Widdershins

by Charles de Lint

  Frustration, worry, anger . . . these are the things that totally muddy our thinking. Not that I’ve ever been a clear, linear thinker, which is another reason that Jilly and I get along so well because she’s anything but linear.

  Jilly . . .

  I went back to trying to hold onto Joe in my mind. I remembered him coming to visit me one time at the apartment I had on Lee Street. I’d lived there pretty much forever—this was before the disaster of my moving to L.A. to be with Tanya. There wasn’t much to the place, but then I’ve never needed a lot. If you need proof, consider how long I’ve been staying in Jilly’s studio loft and how little of myself you’ll find in there. Most of my things are still boxed up and stored in the basement of my brother Christy’s apartment building.

  But back at the Lee Street apartment, I’d taken the time to make the place look nice. I had posters and art on the walls—mostly courtesy of Jilly and our various artist friends. There was a stereo set up with all my albums organized in old milk crates. Brick and plank bookcases for my tune book collections. And then all the instruments, of course, leaning in corners, hanging from the walls, the better-quality ones stored safely away in their cases.

  It was easy to call the place up. I could remember the smallest details, from the row of figurines and knickknacks lined up on the windowsill and the odd patchwork quilt on the bed, to the way the red neon light from a sign on the street outside crept in under the bottom of my blinds. That night . . .

  I felt a tug in my head. It was like when you have something on the tip of your tongue, something you know backwards to forwards, but you just can’t put it into words at that moment.

  I suppose it should have made me feel more frustrated—this new little intrusion added to my inability to grab and hold a strong memory of Joe—but instead, it brought me the oddest feeling of comfort. And then . . . and then . . .

  I was back there in that memory. In my Lee Street apartment. Or at least my every sense told me I was. I looked to the window. The blinds were still up and a gentle snow was falling, just as it had been the night Joe came by.

  This is good, I thought. I’m going to have that memory for Timony now.

  Except there were a hundred other snowy nights that I was living there when Jilly dropped by. And this time, when the door of my apartment opened, it was Jilly who was standing there with snow dripping from her unruly hair, not Joe.

  She had a bundle under her arm. Unwrapping the brown butcher’s paper, she took out a painting, and I saw the familiar flower fairies cavorting in a junkyard. That let me place exactly the when of this memory. It was the night after one of her shows at the Green Man Gallery. Throughout the show there’d been a “sold” sticker on the painting she was offering to me here in my apartment. Now I realized that the sticker had only been there so that she could show the painting and then give it to me after.

  Because I’d loved it so much. The two little gnomish guys in one corner, playing fiddle and bodhran, using old tin cans for seats. And the flower fairies dancing to their music—like Cicely M. Barker’s, but still very much Jilly’s own, wearing the accoutrements of their naming flower, only punky, kind of raggedy versions of how Barker painted them.

  But I could hardly look at the painting.

  I’d forgotten all about Joe, I was so relieved to see Jilly again.

  Or at least I was until I realized that this wasn’t real. This was a memory. I remembered it so clearly. In those days I never locked my door, and she’d come right in without bothering to knock to find me sitting at the kitchen table with my fiddle on my lap as I was transcribing a new tune.

  She’d grinned at me and said, “So what do you think, Geordie, me lad? Can you find a place to hang this old thing?”

  Except this time she didn’t. This time she laid the painting on the table and stood there looking at me with the saddest expression.

  “Oh, Geordie,” she said. “I’ve done a terrible thing.”

  I couldn’t seem to find my voice.

  This wasn’t how it had happened. I’ve never forgotten that night. We were all so poor in those days—not that we ever got much richer, but at least we weren’t scrabbling from hand-to-mouth as we had been back then. The money she could have gotten for that painting would have paid her rent and art supplies for a month, but she’d insisted I accept it and wouldn’t take no for an answTer.

  “But I had to see you again,” she said. “If just one last time.”

  “Juh . . . “ I had to clear my throat. “Jilly, what’s going on here?” I finally managed. I laid my fiddle on the table and got up from the chair. “What are you doing in my head?”

  “I’m not in your head,” she said. “You’re in mine.”

  And when she said those words, that old apartment of mine faded from around us, and we were standing in some empty bedroom with a roof that made a sharp forty-five degree turn halfway across so that the wall on the window side was only half the height of the wall on the other. There were no furnishings except for a bed frame holding a ratty old mattress. The floor was some kind of hardwood, scratched and scuffed, and paint was peeling from the plaster walls. A single unlit bulb hung from the ceiling with a pull chain dangling below it.

  “Your . . . I don’t understand . . .”

  My voice trailed off as I turned back to her because she was different now, as well. A child stood in front of me, recognizably Jilly, but a Jilly I’d never known. She was ten or eleven, even smaller and thinner than she normally was.

  The child gave me a sad shake of her head.

  “I know,” she said. It was Jilly’s voice, but a little higher pitched. “It’s all preposterous and stupid and confusing, but somehow I’ve managed to pull my physical self inside my own head and . . . you know how you used to say—when I was carrying on about some mad thing or another—that I must have this happy attic of a brain, just brim full of interesting things?”

  I gave a slow nod.

  “Well, it turns out it’s not like that at all. It turns out it’s this weird little world where everybody hates me, or just wants to hurt me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Jilly, you—”

  “Oh, I know. I sound pathetic, don’t I? But you don’t know, Geordie. I always thought that with pluck and perseverance, we could all make it through our dark woods to the other side and safety. But that was before I realized that my dark woods are right here inside me. I can’t get away from this, because it’s a part of me and it won’t ever let me go.”

  “Everybody carries their past inside them.”

  “Yeah, but not literally. It’s not memories we’re talking about here. This—” She waved a hand to take in the room. “This is all real.”

  “No, it’s not like that,” I said, remembering what Timony had told me. “It’s only like that if you believe it to be true.”

  “Oh, how I wish that were true. But I know better. I . . .”

  She broke off and turned to the window. It took me a moment to hear the voices that had distracted her. Outside I saw unkempt fields, choked with high weeds and brush. Beyond them was a forest—mostly dark cedar, maple and pine. It all looked vaguely familiar—as though I’d seen it before, just not from this particular perspective. In the closest field, I could see a man approaching along a path that wound through the weeds. He had a loose, lanky stride and held the hand of a little girl who trotted to keep up with him. Behind them another little girl followed, redhaired and trailing a half field back. They were all too far away for me to make out any real details.

  I turned back to look at Jilly. Her face was scrunched up, eyes closed, brow furrowed.

  “Jilly, what are—”

  “Shhh,” she told me. “I’m trying to concentrate on sending you back.”

  “I don’t want to go back. I’ve been looking for you ever since you disappeared. I’m here to help you.”

  Her eyes opened and her gaze met mine. Her eyes held an unfamiliar sadness.

  “T
here’s no one in the world I’d rather see than you,” she told me. “But that’s just me being selfish. Every moment you’re here is more dangerous than the last. You have to go back.”

  “Not without you.”

  “This is no time to be brave, Geordie, me lad. It’s a time for running away and hiding.”

  “Then run away with me.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. Everything that’s horrible and dangerous comes from inside of me. How can you run away from yourself?”

  I’d never seen this Jilly before. I don’t mean the child she now was, but the defeatist attitude she wore like a huge weight on her shoulders. The Jilly I knew had no patience for resignation or any sort of unhappy acceptance to whatever obstacles the world could throw at a person. And she’d had some serious problems, both as a child and an adult, from her brother’s mistreatment of her to the accident that had left her sitting in a wheelchair most of a day.

  But regardless of their severity, she’d always met her difficulties head-on, often with a cheerful smile that was surprisingly genuine.

  “Ms. The-Glass-Is-Half-Full,” she’d say. “That’s me.”

  But now she stood in front of me, lost and vulnerable with a hopeless look in her eyes.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I did what you always do in a situation like this. I put my arms around her and pulled her in close, letting her know that she was loved and creating at least the illusion that she was protected. It’s not that I wouldn’t give up my life for her. It’s just that I don’t know that it would even help.

  It was weird. I could see that I held a child, but she felt like the grownup Jilly I knew. It was as though whatever enchantment made her appear young was only working on my eyes.

  I’d forgotten how perfectly she fit in my arms. I’d been away to L.A. and then when I got back she was always in a wheelchair, which just didn’t feel the same as holding her at this moment did. It was like old times, like the hugs she always had for me when we met somewhere.

  I was facing the window and could see the two little girls in the overgrown yard below, one with hair so bright it had to be dyed. The man who’d been accompanying them was nowhere to be seen. I started to look away when I realized two things:

  The second little girl with the bright red hair looked a lot like a young Lizzie.

  And she had no mouth. There was only smooth skin between her nose and chin.

  “Jilly,” I said into the hair of the child I was holding. “Is Lizzie here with you?”

  She pushed away from me to look out the window. Her hands went up to her own mouth as she stared down.

  “Oh, god, oh god, oh god . . .”

  She turned to me, her face a mask of anguish.

  “I did that to her,” she said. “If it wasn’t for this sick little world I’ve made, nothing would ever have happened to her.”

  I tried to hold her again, but she pushed away from me.

  “You have to go before something horrible happens to you, too,” she said. “You can’t help me. Nobody can help me.”

  “You can say that again, sugar.”

  We turned at the sound of the new voice. The man who’d been with the girls outside now stood in the doorway. He leaned casually against the door jamb, grinning at us.

  This had to be Del.

  My hands clenched into fists at my sides. This was my chance to finally do what I’d been wanting to ever since Jilly’d told me about the horror show he’d made of her childhood.

  “Now isn’t this sweet,” Del said. “I was thinking you might need a little further convincing so I let you bring your best shot here to give you a hand at escaping. But, little sister, that’s never going to happen.” His gaze went to me. “So, what do you say, boy? You going to show me what you’ve got?”

  And then he laughed at me.

  I knew what he was thinking. He had weight on me and reach, and he could probably fight better, too. But I had the Riddell temper on my side. Christy and I had both learned to keep it in check, determined we weren’t going to be like our father. Our brother Paddy hadn’t been so lucky. He’d ended up in prison where he’d finally hung himself. But before that, he’d been a crazy man. He’d had Dad’s temper and his own brawn, and he liked to fight pretty much more than anything. It didn’t matter the odds, because once his temper kicked in, he didn’t feel the pain anymore. He just kept on coming until either his opponents went down or he did.

  That was what was going to happen here. It didn’t matter what Del threw at me or how much it hurt, I was going to keep on coming until he couldn’t touch Jilly again.

  But I didn’t get to lay a punch.

  He did a little wave of his hand before I could reach him and something happened to my body. I felt a mild shock—like from static—and a high-pitched ringing in my ears. I could taste something odd in my mouth, like mulch, or dirt, and felt a spreading warmth go through me. I looked down and saw myself collapse onto the floor, changing and shrinking until all that was left was a small mess of leaves and mud and dead twigs, lying on the floor in the shape of a human being. Somewhere I could hear a child screaming.

  At first, I was only dimly aware that the terrible cries came from Jilly. All I could do was stand and stare at what had become of my body. Then the incongruity struck me: how could I be standing and also looking at my body? The answer wasn’t hard to figure out, but I shied away from accepting it. Instead, I turned my attention to Jilly, whose gaze was locked on the mess upon the floor that had once been my flesh and blood.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. The wailing had subsided into a deep sobbing that shook her shoulders.

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “Really. I’m still here. I don’t know what the hell that thing on the floor is, but it’s not me.”

  She made no sign that she’d heard me. I stepped closer and tried to touch her. That’s when the awful truth I’d been trying to hide from myself couldn’t be pushed away anymore. My hand went through her. No. What I felt was my hand going through her. But there was nothing to see. I had no body. I was just some kind of disembodied spirit.

  Del had killed me. Turned my body into a mess of forest debris on the floor, and all that was left of me was a ghost.

  I turned to him. He still leaned against the door jamb, still grinning.

  “Now do you see what happens when you don’t listen to me?” he said to Jilly.

  Her tear-strained face slowly lifted to face him.

  “Guh—go ahead and k-kill me, too,” she told him.

  Her brother just laughed. “What? And spoil all the fun? We’ve got forever to get reacquainted, little sister. We can’t come up on the finish when the good times are just starting.”

  She charged at him, but all he did was wave his hand again and her trajectory took her crashing into a wall. She collapsed on the floor.

  I went after him too, except in my case, I went right through him and found myself out in a hallway that was as run-down and derelict as the room I’d just quit.

  “You just think on that awhile,” Del told Jilly in the room behind me. “I’m going to play with my new friend outside and when I come back, I want to see a whole change in your attitude. You got me?”

  I drifted back into the room to see Jilly still lying where she’d fallen.

  Del banged the heel of his boot on the floor. “I said, you got me?”

  She lifted her head. Her cheeks were still wet with tears, but her eyes were dull as she gave a slow nod.

  “That’s my girl,” Del said.

  He went back into the hall, banging the door closed behind him.

  I went to Jilly and crouched down beside her.

  “Jilly,” I said, trying to touch her, wanting to hold her.

  But I couldn’t give her any comfort. She didn’t even know I was there. Her gaze went to the small man-shaped mess of mud and debris on the floor, and she began to cry again.

  Timony Twotot

  When Geordie vanished, Timony blinked i
n surprise, then quickly tried to follow the fiddler. But instead of crossing over as Geordie had, the doonie ran up against the impenetrable shell that enclosed the small pocket world he’d been so abruptly cast out of earlier. It would no more allow him entry now than it had before.

  “Well, that’s that then,” he said to no one in particular.

  He had no idea what had just happened. For all his efforts, Geordie’s disappearance had nothing to do with anything he’d done. He’d needed the clear picture in Geordie’s mind and that had never come. But nevertheless, he’d certainly felt that closed world of Jilly’s open long enough to pull the fiddler in, slamming closed before he had the chance to follow himself. They hadn’t found this dog crow named Joe, but now it was no longer necessary. Geordie was with Jilly and . . . and . . .

  And nothing, he realized.

  So long as Jilly believed in her brother’s authority, he would remain all-powerful. And Geordie wouldn’t be allowed the time to convince her otherwise. As soon as he appeared, the brother would cast him out of the world once more. Or worse.

  Timony sighed.

  What were the times coming to? Bogans and a green-bree killing a doonie who’d never done them a lick of harm. Buffalo gathering to lay ruin to the world of both fairy and men. A literal world held inside the mind of a young woman.

  None of it was right. And there was nothing he could do about any of it. He couldn’t even help Lizzie, and that was a responsibility he was unable to shirk. She might not accept the truth of it, but that still didn’t change the fact that he owed her his life and had no choice in the matter. He had to help her. He couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—give up until he had proof that she was dead, however long that would take. And then he would see that retribution was paid, and paid in full.

  But he wasn’t ready to give up hope just yet. If Geordie had gotten through, then the opportunity might arise for him to cross over as well.

  He would wait.

  Doonies were patient. He could wait forever.

  He would keep his senses open to any change in that strange hidden world, but he wouldn’t remain idle.