Someplace to Be Flying

by Charles de Lint

  Kerry gave Maida and Zia a worried look, but neither of the girls seemed the least bit embarrassed by the revelation.

  "It's only borrowing," Maida said.

  Rory laughed. "Borrowing is when you ask permission first—and then return whatever it is you've borrowed." He looked at Kerry, adding, "They're incorrigible. They'll stick whatever they want in their pockets and we're not just talking gum and candy bars here. The time we almost got busted they were lugging this huge disco ball out of a junk shop."

  "We wanted to hang it in our tree," Zia said.

  "But why would you do that?" Kerry asked.

  Zia shrugged. "We thought it would look pretty."

  "And we knew it would drive all the 'pies crazy with jealousy," Maida added.

  "No, I meant why would you steal things?"

  "Don't ask us," Zia said.

  Maida nodded. "You're the ones who invented property."

  Kerry was beginning to understand why Rory had called them impetuous last night. They really were like small forces of nature, impossible to restrain.

  "Okay," she said. "And what are pies?" she added, not sure she even wanted to know how whatever they were could be jealous of a disco ball hanging in a big elm tree.

  "Duh," Maida told her. "They're things you eat."

  "They meant magpies," Rory explained. "They have some kind of rivalry with the magpies, whoever they are."

  "So it's like … gangs?" Kerry asked. She looked at the girls. "The magpies are who they are, the same way you're the crow girls?"

  They both seemed to find this immensely amusing.

  "We're a gang," Maida said.

  Zia nodded enthusiastically. "I love being a gang."

  "Who's up for breakfast?" Rory asked.

  Kerry gave him a grateful look. She was beginning to feel very off-balance and really needed something normal to focus on.

  "What're we having?" Maida wanted to know.

  Rory opened his arms expansively. "Whatever you want."

  "Peaches and bacon!" Zia cried.

  Maida bounced to her feet. "Biscuits and jelly beans!"

  Forget normal, Kerry thought.

  "Actually," Rory said, "I have all of that, but who'd have thought it could be put together as a meal?" He gave Kerry a smile. "And what about you?"

  "Some more tea would be nice," she said. "And maybe some toast."

  "Let's see what we can do."

  The girls disappeared into the house, letting the screen door bang shut behind them. Kerry took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then looked up to find Rory smiling at her.

  "They take some getting used to," he said.

  Kerry nodded. "I'll say," she said as she followed him inside at a slower pace, her tea mug in one hand, Nettie's photograph in the other.

  9.

  Moth had a sixth sense for finding things. The only rule, if something like this could be said to have rules, was that he had to have a certain familiarity with whatever it was he was trying to find. But if he had that familiarity, all he had to do was follow wherever his feet would take him and sooner or later he'd find the thing he was looking for. Which was how, after first stopping by Jack's school bus, he found himself on the grounds of Butler University, down where the common runs up against the riverbank, saying hello to Jack and Katy.

  They were fishing, neither of them showing much enthusiasm. Jack went about it with the same languid air he did everything, leaning back on one arm, smoking his pipe. It was as though he were at some private fishing hole way back up in the hills north of the city, instead of near a bike path on the common with a constant parade of in-line skaters, strollers and joggers streaming by, everyone out to take in a piece of a sunny Sunday morning. He looked lazy as some old blackbird in that flat-brimmed black hat and duster, but his eyes were alert, sharp gaze missing nothing.

  Beside him Katy was a splash of bright color against the browning vegetation and Jack's Johnny Cash impression: bright red hair, yellow T-shirt, purple leggings, green baseball cap. But where Jack was obviously at ease in the role of fisherman, she seemed to only be going through the motions, so withdrawn into herself that she was drifting into invisibility. Most people glancing at them wouldn't even see her, regardless of the bright palette of her wardrobe.

  "Catching anything?" Moth asked as he sat down on the grass beside Katy.

  She glanced at him, gave him a small smile, looked away.

  "You know fish," Jack said. "They can be tricky little buggers. Today they're demanding more incentive than we've got to give."

  Moth leaned back on his elbows and shook out a cigarette, got it lit.

  "Never tried it myself," he said.

  "I'd recommend fishing," Jack told him. "It's a good way to waste time while feeling productive."

  "Well, I do like eating them."

  Jack nodded. "I'd say they taste better when you catch them yourself, but who am I kidding? Doesn't matter who caught them, so long as they're fresh."

  There was nothing fancy about their gear. They each had a long stick with a length of fishing line tied to the end. Probably nothing more than a baited hook and small weight in the water.

  "I've been wondering," Moth said.

  The grass at the very edge of the riverbank was uncut, leaving a narrow strip of wild country between the water and the trimmed lawn of the common, two feet, no more than four feet at its widest. Closer to the water, the long grass gave way to reeds and cattails with a rose madder blush of joe-pye weed a little north of where they were sitting. Moth smoked his cigarette. Katy leaned forward and plucked a stem of grass. She stuck it between her teeth, the seeded end dangling.

  "Wondering's healthy," Jack said. "Broadens the mind. Opens you up to all sorts of stray thoughts and possibilities."

  "My wondering was a little more specific than that."

  Jack glanced at him. "I'm listening."

  "Those stories of yours," Moth said. "You know how you're always talking about how that guy Cody shows up somewhere and then the trouble starts?"

  Jack nodded.

  "So what I'm wondering is, if maybe Cody's showed up here recently."

  "That's pretty specific all right."

  Jack pulled his line out of the water, checked the worm hanging on the end, then let it drop back into the water. The old nail he was using for a weight made a small splash as it broke the surface. Moth thought Jack might be avoiding the question, that no answer was the most answer he was going to get. He saw that Katy had sat up straighter and was looking at Jack, waiting, the same as he was. Jack turned to them, something dark sitting in the back of his eyes.

  "You don't want to get involved with Cody," he said finally. "He's hard on people."

  "Trouble is, I think maybe Hank already is."

  "That business in the Zone the other night?"

  Moth nodded. "You've been talking to Hank?"

  "Nah. Katy told me about it. The crow girls told me some more." He drew on his pipe, exhaled a wreath of blue-gray smoke. "I doubt Cody had anything to do with it. He doesn't run with the cuckoos."

  Moth gave him a blank look.

  "We're the same as you," Jack said. "Some of us get along, some of us don't. But the thing between us and the cuckoos isn't the same as the trouble we have with Cody. It's more a killing feud—lot of pain stored up in it. Old pain."

  "But what are they?"

  Jack shrugged. "Meaner than most. If they were human, you'd call them sociopaths. Got voices sweet as honey and some of them are so pretty you'd think you were looking on a piece of heaven if you came upon one, but they've got no sense of right or wrong. There's just them and then everybody else. We try to ignore them unless they get in our face."

  "So the other night—"

  "Hank's friend was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens, Moth. You know that. Happens with your people the same as mine. Random meanness and there's no accounting for it. The crow girls took care of it."

  "Maybe," Moth said. "B
ut what if it doesn't stop there? Hank feels like he's waiting for something to happen."

  Jack let a long moment slide by before he spoke again. "I know what he means."

  He looked out across the river, gaze on the ivy-covered buildings of the university on the far side of the common, the trees that crowded close to them in places. Or maybe he was looking farther away than that, gaze taking him somewhere else entirely, someplace only he could see.

  "Raven's been living here for a long time now," he said after a moment. "Going deeper and deeper into himself—or wherever it is that he goes. Last time we had trouble with Cody, we couldn't even rouse Raven. We had to take care of it ourselves. Cody wasn't ready for it then, but he'll be ready now. The way it feels is, we're due for something, so everybody's waiting."

  Moth was hoping for more, some clearer explanation of who Raven and Cody really were, what they might get up to, how Hank could be involved, but Jack had fallen silent again. This time Moth let the questions lie, playing it Hank's way, ready to listen, seeing what not talking called up. He lit another cigarette, patient.

  "But you know," Jack went on, "the crow girls have taken a liking to Hank, so it could go one of two ways. They could look out for him, or they could drag him deeper into whatever's going to play out this time around." The dark gaze returned from whatever it had been seeing to meet Moth's. "Because Cody's definitely in town. Nobody's seen him, but I can smell him at night walking the streets, checking out how things lie."

  "What does he want?"

  "The same thing he always wants, to set things right. And the same thing'll happen that always happens—he'll screw it up."

  "I don't get it."

  Jack sighed. "Let me put it this way, and don't take offense. The real reason we don't get along with Cody is he made you. Stirred in that big pot with that big bushy tail of his and out you came, swarming over everything like bugs. Now I'm not saying you're all bad—just the world was a better place before you came along.

  "Anyway, Raven took the pot away from him, but it was too late now. Cody had the taste of it. Knew he'd made a mistake and wanted to make it right, so he stole that pot again, stirred it up, and this time he woke up death." He fixed Moth with those dark eyes of his. "Every time he gets that pot, he screws things up. Doesn't mean to, but as sure as the sun rises, you can count on it."

  "So this time—"

  "Like I said, he'll be hoping to fix things right. He means well. But what'll he do with it? Who knows. All I can tell you is that if history's any kind of a guideline, it'll be nothing good."

  "It's like the grail, isn't it?" Katy said. "This pot you keep talking about."

  "That's a story that grew out of it," Jack said, "but it's older than that, older than Cerridwen's cauldron, too." He smiled. "And Cody sure as hell isn't some questing knight."

  Moth sat there thinking, remembering all those stories Jack had told of this pot, cauldron, whatever it was. Cody and Raven. Now these cuckoos. And then there was the whole business with Katy that they hadn't even gotten into today. It was hard to consider it all to be here and now, real, instead of just another piece of some story. But then he thought of Hank, what had happened to him, the old bullet scar on his shoulder that hadn't been there the day before. Like it or not, things had changed. The world had expanded beyond what he'd always known it to be. All of a sudden there was too much unfamiliar territory.

  "Is there anything we can do?" he asked.

  Jack shrugged. "Just tell Hank to walk carefully. He gets into this, it might take him so deep he'll never get back out again."

  Moth realized he didn't have Hank's patience. "Any chance you could spell things out a little more clearly?"

  "If I knew any more, I'd tell you," Jack said. "You're not blood, but you're family. I hear anything, I'll tell you."

  Conversation fell off then. Jack smoked his pipe. Katy settled back into that place she'd been when Moth first arrived, leaning into invisibility. Moth sighed. He had more questions now than before he'd found Jack and Katy sitting here fishing.

  After a while he got ready to go. Before he left, he reached out to touch Katy's shoulder, half-expecting his fingers to go right through her, but they stopped at the fabric of her T-shirt and he could feel the shoulder underneath, solid as his own hand.

  "The thing Hank told you," he said. "That goes for all of us."

  She covered his hand for a moment, but didn't speak. Didn't have to. Moth understood.

  "Anytime," he said.

  She took her hand away and he stood up.

  "Hope you catch something," he said before he left. "We could have us a fish fry."

  Jack smiled. "They've got stores that sell fish, you know."

  "Well, now," Moth told him. "The way I feel about it is, the best fish are those that someone else catches for you."

  He could still hear Jack chuckling as he walked away.

  10.

  Kerry was tired by the time they finally stopped for a late lunch, but she hadn't lost her good spirits. This was kind of a record for her, she realized as they waited just inside the front door of the Rusty Lion to be seated. She actually had stiff cheeks from smiling so much.

  The restaurant was busier than she'd expected for a Sunday afternoon.

  "But that's just it," Annie said when she commented upon it. "It's because it's Sunday. Everybody's hanging and this is one of the places to be."

  So it seemed, Kerry thought. Most of the tables she could see from where they stood were occupied, the crowd pretty much proportionately divided between upscale and bohemian, but with a complete lack of segregation. Lower Crowsea in microcosm. She supposed she and her companions fit into the bohemian category. A musician, a writer/jeweler, and a … well, what was she? For the moment it didn't matter. It was enough to be here enjoying the English pub decor, the happy murmur of voices, the smell of good food.

  When was the last time she'd gone this long feeling happy? She couldn't remember anymore. When she was a child, she supposed, before her family had moved out to the coast, before all the trouble began. For the past decade, a good day was one without an incident, never mind feeling happy, so she relished the gift she'd been given today and didn't really want to consider it too closely for fear of jinxing it.

  She knew the way she was feeling was due in part to Annie and Rory being such good company, but she felt she could take some credit for it as well. Moving here was an excellent start to reclaiming some normality in her life. She had no past here, certainly not in the city itself. However she presented herself to people, that's who she was. They could have no expectations. There was no walking on eggs around her because who knew what might set her off. She and her new friends could get to know each other by what they said and did, not by reputation. She could be anybody she wanted to be and who knew? Maybe she could even convince herself that she was somebody else.

  "So let's see," Rory said when they finally got a table. He retrieved a wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket and smoothed it out on top of his menu. "Looks like all we have left to get is some groceries."

  So far they'd managed to track down a kitchen table with three mismatched chairs, a beautiful antique wooden chest for the bedroom to keep clothes in, a small bookcase that desperately needed repainting—"Who'd this belong to before?" Annie had asked in the junk shop when they'd unearthed the lime-green grotesquery behind a stack of landscape paintings. "A clown?"—some fruit crates she could use as end tables, a portable cassette player-radio, and a small hooked rug, all for under two hundred dollars.

  "I can't believe we got all of this stuff so cheaply," Kerry said.

  Granted, they'd rummaged around in more antique and junk shops than she'd ever seen in one area, little say been in, but still. She'd seen the price on the chest before Annie had dragged the shop owner to the back of his dusty store to talk about it, and it alone had been over a hundred dollars. At least it had been until Annie had started bargaining.

  "Get used to it when you shop
with Annie," Rory told her. "People seem to fall over themselves trying to give her a bargain."

  Annie grinned. "What can I say? My fame precedes me."

  "That would be infamy," Rory said. "It's not the same thing at all."

  "What kind of music do you play?" Kerry asked Annie.

  "I'll give you a copy of my latest as a housewarming present and you can decide for yourself."

  "Oh, no," Kerry said. "You guys have already been way too generous with—"

  "Curtains," Annie said, interrupting. "We still need to get curtains, too. Or at least some lace. And a plant. Every house needs a plant."

  Rory dutifully made additions to the list.

  "If we're going to do this," Annie said, "we're going to do it right."

  "Yes, but—"

  Annie wagged a finger back and forth in front of Kerry. "I don't want to hear it."

  "She can be a bit of a control freak," Rory explained in a stage whisper. "Just play along and then do what you want later. Trust me, it's way easier."

  "I heard that," Annie said.

  Rory smiled. "You were supposed to. Someone's got to keep you honest."

  "Fair enough," Annie said. "But control freak? Isn't that a bit extreme? It makes me sound so domineering."

  "You do like to be in charge."

  "But that's just my nature. You can't change a person's nature. Next you'll be wanting to reform the crow girls."

  "Good luck to anyone who wants to try."

  "Don't change the subject," Annie said. She turned her attention across the table to Kerry. "You don't think I'm a control freak, do you?"

  The waiter chose that moment to arrive, so Kerry only shook her head.

  She was enjoying the easy banter between the two of them. It was so refreshing to be in a situation where you didn't have to be careful of everything you said. An unhappy memory popped into her mind, the stiff posture of the woman sitting across the desk from her, the expressionless face, except for the eyes that seemed to weigh and judge every nuance of word and countenance. She could hear the sandpaper voice as though the woman were sitting at the table with them right now.