Someplace to Be Flying

by Charles de Lint

  Katy gave a slow nod. "The Grace." She weighed it on her palm. "I think it's hollow."

  Maida peered closely at it. "I had one of those once and it was hollow, too. You just screwed the head off when you wanted to peek inside."

  "Here," Zia said. She pulled a knot of strings and threads and unidentifiable items out of her pocket and managed to work free a length of leather thong. "You can have this."

  Kerry threaded the narrow strip of leather through the hole in the back of the pendant, then she slipped it around her sister's neck, tying it off for her at the back. Katy fingered the pendant, rubbing a thumb along one wing. Kerry didn't know what her sister was feeling, but the pendant seemed to be giving her the comfort that no one else had been able to give her. And then Hank surprised her, offering up the one thing that Katy needed to hear.

  "We saw Jack go," he said. "When the chalice fused back into one piece, we saw a door opening into a meadow with a big stone in it. There was an angel waiting there, with red hair and red wings. Waiting for Jack, it looked like, because when he walked up to her, she took his hand."

  "And then the door closed behind them," Lily said.

  Katy's free hand claimed one of Kerry's, squeezing tight. Kerry didn't mind. Katy could squeeze as hard as she wanted, if it'd make her feel better.

  "That angel looked like you two," Hank said. "Like you'd look if you were older. In your forties, maybe."

  "You … you really saw this?" Katy said. "You saw them together in this field?"

  Hank nodded.

  "And she had wings?" Maida asked.

  Hank nodded again. "Big ones. Like an angel's."

  Zia and Maida smiled at each other.

  "You were so right," Zia said. "Nettie did learn how to fly."

  "The angel was our mother?" Kerry asked.

  "That'd make sense," Hank told her. "Definitely related."

  Kerry could feel the tension easing in her sister, the sharp edge of her sorrow softening.

  "Um, heads up, people," Rory suddenly said. "We've got company."

  Kerry hadn't even heard the elevator open. When she turned, she saw a half-dozen men in suits step out of it into the hall.

  "Hotel security," Hank said. "Now we've got a problem."

  "It's okay," Zia told him, taking Hank and Lily by the hand. "We know a shortcut where they can't follow."

  She led them for two steps, then the three of them vanished. Kerry stared. Even after all she'd been through, she wasn't quite ready to believe what she'd just seen. She was still trying to adjust to it when Maida took Rory's hand, grabbed a handhold in the thick fur of the big dog standing near him and walked them away into thin air as well.

  "How … ?" Kerry said.

  "It's okay," Katy said, lowering her hand from the pendant. "It's just another way of walking. You can learn how to do it, too."

  "But—"

  "You, down the hall!" one of the hotel's security people called. "Stop where you are!"

  One of his companions was talking into a cell phone. The rest had all drawn handguns from under their suit jackets.

  Katy took her hand. "Come on. I'll show you."

  But she hesitated a moment, looking at Raven.

  "You go on," he said, turning away from them. "I still have to remove the cuckoos."

  "What does he mean?" Kerry asked.

  "I guess he doesn't want their bodies found. Probably because it'd start the wrong people asking questions."

  Kerry watched him move down the hall, soft-footed now despite his bulk, where at the Rookery, the simple act of crossing a room made the whole building shake. For some reason the security people didn't see his approach. He stepped right by them and proceeded to the open door of the cuckoos' suite.

  "How does he do that?" she asked.

  "I can show you that, too," Katy said.

  Three of the security people were coming down the hall toward them.

  "Okay, ladies," the foremost said.

  The gun in his hand was shaking and the eyes of all three were wide. Kerry knew just how he felt.

  "Let's … let's just take it easy," he went on, "and no one … no one has to get hurt."

  "Time for us to go," Katy said and she walked Kerry into the same thin air that the others had vanished into.

  THE LIGHT WILL STAY ON

  And if you bury me, add three feet to it

  One for your sorrow, two for your sweat

  Three for the strange things we never forget

  And long after we're gone

  The light will stay on

  The light will stay on

  —Chris Eckman, from "The Light Will Stay On"

  1.

  Hazard, Thursday afternoon, September 5

  Maida and Zia are forever friends—the way I always wanted my sister Kerry and me to be. Maybe we'll get there, too, once we finish putting all the baggage of our lives behind us. But I don't know if we'll ever be so merry. I guess I mean that in all the ways the word can be taken. Merry, happy, the way we define the word now; and merry, fey, one of things it used to mean a long time ago.

  I heard about the crow girls for years, but it wasn't until this past week after they finally came into my life that I can really understand what Jack meant about them. They truly are irrepressible. It's like that rhyme, "two for mirth." Even when they're trying to be serious, they can't seem to stop smiling and neither can you.

  So it's funny to see them at Jack's funeral—funny odd, I mean. Funny to see the smiles gone away, like they're gone to stay. The pair of them dressed in black, but I'm told they're always in black, standing here in the meadow with the rest of us, faces solemn, eyes shiny, Maida biting her bottom lip, Zia with her hands stuck so far into the pockets of her jacket it's like she's making wings out of the cloth.

  We're all here today, gathering under the watch of those piney wood hills, everybody—Margaret and Annie, Raven, Chloë, the crow girls, Kerry, me. Humans, too, without the blood and with. Rory and Lily, Hank and our friends from the junkyard. But it's mostly corbae and their black-winged cousins.

  More of them keep dropping from the sky or walking out of the woods all the time. I lose count after a hundred. The bare branches of the trees are clothed in blackbirds, grieving. Nobody's talking. We're just standing there in ever-widening circles around the small still figure Jack makes lying there in the browning grass, wearing his first skin again, jackdaw feathers stark against the pale ochers and browns.

  Jolene found him here, lying like this, and sent down word to us with one of the wild crow boys. They're here, too, along with a lot of the other wild folk. Bear, Alberta, Crazy Crow, and the rest. Even Ray.

  I'm standing by the old stone where my parents first met, on the grass above my mother's grave. There's a gray sky overhead that makes it feel like all the color got bled out of the day, went away with Jack, or maybe it's just in mourning like the rest of us. And still there's more of them coming, corbae and cousins. After a while you can't see the grass for the blackbirds. All the autumn colors are swallowed by blackbirds, the heavy fruit of their bodies filling every branch, and the air lies still under the pressure of our heavy hearts.

  "How'd he die?" somebody finally asks.

  "Why'd he have to die?" Zia says before anyone else can answer.

  It gets real quiet then. If you listen hard you can hear the shuffle of someone's feet, the slow flap of wings as another latecomer arrives. But mostly the quiet holds, a deep silence that swells from the small body lying in the grass at our feet and washes out across this field of grace.

  Finally, I clear my throat.

  "Before he died," I say, "before he knew it was coming so soon, Jack once asked me to tell you a story if I was still here and he'd gone on."

  Sad smiles flicker here, there. Nobody groans. There's no teasing Jack now. He's gone. The fingers of my right hand rise up to close around the silver crow pendant that hangs from my neck. It's becoming a familiar gesture.

  I go on. "He said he t
hought one or two of you might show up today and he didn't want you going away empty-handed."

  "It's not the one about the porcupine again, is it?"

  I don't see the speaker, but it sounded like one of the wild crow boys. Sad smiles wake in memory of that crazy, tangled story.

  "I liked that one," Bear says.

  I nod. "Me, too. But I've got another one for you today."

  "It won't be sad, will it?" Maida asks.

  She and Zia are holding hands, looking at me like their hearts are going to break. Mine already has. I'm working on the mending of it now, but I get the feeling that might take as long as the crow girls have been friends.

  "Just say it won't be," Maida says.

  All I can do is shrug and tell it. Not like Jack would have, because I'm not Jack. I have to use my own voice and hope it'll be enough.

  2.

  The thing you have to remember about those days is that Jack wasn't always so good at holding on to who he was. More than any of us, he was a wanderer, and that only makes it harder to hold on to yourself. Because the thing about wandering is, you don't put down roots, and without roots, without history, without the stories of who you are and where you come from and how you fit in, you can slip out of context.

  A place knows who you are. I don't mean simply the people who live there, but the place itself. If you go walking in the old neighborhoods, the streets or fields where you grew up, it comes back to you. Those old haunts remind you of the stories of who you were. Which makes it easier to figure out who you are.

  Now, I'm guessing most of you go a lot further back with Jack than I do, and you're thinking, the one thing Jack always had was stories. And that's true. He always remembered the stories. They were so much a part of him, he couldn't not remember them. What he'd forget sometimes was his part in them. That the Jack in the stories was the same Jack telling them.

  One day Jack's walking along a dry riverbed, following it up into the mountains. I don't know where he's going or if he even has a destination in mind that day. Could be he's only rambling.

  Come nightfall he's up around the tree line where the air's thin, but the stars feel so close he figures he could reach out and pluck one and not even have to stand up from the stone he's using for a seat. He sits there awhile, enjoying the dark and the starlight, listening to some of Cody's cousins singing to each other in the distance. Some time passes like that before he finally gets up to build himself a small fire and sets to boiling water for tea. He boils that water right in a tin cup with a wooden handle, keeping the handle turned away from the fire.

  "Let me finish fixing that tea for you," someone says.

  He looks up and there's a woman standing there in the dark that lies just outside the circle of his firelight. He guesses that she thinks he can't see her, but he can see just fine, corbae's eyesight being as good in the dark as it is in the day and all. She's a slim, tall woman, maybe as tall as him, dressed in traveling clothes, split skirt with a man's white shirt tucked into the waist, a canvas jacket overtop, sturdy boots on her feet. Her face is long and narrow, dark chestnut hair pulled back into a ponytail, gray eyes. There's a journey sack slung from one shoulder and she's carrying a birdcage covered with a piece of cloth. Jack can't see through the cloth, but he can smell there's someone inside, been spelled back into their animal skin, and that's when he knows she's a witch.

  Now the thing with witches is, you can't let them do a thing for you because that puts you under their power. You've got to turn them down every time they offer you a helping hand. It's like inviting one into your home. You do that and you've only got yourself to blame when they spell you back into your first skin and fry you up in a skillet.

  So Jack, he smiles at her, but says, "No, thank you, ma'am. I can fix my own tea. But you're welcome to have some with me."

  "I'm not really all that thirsty," she tells him.

  He drops a handful of dried chamomile into the water because it's well and hot now and sets it aside to steep. Glances at the witch, still standing in the dark, frowning to herself, and he starts to making some flatbread. Well, the witch comes into the light then, that frown wiped right off her face.

  "I hate to see a man trying to make bread," she says, putting down her sack and the birdcage. "Let me do that for you."

  "Well, now," Jack says, "I'm partial to making my own bread. But you're welcome to have some with me."

  He sees her gritting her teeth. Only thing witches hate more than not getting their own way is kindness.

  "I'm not really all that hungry either," she says.

  And it goes on like that for a while. The witch offering to clean up after his meal, and he tells her he likes cleaning up and does she maybe have anything dirty that he can wash while he's doing his own? When he pulls out his pipe, she offers him a light, but he tells her there's no need, he's got a fire right here and did she want some tobacco? When he pulls out a needle and thread and starts to mending a hole in his jacket, she offers to do it for him, but he tells her he likes to sew and did she have anything that needed mending?

  "I never knew people were so friendly in these parts," Jack says after a while of this. "Tell you the truth, I never knew there even were people in these parts."

  "I'm just passing through."

  "Story of my life," he tells her. "I'm always just passing through myself."

  They sit there for a while, him sewing and smoking his pipe, her looking at him from across the fire, stroking the cloth on her birdcage.

  "So you got a name?" she asks him then.

  He nods. But he's no fool. Telling her his name'd be the same as letting her give him a helping hand.

  "Well, what is it?" she says when he doesn't offer it up to her.

  "What's yours?"

  "I'll riddle you for it."

  Jack smiles. "Well, now. I never had much of a head for working out riddles. Only ever could remember one, you know, 'What's the strongest of all things?' That being love, because iron is strong, but the blacksmith is stronger, and love can subdue the blacksmith."

  "Never much cared for that one," she says.

  Jack shrugs.

  "You play the bones at all?" she asks then.

  "You fixing to pull out a fiddle?" he says right back.

  She just looks at him, waiting him out. Jack smiles to himself. He's starting to enjoy this now.

  "I'm talking gaming bones," she says finally.

  "Dice or dominoes?" he asks.

  "Either one, makes no difference. Winner take all."

  Jack shakes his head, like he honestly regrets having to say this.

  "I don't gamble either," he tells her.

  She nods. "You figure you can wait me out, don't you?" she says, straightforward about it now. "Well, let me tell you something, boy. I was walking these mountains before you were even a gleam in your mother's eye. I know a thing or two about waiting. I'm as patient as that rock you're sitting on. As untiring as time passing. Sooner or later you're going to fall asleep and I'm going to be there, tuck you in maybe, make up your knapsack into a pillow, ease the boots off your tired feet. And you know what happens then?"

  "You that hungry?" he asks. "All I am is gristle and bone. Doesn't seem worth the wait."

  She gives him a feral grin. "I’m always hungry, boy."

  Now, Jack doesn't remember he's a corbae that day, that he could sit there wide awake till the world comes to an end and still not be tired, were he to put his mind to it. And she doesn't know what he is either, or she wouldn't have stopped by his fire in the first place. She thinks she's got herself some little wild jackdaw traveling man, instead of a full-blooded corbae. So she's ready to wait him out, probably watched him walking up that dry riverbed all day, climbing higher and higher up into the mountains, and figures he's got to be tired from all that exercise. He's got to nod off sooner or later.

  Well, maybe Jack doesn't remember who he is, but he's still about as stubborn as they come, and he's thinking about whoever she's g
ot under the blanket in that birdcage of hers. Knows that whoever she's got caged, he's that person's only chance. So he starts in to telling her stories—not the kind he'd be telling us, but long, pointless stories, the ones that go on for so long by the time you get to the end you can't remember where it was he started, only you don't want to ask in case it starts him telling the whole thing all over again.

  And some time goes by.

  I'm not talking hours, I'm talking days. It's like when Margaret and Cody got to playing billiards, or Zia got into that face-pulling contest with one of Sleepy Joe's kids.

  By the time dawn finally came around at the end of that first night, the witch knew she was in trouble, but it was too late to back out now. Not without forfeiting her prize. Like a cuckoo, she was too swollen with pride to allow herself to do that. Truth is, she had cuckoo blood somewhere back in her family tree. It's what made her a witch in the first place, gave her the finding gift and all.

  So by morning she was worrying, but that was like nothing as the days went by. Got to be where neither cuckoo blood nor witcheries could keep her awake anymore, and one cool evening her eyelids are so heavy she decides to let them close, just for a moment. Jack's in the middle of some confusing story about porridge, partridges and an otter with a wooden leg, and she figures he won't notice. She's right, too—or she would've been, if closing her eyes just for that moment didn't trick her body into thinking it could finally have some rest. She topples over, fast asleep, and the next thing you know, Jack's jumped across the fire and he's laying a blanket over her to warm her from the night chill.

  That wakes her up.

  "Damn you," she starts to say.

  But it's too late. He's already done the favor for her, turned her witcheries back on her, and quick as you can say hickety-split, he's got himself a little cuckoo bird wrapped up in that blanket. She'd have maybe fought a little harder against the folds of prickly wool, but the tiredness that was her undoing didn't go away with her becoming a bird. She struggles a few moments, then goes still, exhausted, and falls asleep.