then?” Joe asked her.

  “I don’t know if I can learn how to believe.”

  “It’s not something you learn.”

  Nia sighed. “I know. Wanting and having’s never the same thing.”

  “Unless you want it bad enough,” Zeffy said. She put her hand on Nia’s knee and gave it a quick squeeze. “Then maybe anything can happen.”

  Nia regarded her for a long moment.

  “I know, I know,” Zeffy said. “I’m the last person you’d think to come out with something like that. But I’ve been thinking a lot about this magic stuff and I’m starting to realize that maybe we had more of it in our lives back home than we realized.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Didn’t you ever know people who always seemed to have things go their way?”

  “Sure.”

  “I think half the reason it works like that for them is because they expect things to go their way. They expect everything to work out. It’s like Jilly. She puts out so much confidence and belief, that it’s rare for something to go wrong in her life. And then when it does, she treats the experience as something she can learn something from, instead of getting all bummed out by it.”

  “I can see how she’d be like that,” Nia said.

  “But then there’s my roommate Tanya. She always expects everything to go wrong for her, and it does.” Zeffy shook her head. “So the thing is, if we can exert so much influence on our own lives simply through our wills, I’m starting to see it as not much more of a step to affect other things in a way that might seem to be magic.”

  “Good point,” Joe said. “Except you’re missing one part of the equation.”

  “What’s that?”

  He waved a hand out through the window of the cab to take in the landscape all around them.

  “All of this exists whether you believe in it or not,” he said.

  Zeffy nodded slowly. “There’s that,” she agreed.

  Nia turned her attention back to Buddy. So what are you thinking? she wondered as she ruffled his fur. He opened an eye and gave her a sleepy look, before shifting into a more comfortable position. Then sighing deeply, he went back to sleep. Nia smiled. She guessed he was thinking that they were all talking too much.

  They reached the mountains in the late afternoon, having stopped only once for a lunch of tortillas and refried beans. Neither Zeffy nor Nia spent much time wondering where they’d come from, and Buddy, from the enthusiasm with which he devoured his share, obviously didn’t think about it at all.

  Joe parked the truck by a dry riverbed under some tall mesquite trees, their boughs spreading out from their twisted trunks to form a perfect shelter against the last of the day’s sun. There was even grass, tall, the blades sharp, but it was browned and yellowed.

  “We’ll camp here,” Joe said, “and head on into the mountains first thing in the morning.”

  “Why don’t we keep driving for another hour or so?” Zeffy asked.

  Joe was already out of the truck, stretching his lanky frame. He leaned back in to reply.

  “Because we’re running on fumes at the moment. You’ll be wanting to concentrate on there being a nice big jerry can full of gas in the back of the truck come morning.”

  Nia got out, studiously not turning to look in the back of the truck in case, by looking too soon, she affected the potential of the gas can being there. Zeffy remained behind for a moment.

  “I’ll get dinner,” she said.

  She closed her eyes, brow wrinkling as she concentrated, and reached under the seat, her hand moving back and forth until she seemed to find something. Nia watched her with a puzzled look, then smiled when Zeffy pulled out a Tupperware container. Zeffy popped the lid and showed off the kabobs inside, skewers laden with chunks of tomato, onion, green pepper and beef.

  “I could get seriously used to this,” she said as she passed the container to Nia and hopped down from the cab.

  Late that night, Nia awoke suddenly, her pulse drumming. She found Zeffy already sitting up beside her, Buddy standing just outside their shelter, whining softly, the fur all prickled along his back. Their campfire had long since died down, but there was enough moonlight for her to spy Joe out in the riverbed, his hat pushed back on his head as he stared up into the foothills.

  “What...what is it?” she said.

  Her throat was so dry her voice came out in a raspy whisper. Joe turned to look at them.

  “Something’s happening,” he said. “Something bad. Can you sense it?”

  Nia nodded.

  “It’s Max,” Zeffy said.

  Joe nodded. “I don’t know what the hell he’s gone and done, but if we’re picking up the echoes of it, you can be damn sure others are as well.”

  Buddy whined again, such a plaintive sound that Nia quickly got up and knelt beside him. She put her arms around his neck.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  Joe straightened his hat and joined them by the shelter. He crouched down, sitting on his heels.

  “Depends,” he said. “Try to get him out of whatever’s he’s gotten into, I guess, and then out of the spiritworld quick as we can. Problem is, the echoes we’re feeling could call up a pack of my cousins and they might not be so ready to let him go. Might want to give us a hard time, too. So you’ve got to ask yourself, how much are you willing to risk for these friends of yours?”

  “For Johnny,” Zeffy said, “not much. But Max?” She sighed. “God, why can’t I stop thinking about him?”

  Nia lifted her head from the warm comfort of Buddy’s neck and swallowed hard.

  “What happens if your cousins show up?” she asked.

  “Depends on which ones they are,” Joe said. “And how hungry they are. Truth is, we could all end up as their meal.”

  Nia gave him a startled look. “Even you?”

  “Even me.”

  “But you’re one of them.”

  Joe nodded. “I think so, but I don’t know how many of them would agree. I’m a little too comfortable walking both sides, your world and mine, for a lot of the cousins’ tastes. Got things they don’t have but want.”

  “Like what?” Zeffy asked.

  Joe shrugged. “Like a skin that fits me on either side.”

  Nia looked from him to Zeffy. She was so scared now all she wanted to do was run. Send us home, she wanted to tell Joe. Right now. But Buddy whined again and she thought of Max.

  “We can’t not help him,” Zeffy said.

  “Your call,” Joe told her. “But everybody’s got to decide.”

  When he looked at Nia, she nodded quickly before her courage completely fled.

  “Okay,” Joe said. “Let’s break camp. I’ll fill the gas tank, you guys throw our gear in the back of the truck.”

 
He stood up and started kicking dirt over the last coals of their fire.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Zeffy said. “I mean, Max—he’s not your friend.”

  Joe smiled. “But you are.”

  “Just like that?”

  He turned to look at them. “You think I’ve got it wrong?”

  Nia was happy when Zeffy didn’t even hesitate.

  “No,” Zeffy said. “I guess I’m just not used to everything happening the way it has. It’s all so quick.”

  “Things move fast here,” he said. “That’s all. It’s dreamtime, remember? Everything’s intense like in a dream. And I promised I’d help you, didn’t I?”

  Zeffy nodded. “I just...Thanks, Joe.”

  He smiled. “Hey, can’t have too many friends, right?”

  You can’t have too many friends, Nia thought, the words ringing in her mind the way Coltrane’s sax had last night. And all I’ve got is Max. Then she corrected herself. All she had was Max. All she’d allowed herself before this was first her mom, and then Max. Nobody else seemed to measure up. But now she found herself wondering, was that the real reason, or was it more that she didn’t measure up? That she couldn’t face up to the responsibility that having friends involved? But that wasn’t entirely it, either. The thought of making friends scared her so much she didn’t even bother to try anymore, because it was easier to stay aloof and not get hurt.

  You can’t have too many friends.

  The thing she realized when Joe said that was how ever since all this craziness had begun, she’d actually made other friends—Zeffy, Jilly, Buddy, now Joe—and she liked the feeling, the sense of belonging to something other than herself. She even liked the responsibility.

  “C’mon,” Joe said, pulling her from her reverie. “Let’s get a move on.”

  11 MAX

  I don’t expect to ever see the morning light again, but there it is when I wake up on top of the ridge, the old pine towering over me, my body stiff and sore from lying on the rock all night. I guess I’m not a quick study because it takes me a while to realize I’m still alive. When I do, I don’t feel relief so much as confusion. I sit up slowly and images flash through my head. The bird. Devlin. The two of them going over the side. I turn and study the spot from which they fell, but I can’t seem to move, can’t make it those few feet across the granite to look over and down. Instead, I let the spectacular view grab my gaze and hold it, try to lose myself in the jagged waves of forested mountains that blue off into the distance.

  The birdsong coming from a half-dozen warblers in the big pine that shares the ridge with me seems incongruous, somehow. There’s so much life in the racket they’re making. The sky’s so blue, not a cloud to be seen in its robin’s-egg expanse. The light of the sun cascades through the boughs of the pine in a cathedraling effect. Everything, from what I see and hear, to the drumming heartbeat in my chest and breathing, tells me I’m alive. But I don’t feel I should be. I remember falling into light last night, the tunnel with something welcoming me at the end, a classic near-death experience. That was my body that went over the cliff.

  So how can I still be alive?

  There’s no sense to it. But then nothing’s made sense since the morning I first woke up in Devlin’s body, so why should it suddenly change now? And yet...and yet...there’s what happened last night. I saw the bird and Devlin go over the edge. I feel firmly rooted to this body, but it still seems unimaginable that I could survive beyond the death of my own body—even if I’m not in it.

  I steel myself and work my way toward the edge on my hands and knees. When I finally peer over, I’m expecting to see my body lying on a ledge a few feet down, maybe snagged in the branches of a tree—some innocent if improbable explanation. Vertigo takes my breath away and has me scrambling back. I forgot. It’s at least a hundred feet, straight down, sheer rock. I close my eyes and see them going over again, Devlin in the bird’s body, knocked unconscious, the bird in mine, flailing its arms with less preparation than Icarus put into that flight of his and about as much success.

  Nothing could have survived that fall.

  Nothing did. I know that. But as I work my way down the forested slope on the far side of the ridge, I’m hoping for a miracle. If the impossible can happen to me—the first switch of minds, being here, for god’s sake—is one more miracle so much to ask for?

  It takes me the better part of forty-five minutes to reach the valley floor, fighting the thick brush, holding on to branches and tree trunks whenever my feet slip out from under me on the steep slope. The angle of my descent takes me farther away from the ridge than I expected, so it’s another ten minutes before I reach the foot of the cliff. The brush opens up here, kept clear by rocks falling from its face. Only weeds and small saplings grow up between the fallen stones. A sweep of raspberry bushes grows thick in the border between forest and clearing, their fruit just coming into season.

  There’s no sign of the bird anywhere, at least not that I can see, but it’s hard to miss my body lying on the stones, neck and limbs bent at impossible angles. A sick feeling starts up in the pit of my stomach and I can’t seem to breathe.

  So much for miracles.

  I go numb—not just my mind, but everything. I can’t move, my limbs feel thick and prickly, like they’ve gone to sleep. There’s an ache inside that won’t go away. I know it won’t ever go away.

  I don’t know how long I’m standing there, but finally the numbness gives a little and I can move again. I push through the raspberry bushes, ignoring the thorns that catch at the sleeves of my shirt and my jeans, and walk slowly over the uneven footing until I’m standing directly over the body. My body. I’m dead. I’m standing here, but I’m still dead.

  Looking down at myself, I suddenly understand what Janossy meant when he tried to describe Nada Brahma—the Great Tone of the Hindu tradition—to me, because as I stand here, I feel myself resonating against some impossible depth, touching the tone that rang out at the beginning of the world, a tone which, as he put it, “continues to sound at the bottom of creation, and which sounds through everything.”

  “You don’t need an instrument to appreciate that sound,” he added. “All you need is ears.”

  I’ve got ears. I hear it. It’s the blood rushing in my ears. It’s the panicked drum of my pulse. It’s my ragged breathing. But it’s also the sound from which life originated, a music reverberating from spirit to spirit, mine and the world’s. It’s what we came from and where we go to. Except I’m still standing here. Somebody else wore my body and went on. The bird? Devlin? I don’t know.

  I sink to my knees beside the body, but I don’t touch it. I’m too afraid of what will happen if I do. Too afraid that contact with it will reverse the shift and I’ll be trapped in a corpse. That the same power allowing me to live on in this body will deny me access to the journey that should have been mine when my body died, will leave me lying here on the rocks, staring up blindly up into the sky until the body finally decomposes.

  I feel like Tom Sawyer attending his own funeral, except there really is something to bury here and there’s no one to mourn me. I wish I hadn’t been so quick to alienate everyone around me—Nia, Zeffy, Bones. I need someone to hold me, to let me know that I still have a connection to the real world. I need someone to talk to—I’d even take Devlin with his bird voice ringing inside my head.

  The bird.

  A false hope rises up in me. I force myself to my feet to make a careful survey of the rocks, starting near the body, then walking in widening circles across the uneven stones, but with no success. If the bird fell anywhere nearby, something’s come along and carried it off. Or maybe it recovered in the air and flew away.

  No. Not it. Devlin. Devlin sitting in the bird’s head, steering its body the way I’m steering his.

  I cup my hand and call his name, over and over again, until my voice goes hoarse, my throat starts to hurt. There’s no reply.

  Finally I return to where the co
rpse is lying on the stones behind me.

  It doesn’t seem quite real, I think as I kneel down beside it. By now, lying out in the sun for half the morning, it should be pretty ripe, but there’s no smell, no change, not even a fly. It seems more like a mannequin, or a wax figure from some museum diorama than a real corpse.

  I can almost hear a voice in my head, the logical part of my brain asking me, What are you planning to do? I can tell by its tone that it thinks I’m making a serious mistake. But I can’t not do it.

  “I have to find out where I belong,” I say aloud.

  There’s no one to hear me. Only the corpse.

  I lay the palm of my hand against its cheek. I’m given enough time to register the cold, waxy feel of the skin; then the vertigo hits me hard, taking me by surprise. I’ll be honest. For all my fears, deep down I didn’t believe my old body had any more of a hold on me. Now I know, but it’s way too late. Devlin’s body sloughs off like an ill-fitting suit and I’m falling back into myself, back into the broken body lying on the stones. There’s nobody home— until I’m in there.

  Devlin’s body collapses across me, but I’m only peripherally aware of it. I can’t feel its weight. I can’t feel anything. Can’t move. Neck broken, limbs broken. Eyelids dried open, the sun burning my pupils. I can’t even blink. But I can hear.

  There’s a sound, but it’s so out of context I can’t place it at first. Then I realize what it is. It’s an engine, a motor. I don’t know how far away the vehicle is. Sound carries in the bush, so it’s hard to tell. I don’t know if it’s coming here, or just passing close by. Doesn’t much matter anyway. Even if it is coming here, there’s nothing anyone can do to help me now.

  12 TANYA

  Snow was falling thick on the street outside. Tanya sighed, watching it come down, the wind pushing the white blanket into drifts that buried the curbs, changing the contours of the street. It looked like they were going to have a white Christmas this year, after all. Better still, the snowfall hid the ugliness of her neighborhood, drove the pushers inside, covered the litter and abandoned cars, smoothed the rough edges. It almost looked pretty.