Someplace to Be Flying

by Charles de Lint

  "Me, too. You take care, Kit. Get some sleep."

  "I'll try. Thanks again."

  He cradled the phone and sat back in his chair, staring at the contact sheets pinned to the corkboard above his computer. He'd circled the shots he liked the best with an orange grease pencil. It was terrific work, but then Lily's photos usually were. She was so grounded. Had a little bit of trouble with self-esteem, it was true, but she dealt with it in the same matter-of-fact way she dealt with everything. It wasn't that she couldn't see the whimsical side of things. It was just that she'd always known the difference between what was real and what wasn't.

  At least until now.

  Jack's stories had started it—that much was obvious. But where was the jump from enjoying his stories to thinking you'd stepped into one? And where did Hank Walker come into all of this?

  Rory hadn't lied to Lily. He did believe—not necessarily that it had happened the way she'd said it had, but that she believed it had happened that way. Only where did he go with it now? What did you do when one of your best friends turned the corner and stepped from fact into fiction?

  After a while, he turned back to his computer and logged on. He had eight messages waiting for him, but it was the last one that caught his immediate attention.

  Sender: dgavin@tama.com

  Date: Sat, 31 Aug 1996 00:37:52 -0500

  From: 'Donna Gavin'

  Organization: Tamarack Publishing

  To: rcrowther@cybercare.com

  Subject: Do we have a problem here?

  Hi Rory,

  I hope you don't mind me contacting you like this. I got your email address and phone number from Sass. I tried phoning, but your line's been busy for ages, so I'm sending you this instead.

  It's about Lily.

  I just got the strangest phone call from her and I need to talk to somebody about it. I'm going to be out of town at a conference until Tuesday, but if you could email and let me know the best time for me to call you, I'd really appreciate it.

  I don't want to worry you, but something *really* weird is going on with Lily.

  Donna

  No kidding, Rory thought.

  He hit "Reply," composed a quick response to Donna's message, and sent it. He tried going through the rest of his messages, but he couldn't concentrate. Finally he shut his computer down and sat staring at the blank screen.

  There was no one except for Donna that he could talk to about this—at least not without betraying Lily's trust, and he wasn't about to do that. At least not yet. If he decided she was putting herself into danger, then all bets were off, but for now all he could do was wait.

  11.

  If there was any one place Hank might call home, it was that broad empty slab of concrete he'd cleared off in the Tombs. Big cleanup one spring, maintenance since then. Once the Tombs regulars figured out it was his space, they pretty much left it alone. No one had any use for it anyway, except for Hank.

  That was where Moth found him, closing in on four A.M. that night. Hank sat cross-legged in the middle of that flat stretch of pavement, not doing anything except maybe thinking.

  "Pretty night," Moth said, claiming a piece of the pavement beside him.

  Hank nodded.

  "That dog of yours was watching me as I came in. If I hadn't checked out, I think he'd have taken a piece of me."

  "He's nobody's dog," Hank said. "He's just what he is."

  "Like all of us."

  "Like all of us," Hank agreed.

  Moth let a piece of the quietness lie between them.

  "You okay?" he asked after a while.

  "I don't know. Used to be I knew where everything stood, but now I'm not so sure."

  "Because of these animal people?"

  Hank nodded. "Them, and Jack's stories." He turned to look at Moth, his face ghostly in the starlight. "Feels like something's coming down, just like in those stories of his."

  "Doesn't have to touch you."

  "But that's just it," Hank said. "It already has. Thing is, I don't know where it's taking me."

  He sounded tired, Moth thought.

  "You get any sleep today?" he asked.

  "Crashed in Tony's back room for a few hours."

  "Talk to Jack?"

  "Couldn't find him." Hank hesitated for a moment, then added, "But I talked to Lily. The woman from the other night."

  Moth waited.

  "She feels the same. Drawn in, but doesn't know to what or where. Feels like she's just waiting."

  "Waiting for what?'

  Hank shrugged. "Just something. I don't know what."

  Moth leaned back on his elbows and stared up at the night sky. It was quiet here. You couldn't hear the traffic from either Williamson or Yoors, light as it would be at this time of night. Couldn't hear the bikers, either, and they were usually still partying. Listening to what Hank had to say, thinking of Jack and the story he'd gotten from Jimmy, he felt himself slipping somewhere else, too, into a version of the city where that kind of thing could happen. Was happening.

  Hell, he was already there.

  "Went by Jimmy's today," he said without looking away from the stars. "Got him to tell me that story again—the one about the dog-headed guy."

  "I remember you passing that on," Hank said. "What about it?"

  "Just wanted to remind you that you're not alone."

  Hank gave a slow nod. "We had a good laugh about it that night. I mean, Jimmy of all people."

  "But we're not laughing now."

  "Not much," Hank said. He went somewhere inside his head, came back. "Jack tells the other side of that story—about the game and all."

  "Yeah, but Jimmy says it took three hours, not three days."

  "That's because Jack tells a better story."

  Moth didn't have to turn to see the smile. He could hear it in Hank's voice.

  "I won't argue that," Moth said. "But then Jack's not just passing along something strange. He's got other reasons for telling his stories. You know that thing he says, how when we understand each other's stories, we understand everything a little better—even ourselves."

  Hank nodded.

  "Guess we're going to have try to understand his a little better," Moth said.

  The quiet lay down between them again, easy as an old dog.

  "Maybe not just his," Hank said after a while. "I was talking to Katy today."

  Moth didn't say anything. He waited, content to let the night sky slip down into his eyes and fill him. Big sky like that, it did wonders for the soul. Put everything into perspective. How serious could your problems ever be when you were this small in the overall scheme of things?

  After a while, Hank lay down on the pavement beside him and started to talk.

  Hearing him out, Moth realized that he'd never really known the meaning of "strange" until now. Above him, the sky seemed so enormous that it swallowed the very idea of the two of them lying here, looking up.

  Moth turned to look at Hank. "So … do you believe her?"

  "I don't know. But something's on her mind and it's hurting pretty seriously." Hank met Moth's gaze and even the poor light couldn't hide the trouble in his eyes. "Is this the way it works?" he asked. "They just line up on you, one after the other? You accept one impossible thing, so then you have to accept them all? You believe in ghosts, so now you've got to believe in aliens? Animal people are walking around among us, so Elvis is, too?"

  Moth nodded. He understood perfectly. Where were you supposed to draw the line?

  "So where do you go from here?" he asked.

  Hank didn't hesitate. "Wherever it takes me," he said.

  A PIECE OF NOWHERE

  They say that history repeats itself, but I have an embellishment on that. History repeats itself, but at an accelerated pace.

  —Dwight Yoakam, from an interview in New Country (November 1995)

  The room's all fogged, up, thick with a gray cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke. Only thing that cuts throug
h are the lights above the tables, the click of the balls as they hit each other, the thump when they drop into a pocket. Jimmy's Billiards has been around pretty much forever and it hasn't changed over the years. It's still the same one-up above that pawn shop at the corner of Vine and Palm, scratched wooden floors, plaster walls and ceiling dingy with smoke stains, beer on tap and only one brand, bags of chips, smokes sold in packs, single Cuban cigars, some of Jimmy’s hooch if he knows you. You want anything else, you're in the wrong place.

  Mostly we all know each other here. Sharks show up, they can play by themselves or sit and watch. We don't take too kindly to anybody trying to make a fast buck off of us, got little enough as it is.

  But the game tonight's different. The slip of a girl and the tall man she's playing, they've been in before, played a few racks with most of us, but never like this. She's never played like this.

  He's looking like a riverboat gambler, flat-out handsome as always, black jeans, boots, and jacket, black flat-brimmed hat just like mine sitting on the bench by the table, white shirt, bolo tie. She's wearing black combat boots, black leggings coming down from under an oversized black sweater that's got so many pulls and loose bits of wool coming off it looks like it's made of feathers. A raggedy girl to his long cool. But they could be family, looking at them. Cousins, maybe. Something similar in the cut of their features. Maybe he's got that dark gray hair, hint of red in it, while hers is blue-black with those two bands of white running back from her temples, but they've got the same too-dark eyes with just a hint of yellow in them. Same dark skin, too. You could take them for Indians, or light-skinned blacks, but I know better. They're first people, like me. Got a trouble between them that goes way back.

  Nobody was paying much attention when Cody won the coin toss. He broke the rack and starting putting away balls, ran them for over an hour until he finally missed an easy corner shot on a five ball. He shrugged and smiled at Margaret when she stepped up to the table, but I could tell he wasn't pleased. Something in his eyes, the way the skin on his face shivered for a moment, looking like fur, gone before anybody else could notice it.

  Margaret, she's been going through racks ever since—three days now. Nobody's seen playing like this before. Talk's gone dead. The other tables are empty and Jimmy's cut the lights above them. Everybody just drinking their beer, smoking and watching. Going home to sleep, going to work, but always coming back, shaking their heads when they see she's still at the table, sinking those balls.

  First they were waiting for her to miss. Now they're just wondering how long she can stand there at the table, bright-eyed and smiling, playing like she just got up. I think of telling them, she can stand there forever and she's never going to miss, but I hold my peace because I'm curious, too. Not about how long she can keep it up, but what she's up to.

  Corbae and canid. The trouble between our families goes all the way back to the first day. We're talking the long ago, spirit time, not the way you count years. We've never had much use for calendars—not the way you do. The cycles of the sun, the moon, the seasons are all we've ever needed, same way we always had territories instead of "owning" the land. Property's something you came up with. Raven says it's because you think in terms of boxes. Everything's got to fit in one—you even live in them.

  Territory's a different thing. It's not permanent. We mark out what we need when we're mating, when we're feeding the kids, then let it go. Don't build anything permanent on it, don't leave much of a mark at all. Some raggedy nest, maybe, feathers, scat, nothing the rain and time won't wash away. And we never keep it just to ourselves, you know, saying that flower can't grow here, sparrow can't feed, the sun can't shine here, the wind can't blow, fox can't walk through, spider can't make its web. Makes no sense to us. Oh, maybe some of us are living in boxes now, but mostly we live how we always did, follow the old ways, walk in the world, tall but leaving only footprints, living on spirit time.

  People, they don't know what to make of us. Most of you think we never were, or if we were at one time, we're not anymore. But we're still here, old spirits all around you, only you're not paying attention to us. When you do happen to stumble upon us, you think you're seeing a ghost, or a faerie, or some little alien come down from the stars, going to stick a needle in you, steal you away in a silver saucer. You don't want to believe we could be real. Puts too much responsibility on you. Makes you uneasy, remembering what you're doing to our cousins.

  But we don't get involved with judgments or retribution. I don't say this to put you at your ease. You either live a life of kindness or you don't. The payback comes when you finish your business in this world and cross over to the next. Good people have nothing to worry about. Everybody else, well, you'll be getting yours. You didn't borrow that Old Testament "eye for an eve" from us the way you did so many other stories. One of your people happened on a glimpse into the Mystery that started it all. Everybody's got to pay her due and let me tell you, nothing gets by her.

  But I was telling you about Cody. Maybe you know him better as Dogface, Old Man Coyote, though mostly he doesn't look so old; always in somebody's business, making it his own. Truth is, I like him more than I don't, which says about as much about my good nature as it does about his charm. And he is charming—a good-looking, dark-haired man with eyes the color of a moth's dark wings, as drawn to trouble as to a flame.

  First day we're walking around, furred and feathered and scaled, taking it all in, that sweet mystery of being alive, here and now, living in Zen time. Corbae, we saw it happen, sun born, moon called up from the sea, stars scattered across a darkness blacker than our wings. We were siblings then, slipped up out of the before from in between the stars to take in the show. We're sitting there in the forever trees, watching the darkness catch fire—"It's like fireworks," Zia says, and none of us have seen them yet, but we understand. The lights settle down and then we're watching the long ago take shape, hill by river by forest by sea. We're watching our brothers and sisters sit up and blink, look around themselves, already forgetting everything except for what they can see in front of their noses.

  And everybody's got their own skin, fits them well because they're born to it, no complaints. All except for Cody.

  Oh, Cody.

  He's walking among the brothers and sisters while they're not quite awake yet. Steals the bobcat's bushy tail, the hare's courage, the ant's independence, the dolphin's legs, the turtle's fine-pointed ears. Takes this and that and a bit from everybody and then he sees us sitting up there in the trees, watching him.

  Oh, Cody.

  Who're we going to tell? Why would we even care?

  But that's where it starts. Cody, scheming, scheming. Always has to put one over on the corbae. Sees any kind of a blackbird and it starts up a meanness in him.

  Because we know.

  Doesn't matter that we'd never tell, that there's no one to tell.

  It's enough that we know.

  Margaret starts in on a new rack and sinks five balls off the break. She steps back from the table and downs a shot of Jimmy's hooch, then calm as you please, sinks the rest of the balls, works the table so fast that balls are leaving smoke trails behind as they drop into the pockets. Somebody sets up a new rack, but she pauses again. This time it's to give Cody a considering look.

  Feels like they've been at it for weeks, or she has, sinking rack after rack. Cody, all he's been doing is standing by the table, getting quieter and quieter, so still the air feels thick around him. He takes that look she gives him, then reaches into his pocket and tosses a small black pebble onto the pool table. Paying off his debt with a piece of magic. A little chunk of long ago, old time, weathered and smoothed. It sits there on the green felt, sucking light into itself.

  "You know," Margaret says. She looks at that pebble, but leaves it lie. "There's not one of us cares about what you did. You ever hear of a corbae could leave some pretty thing just lying around without sidling up and putting it in her pocket? Maybe you invented borrow
ing, but we took to it like it was ours."

  Cody's heard this before. Heard it more times than he can remember, I'd guess.

  "So give it a rest," she tells him.

  Cody doesn't say a word. Just looks at her, then he snaps his cue in two, tosses the pieces onto the table. Picks up his hat and walks out. I see something in his eyes as he leaves, something in the shadows under that low brim. The desert's in there and the timberlands. All the lonely, wild places where he roams—not because anyone makes him, but because he claims he wants to.

  I think of what Margaret said and suddenly I flash on what this is all about. It's not that we saw him, there in the long ago, taking a piece of this, a piece of that for himself. It's that he thinks we don't care. It's that no matter what he does to get our attention—outrageous, helpful, mean—he thinks we don't care.

  I turn to Margaret, see her putting away her cue. She turns to me before I can say anything.

  "I know, Jack," she says.

  Then she heads for the door. I stop long enough to pocket the pebble before I follow her out into the night. I hear the crowd start to stir as I walk toward the stairs.

  "Christ," someone says. "Pull me a beer, Jimmy."

  Jimmy doesn't move. I catch a look in his eyes and know that he's seen past our skin. Maybe not Margaret's or mine, but for a moment there, he saw Cody's wild face, the long snout and whiskers, and it turns something around inside him, you know, the way the crow girls can make you see things differently, just by being who they are. It changes him. Reminds him how long the world's been here before ever he was born into it. Reminds him that somebody was walking it in that long ago, and they're still here, walking it now.

  "Hey, Jimmy," the guy who wanted the beer repeats.