Widdershins

by Charles de Lint

  Rabedy could only look at the green-bree. His neck was sore. He remembered the ease with which Odawa had put him out of action.

  “After what you just did to me,” he said, “you still expect me to help you?”

  “I expect nothing. I am only asking. The decision is entirely yours.”

  “And if I help you, you’ll go away and leave us all alone?”

  “I’ll leave you alone even if you don’t help me,” the green-bree said. “Haven’t you been listening? I offer you no threat. I need help and I’ll be grateful to you if you provide it, but I am not here to force my will on anyone.”

  “Except for Grey.”

  Odawa shook his head. “No, not even him. I just mean to kill Grey. I’m done with games and threats and all the childish nonsense that has filled my life for too many years. It’s time I simply dealt with Grey and got on with my life.”

  “Corbae don’t die easily,” Rabedy said.

  The doubt was plain in his voice. True, Odawa had dealt effortlessly with him, but he was only a poor excuse for a bogan, as his uncle liked to say. Grey . . . Grey was a corbae in his prime. In his veins ran the same blood as that cousin of his who had brought the world into being in the long ago.

  “No,” Odawa agreed. “Especially not when he’s aided by the curse of his dead wife that keeps misdirecting me whenever I try to get near him. But I guarantee you this, Master Rabedy. Put him in front of me, and you’ll see how easily a corbae can die.”

  Rabedy gave a slow nod. And then the world could go back to the way it had been before Big Dan brought the blind green-bree into their lives. Odawa would go away. Grey would be dead, and they wouldn’t have to worry about his coming after them for the killing of his cerva cousin. Fairy and the spirits of the wild and the green could go back to ignoring one another, and life would be so much less complicated than it had become.

  “I’ll bring you to him,” he said. “But then you’ll be on your own. I won’t add to the troubles between our people.”

  “All I ask,” Odawa assured him, “is for the chance to stand face to face with the man who blinded me. Give me that and I won’t need your help or that of anyone else.”

  “Fair enough,” Rabedy said.

  He took a piece of string out of his pocket and knotted it once, twice, and then a third time.

  “Here,” he said, putting the knotted string into the green-bree’s hand. “Think of Grey as you undo one of these knots, and it should guide you to him.”

  Odawa fingered the string. “There are three knots.”

  “So you’ll get three tries. I can’t fit more onto that bit of string. But surely that should be enough.”

  “Depending on how well they work against his wife’s curse.”

  “I can’t help you with that.”

  “I could still use your eyes until I find him.”

  Rabedy sighed. He wanted to be done with this now. But if he was to get rid of the green-bree once and for all . . .

  “Fine,” he said. “So let’s go and get it done.”

  He stepped closer to Odawa and allowed the green-bree to grip his shoulder. When those strong fingers found their hold, Rabedy led them away from the dismal grey shoreline of this unhappy world that was Odawa’s croi baile.

  Geordie

  I wondered what Eddie would think to see the bunch of us go trooping off into the woods behind his hotel, but we didn’t run into him on the way out, so I was spared the need to come up with some plausible excuse. That also meant that I didn’t have to introduce him to Cassie and explain what she was doing all the way out in Sweetwater without a car or a ride to get here. I liked Eddie and didn’t particularly feel like lying to him, but telling him that we were off to call up a stag spirit, or that Cassie had gotten here by crow girl express would only make things way more complicated than they already were.

  We tramped through the bush, avoiding the clumps of hard, icy snow that had yet to get the message that spring was here, until we found a small meadow that was out of sight of the hotel or any of the other buildings in Sweetwater. On any other day I’d have been happy to hang out and play some tunes under one of the beeches or elms that rose up above the cedars and scrub trees. But although the weather was warm enough, and I did have my fiddle with me, the case hanging from my shoulder by a strap, we were here on more serious business.

  “So, who’s going to do it?” Siobhan asked.

  Now that we were out here, she didn’t seem quite so sure about what we were getting into. If she knew what Cassie and I did, she’d probably be more nervous still. Sure there are native spirits like the crow girls or Cody who seemed to thrive on getting involved in human affairs, but most of them just want to be left alone and don’t take kindly to being drawn into our messy lives. Especially not when those calling them up are strangers to them, and we’d certainly be strangers to this Walker.

  But we were here now, and I really didn’t want to get back into another discussion about calling Joe here by using his true name.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  “Is there anything we should know?” Con asked.

  Cassie replied before I could. “You’d be smart not to draw any more attention to yourselves than simply being here is already going to do. Let Geordie do the talking unless either of them asks you something directly.”

  “So . . . is this dangerous?” Andy wanted to know.

  “Any dealings with the otherworld can be dangerous,” Cassie told him. Then she smiled. “Hell, being alive is dangerous. But in this case, just be quiet and things should be okay.”

  I looked around to see if anybody else had something they needed to say, but they were all quiet now, waiting on me.

  I won’t say I wasn’t a little nervous myself. I know. I’ve spent all kinds of time with Galfreya and her fairy court, but this was a whole other ball game. I’d heard enough stories about people getting on the wrong side of a hot-tempered cousin not to approach a situation such as this without a healthy dose of caution. But while you can worry forever about what might go wrong, and make all the safeguards in the world so that it won’t, in the end you still just have to do it.

  So I took a steadying breath and called the cerva’s name, or at least as much of a name as we had for him. I hoped it would be enough. Without his true name, we could only hope to get his attention. Maybe he would be curious enough to see who was trying to summon him. Maybe not. All we could do was try.

  But I tried to feel positive as I sent his name out into the forest.

  Walks-with-Dreams.

  Once, twice, three times.

  And we waited.

  I have to admit I felt a little self-conscious yodeling “Walks-with-Dreams” off into the woods at the top of my lungs—like a low-grade version of one of those dreams where you’re up on stage playing a tune to a huge crowd and suddenly realize you forgot to put your pants on before the show. Here in the meadow, everybody was just looking at me and nothing much was happening in response to my call. It wasn’t that big a surprise to me because I know that the otherworld has never been about answering to our beck and call. Normally, you’d have about as much of a chance attracting the attention of a cousin as you would teaching a mouse to play a jig.

  But then I sensed a change. In the air, in me—I’m not sure. I just became aware of a difference. It took me a few moments to realize that it was the forest going quiet all around us.

  I’m not sure the others felt it. Or at least they weren’t showing it. Glancing at their faces I saw that they were starting to get that look of boredom people develop when they have to wait too long for something to happen—even when they are in a dangerous situation. But I knew that Cassie heard what I heard—or rather the lack of what there was to hear. The normal sounds around us were withdrawing. I could still hear birdsong, the chitter of squirrels, the droning of insects, but they seemed far away now. Muffled, as though they were coming to us from the other side of a window.

  Con turned
to me. “So, how do we know that anything’s even going to—”

  “Shh,” Cassie told him.

  And then the cerva was here, and no one wanted or needed to speak. Not even me, and I was supposed to be our spokesperson.

  It’s funny. I thought I’d be fine, that my time in Galfreya’s fairy court, that knowing Joe and some of the other cousins, would have prepared me for this. But Walker was different from any of them. Fairies, depending on their affiliations, were by turns whimsical, grotesque, heartbreakingly beautiful, or stern. Joe and his cousins were mostly earthy and scruffy . . . and just a little scary. Or at least the ones I’d met were—barring the crow girls.

  But Walker . . . Walker was tall and composed in demeanor, an inspiring figure with the long face of a deer, a massive rack of antlers and deep brown eyes that were like dark pools hiding all the forest’s secrets in their depths. Looking at him, I started thinking about all those murmurs and hints of the Horned Lord of the Hunt that sometimes come twisting through the ballads and tunes that make up my repertoire. If Walker’s presence was anything like what Cernunnos was supposed to be like, it didn’t surprise me that he’d been so revered back in the old countries—you know, before the priests in their robes made worshipping him yet another sin.

  Standing here in his presence, I understood the reverence people had felt for that European lord of the forest. Here, in our own woods, I wanted to go down on my knees in front of Walker and ask for a blessing.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Not so much because I couldn’t find the voice to ask, but because I realized those calm eyes of his also held dark fires in their depths. There was a set to his jaw and shoulders that told me he was nowhere near pleased to meet with us here.

  “I don’t know you,” he said, his voice deep and resonant, “and you have the stink of fairy on you. Why did you summon me, and who gave you my name?”

  A threat lay heavy in the air, carried on the shoulders of his words. Not the threat of violence. For all that he was so tall and broad-chested, I didn’t get the impression that he dealt with his problems in a might-makes-right kind of way. The threat I sensed was subtler than that. A promise that he could close doors inside us that were open at the moment. And the doors he could close were . . .

  I don’t know what the others were getting from him, but for me I understood that the door he could close was on my music and my connections to the fairy realms. I could live with losing magic—it always just seemed to bring complications and trouble anyway—but not my music. I couldn’t live without my music.

  That made me think of Jilly, having lost her art because of the accident, and I gained a whole new sympathy for her. Jilly, who was lost somewhere in the otherworld.

  “Are you all mute, as well as foolish?” Walker asked.

  No one had said a word, and then I realized that was because we’d all agreed earlier that I was going to do the talking. I wanted to turn to the others and tell them that I’d changed my mind, but for Jilly’s sake, I found the courage to step forward. I tried to remember all the things my brother Christy had told me about situations such as this. I knew that being respectful was right near the top of the list. Foremost was, don’t get involved in this sort of thing in the first place, but it was already too late for that.

  “I . . .”

  I had to clear my throat.

  “I’m sorry if we’ve disturbed you, sir,” I finally managed, “but we’re here on Lizzie Mahone’s behalf.”

  He gave no sign of recognition, and I didn’t think the name registered at first.

  “Lizzie,” he repeated.

  “You told her she could call your name if she ever needed any help.”

  Walker surveyed our small company.

  “And yet she’s not here,” he said.

  “I know. She’s—”

  “And it doesn’t explain the reek of fairy. This is not a time when aganesha or their friends should be coming uninvited into our forests. And as things stand at the moment, that invitation would be a long time in coming.”

  “We understand, sir,” I said. “We offer our condolences to you on the loss of your daughter.”

  “Do you now?”

  I swallowed thickly and nodded. That deep dark gaze of his studied me for a long moment.

  “I thank you for that,” he finally said. “My daughter will be much missed.”

  His gaze lifted to take in the others before returning to me.

  “So, you are friends to Lizzie and to fairy,” he said.

  “To Lizzie, yes,” I replied. “And I have often played music in Mother Crone’s court, but we seem to have gotten on the wrong side of the fairies—or at least some bogans. Nothing like what you’ve had to endure, but Lizzie’s cousin—Siobhan here—was assaulted by them, and now they’ve stolen away Lizzie and our friend Jilly.”

  “Bogans,” Walker said, and there was a world of menace in his use of the word.

  I nodded. “Possibly the same gang that has brought so much sorrow into your life.”

  Walker gave a slow shake of his head and looked off into the woods.

  “What can they possibly hope to gain with all of this?” he said.

  I figured the question was rhetorical and waited until he looked back at me.

  “There’s something else,” I said when he did. “We’ve been told there’s a cousin with them. An old and powerful one from one of the fish clans—blind, but still formidable.”

  Walker’s brow darkened. “Who?”

  “The only name we have for him is Odawa, and I don’t believe he’s local.”

  “I can find out,” he said.

  He looked like he was about to go and do just that.

  “Sir?” I said.

  He waited for me to go on.

  “Will you help us track down our friends? We know they were taken into the otherworld, but none of us are that familiar with travelling through it on our own.”

  “Do you know where in the otherworld?”

  I shook my head. “No one can seem to get a trace on them.”

  “Do you have any idea how big the otherworld is?”

  I was about to tell him that I did, that it was world upon world, vast and confusing, but then a cell phone went off. The tone played the opening bars of The Flintstones theme.

  “Crap,” Cassie said.

  Trust her to have that on her phone. Her preferences have always ranged from the tasteful to the tasteless.

  She pulled out her phone and looked at its screen.

  “It’s Joe,” she told us.

  Walker gave her a considering look as she spoke. It was as though he was seeing her for the first time.

  “I know you,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him, “but I really need to take this. He might have news about Jilly.”

  Walker turned to me. I thought he might be angry, considering how Cassie’d just blown him off, but he only looked thoughtful.

  “And Joe is?” he asked.

  “Joseph Crazy Dog.”

  “Ah.”

  He looked as though he was going to say something else, but stopped himself.

  “. . . behind the hotel,” Cassie was saying. “With Walker. Uh-huh.”

  She turned to us to say, “He’s going to be right here,” but she needn’t have bothered because hard on the heels of her words, Joe came stepping out of the between, a cell phone in his hand. He gave Cassie a quick hug and nodded to me before turning to face Walker.

  “Is it just me,” I heard Andy say from behind me, “or does none of this seem so weird anymore?”

  I didn’t bother to respond. I was more interested in what news Joe had. But Walker spoke first.

  “I should have realized,” he said, “that one of Cody’s people would be mixed up in all of this.”

  “Well, first off,” Joe told him, “I’m not one of Cody’s ‘people’—whoever the hell they’re supposed to be—and the reason I’m involved is that somebody’s made the mis
take of messing with my family.”

  “Your . . . family.”

  “Her name’s Jilly. She’s like my sister, or my daughter.”

  Emotion flickered in Walker’s eyes.

  “Oh, crap,” Joe told him. “I’m really sorry about what happened to Anwatan. I only just heard.”

  Walker nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Now, I don’t want to be crass,” Joe went on, “but unless we want a repeat of that, we need to track down these women. What do you know?”

  “Only what I’ve just been told by your friends,” Walker said.

  That crazy gaze of Joe’s turned to me, and I couldn’t repress a shiver. There was always something going on in his eyes, but today they looked positively feral.

  I gave him a quick introduction to the others and after I’d filled him in on what we knew, he told us what he’d learned at the fairy court.

  “I’m sorry about your girlfriend,” he told me, finishing up, “but she shouldn’t have tried to stonewall me like that.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Whatever.”

  “And,” I added, “I’m not particularly happy with her at the moment, either. She seemed way more concerned about the politics of the court than in helping us find Jilly.”

  Joe shrugged. “She’s a fairy—what did you expect?”

  Walker nodded in agreement. His reaction was expected, all things considered, but I was a little surprised by Joe’s attitude. I’d never gotten a sense of animosity towards fairy from him before. But I guess I understood. While I felt a little guilty, siding with them instead of with Galfreya, she’d brought this on herself. My first loyalty was always going to be to Jilly, not to the fairies or their court.

  “Do you trust them to actually help us?” Cassie asked.

  “Don’t know,” Joe said. “But I’m not hanging around to find out. I left Jack and Grey back at Tatiana’s court. If something comes up, Jack knows how to find me.”

  “Last night,” Walker said, “we held the second blessing ceremony for Anwatan.”