Widdershins

by Charles de Lint

  “Lucius will see you,” she tells me after I explain why I’m here, “but the fish man can’t come in.”

  Though I’ve never met her, I assume this is Chloe Graine, Raven’s long-time companion who looks after him those times when he withdraws from the world. She’s elegant and tall, dark-haired with strong, stern features and midnight-dark eyes that warm somewhat when she faces me, but go flat and cold whenever her gaze turns in Odawa’s direction.

  Something’s off here, I realize. Exactly what, I can’t tell.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Think about it,” she says. She brushes her hair back from her eyes, and I catch the faint scent of anise. “I’m surprised you even have to ask.”

  Beside me, I can feel Odawa stiffen. It could have been with tension, it could have been from anger. I can’t tell. I just know that the last thing I need is for him to cause some kind of a scene now, just when I’m going to get my chance to talk to Raven.

  “I’m really in the dark here,” I tell her.

  Chloe gives me a look that seems to ask, are you a moron?

  “Well, for starters,” she says, “he murdered Lucius’s goddaughter.”

  “His goddaughter . . . ?”

  “Your wife Mira.”

  “She was Raven’s goddaughter?”

  “She never told you?”

  I turn to look at Odawa. He’s already backing off the porch, but he’s making his escape too late. Before he can step away into the otherworld, or even change shape, a tall black man appears from further down the porch and grabs his arm with a big meaty hand. I don’t know the newcomer by name but he has the scent of a rook about him. Odawa tries to pull free of his grip, but the rook’s as unmovable as a stone cliff.

  “Don’t even think of changing shape, Odawajameg,” he says.

  I can see Odawa deflate at the use of his full true name, obviously having been planning to do just that. But I can barely concentrate on Odawa’s problems. I’m still trying to get around Mira’s connection to Lucius Portsmouth. She’d been Raven’s goddaughter? The Raven who’d brought the world into being?

  “How could you not have known?” Chloe says.

  “I . . . it just wasn’t something we ever spoke of,” I tell her. “I knew her parents were dead, but she never wanted to talk about her past. I had to respect that. I assumed she’d tell me when the time was right, but we never got that time.”

  Chloe nods. “She and Lucius certainly had their differences. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that she never mentioned him.”

  I look to where the rook’s still holding Odawa. I feel no guilt at having led him into this.

  “What’s going to happen to him?” I ask.

  “There will be a trial, I suppose. Considering the clan affiliations, we’ll have to call up some of both the water and air cousins to arbitrate. Brandon will keep him safely until then.”

  I nod. “But I don’t understand. Why would Raven wait until now to deal with this? Mira’s been dead for years.”

  “The fish man’s never been stupid enough to actually come knocking on Lucius’s door before. You know how it is. Lucius is the last one to create a problem between the clans over a personal matter. But he can’t ignore this.”

  Not to mention that Raven has been withdrawn from the world for most of the long years since Mira had died, but it would be impolitic to actually come out and say it.

  “Maybe Odawa’s here because he didn’t know,” I say.

  Chloe looks at him, then shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. Mira’s still dead. Why are you finding excuses for him?”

  “I’m not. It’s just—”

  I don’t know what it is that I’m feeling. I want Mira’s killer brought to justice as much, or more, than anyone. I guess I just can’t shake the guilt of having plucked out his eyes and starting all of this in the first place. I’d thought he was dead—an honest mistake, anybody knowing the circumstances in which I’d found him would say, and after all, cleaning up carrion is what we corbae do.

  But I should be the one avenging Mira’s death and all the unhappiness that Odawa had created for me over the years. Instead, as unknowingly as I’d first blinded him, I’d led him to Raven’s justice instead. Odawa’s quick to point the accusing finger at me.

  “This is all your doing,” he tells me before Brandon leads him away. His voice is dark with the unhappy promise of what he’ll do to me if he ever gets free and finds me again. “You had this planned from the beginning.”

  I shrug, but don’t say anything as he’s taken away because there’s nothing left to say. All things considered, I don’t really owe him an explanation. And he wouldn’t listen if I tried to give him one.

  I watch Brandon strong-arm Odawa down the stairs and march him across the lawn toward the back of the house. The oaks are full of black-winged cousins once more, taking in the proceedings with great interest.

  Not until he’s gone do I turn back to Chloë.

  “I keep telling Odawa,” I say, “that the salmon clan has the gift of knowledge, not wisdom, but he doesn’t seem to have either or why would he have come here with me? Even if I didn’t know Mira’s connection to Raven, he should at least have made the effort to find the names of the kin of the cousin he killed.”

  “He obviously didn’t. And why he didn’t doesn’t really matter.”

  “I suppose. But you’d think he’d have been able to see that I didn’t know anything about any of this.”

  “Maybe he thinks you’re just a good actor.”

  “I don’t know how much he actually thinks. You know he’s caught up in this business that has the cerva on the warpath?”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me? He’s as conniving as a cuckoo and easily as dangerous.”

  She was referring to the long-standing enmity between corbae and cuckoos that had finally been laid to rest a few years ago by the deaths of most of the local cuckoo elders. I’d first arrived in the area not long after, and the air had been filled with cousin gossip about the events.

  “He’s also involved in the abduction of a couple of humans,” I say. “A fiddler named Lizzie and a woman named Jilly that Joe calls his sister.”

  Chloë eyes go darker still. “Jilly Coppercom?”

  I nod. “It’s all got to do with—”

  But she cuts me off. “Don’t tell me about it now. Save the story until we’re with Lucius so you only need to go through it once.”

  When she leads me inside the Rookery, it’s like stepping back into a Victorian household. There’s an umbrella stand just inside the door with a cloak rack on the wall above it, all brass and oak. Wooden wainscoting runs the broad length of the hall at about waist height, setting off a willow leaf pattern of Morris wallpaper. There are paintings in ornate wooden frames, old-fashioned oil landscapes, mostly, though I do see a couple of more contemporary pieces, also in oils. One in particular catches my eye. It shows a pair of dark-haired teenagers with a hint of crow heads surrounding them like auras.

  Chloë allows herself a small smile when she sees me looking at it.

  “That’s one of Jilly’s,” she says.

  I’m surprised. It’s really good. But then I don’t know all that much about Jilly beyond the fact that she seems to have some very powerful friends.

  “So she’s an artist?”

  “She was.” Chloë seems to catch herself. “No, that’s not right. She still is. She’s just been limited in how much she can express since the accident. I can’t tell you how worried I am, having heard your bad news.”

  “I’m sorry to have been the one to bring it.”

  She shakes her head. “No, it’s something we needed to know if we’re going to be able to do anything about it.”

  “To tell you the truth,” I say as we continue down the hall. “I didn’t think Raven would even see me.”

  Chloë smiles. “First, he prefers to be called Lucius. ‘Raven’ has too many connotations that he’d just as soon let lie. And
secondly, we always have time for kin.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  But I don’t feel any more comfortable as we go on. I catch glimpses of a stately dining room, a living area with sideboards and fat comfortable furniture, and then Chloë leads me into the library to meet the owner of the house.

  There are more books in here than I’ve ever seen before outside a public library or a bookstore. Fat, leather-bound volumes fill the shelves from one end to another. The shelves themselves cover the walls, floor to ceiling, with library ladders on rails to reach the higher ones. The only breaks are the door through which we’ve entered and two bay windows that look out on to the garden at the rear of the house. An immense desk stands in one half of the room. Two fat club chairs share a marble-based reading lamp and side table in the other half. The floor’s polished wood, the ceiling’s high, and my nostrils fill with the pleasant, if slightly musty, smell of old books.

  After a quick view of the room, I turn back to the door, expecting Raven to be following us in. Chloë touches my arm and directs my attention to one of the two bay windows. I blink when I see the vast bulk of a man standing in front of it, then realize that Raven has the gift of so many cousins: that trick of not being noticed until you want to be. I’m good at it, but not this good. I’d looked right at the window and hadn’t noticed a thing, which, given his presence now that I do see him, impresses me even more.

  Raven’s the biggest and blackest man I’d ever seen. He’s tall and rounded like an enormous Buddha, bald and dressed in a simple dark suit, with a gaze so dark and bottomless it makes Chloe’s midnight eyes appear like pale twilight.

  He places his broad right hand over his heart and offers me a nod of welcome that’s almost imperceptible in its movement.

  “Wisskatjon,” he says. “I’m pleased to finally meet you, though I do wish it were under better circumstances.”

  I start at the use of my true name and almost say You know of me?, but then I realize, of course, he would. I’d married his goddaughter. Everybody knew that, it seems, except for Odawa and me.

  “People just call me Grey,” I say.

  He nods. “And I prefer Lucius. Come. Sit down. You have a story to tell me.”

  He crosses the room to shake my hand, then directs me to one of the club chairs. I wait until he sits down—holding my breath to see if the chair can actually take his weight—before I take the other chair. Chloë leans against the front of the desk, facing us, her arms folded.

  “I don’t think we have time for stories right now,” I say. “Or at least, not long ones. Not if we want to stop a war.”

  “Then keep it short,” he says.

  I do. I tell him about my first meeting with the bogans and Lizzie’s rescue, and then how she and Jilly disappeared from the hotel in Sweetwater. He sits up straighter at the mention of Jilly’s name.

  “I’m sorry to be the one to be telling you this,” I say.

  Instead of responding, he first gives Chloë a questioning look.

  “I didn’t know until only a few moments ago,” she said.

  Nodding, he turns back to me.

  “Please, go on,” he says.

  I try to be quick about it, telling them how I’d met first Whiskey Jack and then Joe, of going to Tatiana’s fairy court and discovering Odawa’s involvement with the bogans, though I’m still not sure exactly what it had been. Safe passage through cousin territories is the easy guess, but I’m sure there was more to it than that.

  “I’ll have to have a little talk with Odawa about Jilly’s disappearance,” he says when I’m done.

  “But the war . . .”

  Lucius sighs. “You know I’ve been through this before.”

  I nod. “With Joe, the last time the local cousins had a problem with Tatiana’s court.”

  “That was only the most recent crisis of many. If it’s not the aganesha hunting cousins, then it’s one of the clans taking out some fairies. It doesn’t matter. We get it all smoothed over and have a few calm years, then everything just starts up again.” He pauses before adding, “I’m truly tempted to sit this one out.”

  “And there’s Jilly to consider,” Chloë says.

  Lucius nods. “Yes, there’s Jilly.”

  “But so many innocents will die,” I say.

  That old, dark gaze of Raven’s settles on me.

  “Nobody’s innocent,” he tells me.

  “You know what I mean.”

  That gets me another sigh.

  “But some,” he agrees, “are more innocent than others.”

  “It wouldn’t take you long, would it?” I try. “To have a word with Minisino, I mean. To stop this.”

  “I’ve only to wave a hand and everything will be set right? After all, I made the world.”

  Something in his voice, in his eyes, tells me it’s not that simple. He’s amused at my naivete, but there’s a sadness, too. And under that, an anger, though it doesn’t appear to be directed at me.

  “I don’t know,” I say, feeling I still have to be careful, though I’m not sure exactly why. “It’s just . . . you’re Raven, aren’t you?”

  “I am and I’m not. Raven the World-Maker, the Creator, the one who pulled a world out of the darkness . . . somewhere inside me . . . some-when . . . I suppose I was him. But now I’m just Lucius Portsmouth. An old corbae who’s perhaps outstayed his welcome in this time and place.”

  “But . . .” I start.

  My voice trails off because I don’t know where I’m going. Questions fill my head, but they fall silent before they leave my lips. I can almost understand what he’s saying. Once, there was a Raven who made the world. Once, it might have been the man sitting in the chair beside me. But that was in the long ago. There might be a piece of that Raven still hidden somewhere deep inside him, somewhere in his blood, in the deep of his bones, but it wasn’t something the man he’d become now could readily access.

  Because we diminish, we spirits.

  I remember a conversation I had a long time ago with an old woman by the coals of a campfire, in a place that’s no longer a part of this world. That’s what she told me: We diminish. Not because we’re dependent on people’s belief, the way it’s said the Eadar are, but because time moves on and nothing stays the same. Mountains are ground down, continents change their shape, glaciers withdraw. Time moves and everything changes.

  We diminish because it’s simply the way of the world.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” Chloë says, her thoughts obviously travelling a similar road as mine. “No one ever wonders why the Raven who made the world would be living in an old house on Stanton Street. Why Cody, the Great Trickster, wanders the world like a hobo, when he’s not spending his time in pool halls or playing poker. Why even Nokomis can be met and spoken with, for all that she is the spirit of all these worlds, made manifest.”

  “It’s because we’re more than the stories,” Lucius says. “And less than them. Reduced only, perhaps, because there isn’t room in the world for beings of such mythic proportions. So the stories stay big, but the subjects of those stories . . . we become cousins and dreams and old men living forgotten in old houses.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you?” I ask.

  “Not even a little. Perhaps I did bring the world into being, but so what? I don’t see it as my having done anything more marvelous than someone opening a box to see what’s inside. The world goes on the way it will. It doesn’t follow my wishes and I wouldn’t want it to. That, it would seem to me, is a responsibility that would break anyone.”

  I don’t mention the stories I’ve heard about his withdrawals from the world—breakdowns, some might say.

  “So there’s nothing you can do?” I ask instead.

  “I didn’t say that. I still have a voice. I can still be heard. The old mysteries rest somewhere in my blood and things still happen when I speak. But I don’t control those mysteries. I don’t know that I ever did. They come and go of their own choosing. Most
ly they seem to leave us to muddle through our lives as best we can.”

  I nod.

  “But I will speak to Minisino,” he says. “Perhaps he will listen. Perhaps it will make a difference.”

  “That’s all I can ask,” I tell him.

  I see Chloë smile.

  “You seem disappointed,” she says.

  “I’m not. It’s just . . . I’m hearing things I didn’t expect. They make perfect sense, of course, but it’s just . . .”

  “Here’s something to remember,” Lucius says. “Respect the old spirits. Even venerate them. But don’t set them above you. The world in which they lived and the one in which we do are no longer the same.”

  But a funny thing happens while he tells me that. The room seems to swell with a presence too large to be held by these book-laden walls. Too large to be held by a cousin’s mind.

  Then the moment’s gone and it’s only Lucius in the room with me once more. Still massive. Still a big presence. But the scale is so much more normal.

  He rises from his seat with a lightness and grace that belies his size.

  “Let’s go see the buffalo,” he says. As I get up, he turns to Chloe. “Can you look into this business with Jilly while we’re gone?”

  “I will.”

  “And Odawa . . .”

  “I’ll have Brandon talk to him.”

  “I want him alive enough to face trial.”

  Chloë nodded, a grim look in her eyes. “That’s why I won’t do it.”

  At my upraised eyebrows, Lucius explains, “Chloë was very close to your wife at one time and is deeply resentful that she didn’t live long enough for them to be reconciled once more.”

  I want to ask what the rift between them was, but this is neither the time nor the place. For now, I keep my mouth shut and simply follow Lucius as he leaves the library. But when this business with the buffalo is over, I’ll have questions for him.

  Instead of taking me back through the house, Lucius leads me down another hall that brings us into a large kitchen. He opens the door and after we go through a summer kitchen and another door, we step out into the Rookery’s backyard. He looks up at the trees, still filled with all those gossiping blackbird cousins.