Spiritwalk

by Charles de Lint

  “I remember.”

  “But it didn’t go away when the weather warmed up. Got worse, in fact. So then a couple of weeks ago I was supposed to meet her to go to an opening at a gallery—”

  Esmeralda didn’t blink at that, but she revised her opinion of him again. There was definitely more to him than the face he presented to most of the world.

  “—only she never showed. I tried calling her. No answer. Finally I drove up to her place and found her lying in her bed like she was dead. I didn’t know what to think. I thought maybe she’d OD’d on something, so I brought her into town. I didn’t want to take her to the hospital in Hull—I don’t speak French and I didn’t want to get some kind of runaround. So I brought her to the General and she’s been there ever since.

  “The doctors say she’s in a coma, but they don’t know how it came on, they don’t why, and they don’t know when or even if she’s ever going to come out of it.”

  “Do you spend a lot of time there?” Esmeralda asked.

  “As much as they let me. Judy came by to sit with me tonight—other nights, some of the other guys come by.”

  Esmeralda smiled. Judy looked very feminine to her. It was odd considering her as “one of the guys.”

  “And how does she seem to you?”

  It was Judy who answered. “Lost. You look at her face and you know there’s no one home.”

  “It’s starting again, isn’t it?” Blue asked. “The same business as before? Someone’s stolen part of her like Glamorgana did, only this time they took so much that there’s nothing left for her to run on.”

  “Not necessarily. I think Judy had the right idea. She’s lost.”

  “Lost? Lost where?”

  Esmeralda sighed. “I don’t know. But someone’s going to have to go find her.”

  No one spoke for long moments. Blue finished off his beer and opened a second. The others were still working on their first.

  “Do you know how to do that?” Blue asked finally.

  “In theory. I’ll have to make some preparations.”

  “Like what? How long will they take? When can we go?”

  “Not we—me.”

  Blue shook his head. “Not a good idea.”

  “Someone has to be here for when she gets back,” Esmeralda said. “Someone she knows well and trusts. Someone that loves her. So it’s either you or me that goes. Do you know what to do?”

  “No, but I don’t like the idea of—”

  The computer beeped and Blue looked at the screen.

  TRUST HER, Jamie said.

  Before Jamie could say more, or Blue could argue, the phone rang. Blue scooped up the receiver.

  “Yeah, speaking,” he said into the phone. “What’s the big... ?”

  Watching him, the two women saw all the blood drain from his face. Around Esmeralda’s feet, a gust of wind stirred.

  8

  Smoor had the taste of ashes in his mouth as he left the corridor and walked into the private room to stand over the bed. When he used his dead mistress’s spells, they always burned like cold fire in his mind and rose like ashes in his throat. He looked down at the woman, remembering. That night and his pain. The death of his mistress, consumed by her own witchfire. And all that remained, scattered on the grass...

  The taste of ashes grew stronger on his tongue.

  Leaving the bedside, he went to the window and drew a talon-like fingernail along its edges, peeling back the weather stripping. Once all around, and he pulled the huge window from its frame, not even straining with its weight. He leaned it up against a wall.

  Returning to the bedside, he wet a finger on his tongue, then drew symbols on the woman’s face, the saliva glistening like phosphorescence where it lay on her skin. Peeling back the sheets, he drew more symbols on the palms of her hands, her belly and the soles of her feet. Not until they were dry, still shimmering, but with a hard cold light now, did he remove her from the IV and monitoring equipment.

  By the time a nurse arrived in the room, summoned by a flashing light at her station once the monitors were disconnected, he had already crawled crablike down the side of the building, the woman hoisted under one arm, and disappeared into the woods that bordered the hospital’s grounds. He waited, hidden in the trees, until there was a lull in the traffic on Smyth Road, then loaded his burden into the back of a stolen Buick Skylark and got behind the wheel. The Buick’s plates had been exchanged earlier in the evening with those from another car in a shopping-center parking lot.

  “Spells will keep you alive,” he told his unconscious captive, looking over the seat at where she lay sprawled in the back. “But not for long.” He grinned as he turned frontward and started up the Buick. “Long’s not needed anymore—not for you, my pretty thing.”

  The Autumn Heart was his.

  9

  Blue hung up the phone with a numb expression, missing the cradle and fumbling the receiver until he got it set properly in place. Then he just stared blankly at a spot equidistant between the two women.

  “What is it, Blue?” Judy asked.

  Esmeralda didn’t speak. The wind had spoken to her. She already knew.

  “It’s Emma,” he said slowly. “She’s gone. Either she just... just got up and walked away, or somebody’s kidnapped her.” He sat for another couple of moments, a lost look in his eyes, then shook himself like a big dog and rose from his seat. “I gotta go find her.”

  “Blue,” Esmeralda said quietly, but it was enough to stop him in his tracks. He turned slowly to look at her. “Where will you look?” she asked.

  “Christ, I don’t know. I’ll start at the hospital, then work it out from there.”

  Judy set her beer aside and rose as well. “I’ll get hold of Hacker and some of the other guys.”

  “Wait a moment,” Esmeralda said. Again her quiet voice stopped movement. “Where will you look?” she repeated.

  Blue blinked for a moment, then frowned at her. “I told you, I don’t know. But I’m not just going to sit around here and—”

  Esmeralda held up a hand. Winds stirred briefly about her, tousling her hair. Judy’s eyes widened.

  “Think for a moment,” Esmeralda said. “Who could have taken her? For what purpose?”

  “If I knew that—”

  “She’s right,” Judy said. “If we can figure that out, we cut out a lot of running around.”

  Blue looked from her to Esmeralda, then slowly made his way back to his seat. “Okay,” he said. “I’m thinking. You got any bright ideas?”

  Esmeralda forgave his brusque manner. She was beginning to get a measure of him. It was worry that was shortening his temper.

  “I could track her,” she said, “but I’m attuned to her spirit, not her body, so any farseeing I might do would be of no help in this aspect of our present situation.”

  The computer beeped, and they turned to look at Jamie’s screen. Words darted across its green background.

  LOGIC DICTATES THAT THIS IS CONNECTED TO HER EARLIER TROUBLES, they read.

  “They’re both dead,” Blue said. “Chance and the witch. I saw them die.”

  AND THE WITCH’S CREATURES?

  Understanding sparked across Blue’s features, waking a grim darkness. “Jesus! Those things. They just ran off.”

  EXACTLY, Jamie said. NOBODY SAW THEM DIE.

  “But what the hell would they want with Emma?”

  In the ensuing silence, Esmeralda’s quiet voice seemed loud.

  “Vengeance?” she asked.

  Blue’s gaze locked on her own; then he nodded. “It’s got to be them that grabbed her,” he said. “And I know where we can start looking for them—Lac la Pêche, where Chance and his witch bought it.”

  He rose again, Judy following. This time no one called out to stop him, but he paused at the door.

  “You coming?” he asked Esmeralda.

  She shook her head. “There’s another part of her that’s still lost that I’m better equipped to lo
ok for. Godspeed.”

  She could see both of them remembering the wind rising up about her, a wind that had only touched her.

  Blue nodded. “You, too,” he said, and then they were gone.

  Esmeralda rubbed at her temples, then shifted to the swivel chair, which she pulled up in front of the computer screen. “I’ll need some things, Jamie,” she said. “Maybe you could tell me where to go look for them to save my wasting any more time.”

  WHATEVER WE HAVE IS YOURS, Jamie replied.

  10

  Hidden from the moon’s light by the deerskin flaps of his conjuring lodge, Migizi sat gathering silence from the quiet places within his spirit. His shadow lay upon his shoulders. His soul watched from outside the jessakan, leaning against its birch poles and deerskins, listening to the soft sound of the water drum calling the grandfather thunders, the chanting that asked Grandmother Toad for her aid.

  The air was close inside the lodge, thick with sacred smoke. High above the glade, Nokomis’s blossom moon wabigwanigizis rode the sky, listening to Migizi, accepting his smoke. When Migizi stepped outside the lodge, she bathed him with her light, adding her strength to his strength, and then they came.

  A band of manitou, Nanibush’s spirit guides, walked the meekunnaug, the Path of Souls that the spirits of the dead travel to reach the west. The moon came down to be by Migizi’s side, Grandmother Toad standing there, holding his wrinkled brown hand in one of hers, the hand of his soul in her other. The spirit guides were dressed in their finest white buckskins, their braids bedecked with feathers and shells, their shirts with complex beadwork designs. Spirit drums sounded quietly in the darkness.

  “K’neekaunissinaun, ani-maudjauh, “ they called softly. Our brother, he is leaving.

  “Not I,” Migizi replied softly.

  Grandmother Toad turned from Migizi then to face the woods. Drawn by the kindness that the moonlight showed in her features, the strange manitou drifted from the woods to join them in the glade.

  “We bring you a sister tonight,” Migizi said, for he saw now, with Nokomis’s strength joined to his, that this manitou was female. “She is lost.”

  The sound of spirit drumming was a soft thunder all around them. Sacred smoke given sound. Animiki speaking.

  “Come with us, sister,” the spirits said.

  The strange manitou hesitated.

  “Come with us,” the spirits called.

  Grandmother Toad crossed the glade to take the manitou’s hand. “I will show you the way, nici’men,” she said, calling her “little sister.”

  A moment longer the strange manitou hesitated; then she let Grandmother Toad lead her onto the Path of Souls. Migizi watched them go, the spirit guides walking all around them, the sound of spirit drums following them as they traveled west.

  “Go in peace, little one,” he said. “K’gah odaessiniko. “ You will be welcome.

  When they were gone, he lifted his gaze to the moon of blossoms, thanking her, then returned to his conjuring lodge for his spirit pipe. He filled it with tobacco and took it with him to where his soul sat under the honeysuckles waiting for him. He raised the pipe skyward.

  “Saemauh k’weekaunissimikonaun,” he called softly to the manitou. Tobacco makes us friends.

  His shadow nestled against his back. His soul looked westward. He lit the pipe with peace in his heart. He thought of the naming ceremony the next day would bring. Some might think it was his due, as a grandfather mede of his people, to name the daughter of Bebon-Waushih and Misheekaehnquae, but they were not he. Migizi considered it not his due, but a great honor that the child’s parents would ask him to help her find her name.

  The finding of a name was a sacred task, so he offered smoke to the thunders and asked for their blessing.

  Two

  1

  Esmeralda sat alone in the Silkwater Kitchen. She had changed into jeans, a flannel shirt and sturdy walking shoes. On a chair beside her lay a gray leather jacket that someone had left behind in the House when they moved away. Jamie had told her to go ahead and borrow it as she had brought nothing suitable with her. Beside it was a small leather bag, stuffed full of the things she felt she might need, collected from her carpetbag and various parts of the House. There were herbs and candles in it, charms and fetishes. And because this was no longer England, tobacco as well, for she knew her journey would be taking her into the spirit realms where the native manitou dwelled.

  On the table in front of her was the copy of The Tale of the Seasons—the old poetry journal that she’d left behind in the House’s Library when she’d gone away years before. It had a blue leather cover and the pages were stiff and cream-colored, covered with tidy handwritten words in green ink. She had been leafing through it, stopping to read a verse here, another there. Now she looked out the kitchen window at the dark garden, the words thrumming in her head.

  I know where I walk you can’t always go

  for all my strange talk, you can’t always know

  there’s a madness in my soul, a demon in my head

  a power born of hollow hills, gold and twilight-led

  I know where I walk Great Pan is not dead

  She didn’t know the person who’d written those words. Not anymore. At the same time, she knew that girl very well. The words she had written spoke of a time when the winds that moved inside her were a source of confusion and fear. They dated to a time before she had learned to ride their currents, to when she still fought the strangeness that they had brought into her life.

  I know that my ways don’t always seem kind

  sky-clad I grew once, root, leaf and vine

  if I speak of love now, speak of love for you

  gather in the harvest, reap the brambles too

  I know that my ways lead now to you

  Too often she had made of them a pretense, thought of them as something that was charming and whimsical, and even mystical, but not real—just as Emma had. As Emma still did. They had seemed to be a source of creative energy, a muse, but not something to steer one’s life by. She had drunk at their well in those days, but made no payment in return.

  there was a star once, o how it did shine

  fell into the shadows, time out of mind

  there’ve been so many stars that did fall

  hear the strains of madness, hear the demon’s call

  there was a star once, now the dark is all

  And now? she thought, looking out to where the night lay on the House’s garden. She had moved out of the shadows, risen from the darkness, to study, to explore, to learn. How the spirits moved. The sources of their powers. The vessels they chose to reside in. She had cloistered herself in years of study. Passing on the lore to those who asked, to those who came to drink at her well. She had embraced the beauty and the mystery, yet how often had she walked back into the shadows to sow the mysteries’ seeds in the darkness?

  Well, she was doing it now. Horned Lord, Mother Moon. She was doing it now.

  “Leaving so soon?”

  She looked up to find Tim standing by the kitchen counter with an empty tea mug in his hand.

  “For a time,” she said. “But it’ll be a short journey this time.” In how we reckon time, she thought. Who knew what distances she would travel, moving through the spirit realms? “Have you been working?” she added.

  “I live on tea when I’m writing.” He took the cozy from the teapot and filled his mug, then held the pot up, offering her some.

  She shook her head. “You’ve reminded me that it was time I was going.”

  Closing her old poetry journal, she left it where it lay and rose from the table. She put on the borrowed jacket and slung the bag over her shoulder. Tim called to her as she went to the door.

  “You’re going the wrong way—that just leads into the gardens. I guess you forgot. The gardens are surrounded on all sides by the House. You can’t get to the street that way.”

  “The journey I’m taking won’t take me out of the Hous
e,” she said. At least not by routes he would know.

  He gave her an odd look, then nodded. “Like meditation?”

  “Something like that. Hopefully, I’ll see you in the morning, Tim.”

  “Sure.” He raised a hand. “Happy trails.”

  “Thank you.”

  She stepped out into the night and closed the door before he could say anything more.

  * * *

  The gardens enclosed in the protective embrace of Tamson House always seemed far larger than their actual acreage should allow. They were riddled with paths that twisted and wound around deep stands of trees and bushes. Statues hid in the greenery. Flowerbeds lay thick with spring growths. Little nooks with benches appeared out of nowhere, only to be swallowed again when one walked on. The paths all led to the central knoll that was Esmeralda’s destination.

  It was quiet there. The fountain hadn’t been turned on yet and the city beyond the walls of the House might never have existed, its presence was so little felt here. Esmeralda sat on the stone lip of the fountain, her bag on her lap, and collected her thoughts. Above her, an ancient oak overhung the fountain with the wide spread of its branches. The quiet she nurtured inside soon echoed that of the tree above her, the gardens around her. Her taw, the silence that is like music, filled her with its potent strength. When she heard footsteps approaching, they seemed loud, for all that the man who came out of the trees walked softly like a cat.

  He stood and regarded her, and she him. In the moonlight they could make out little more than general features.

  “A strange night,” the newcomer said quietly. “I never thought to find one of the Powers in this place, Lady, but then this rath delights in surprise.”

  “You must be Taran,” she said. “The bard.”

  A sad name, she thought, for it meant a child not blessed by fire and water. An outcast. He moved closer and lifted one arm. The moonlight shone on a leather glove stretched tightly around a clawlike appendage that had once been a hand.

  “Bard no more,” he said.

  Esmeralda shook her head. “That’s something that can’t be put on or taken off like a cloak.”