But she didn't speak the words aloud. They'd only make Katy feel worse. Instead, she took Katy's hand and curled her sister's fingers around the crow pendant that dangled between them. Then she held her close, letting Katy cry.
She took her own comfort from having a sister she could still get to know. At least it wasn't too late for that.
7.
Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming
Cody sat by a small fire in the high lonesome, way past the tree line, so far up in the mountains that there was only the sky left to climb. It was a quiet night so he heard the footsteps from a long way off. Smelling the air, he knew he was meant to hear them because the person approaching his fire could be as silent as the nightfall when she wanted. He looked up but didn't speak as Margaret came into the firelight. She waited a moment, then lowered herself down onto a stone across the fire from him.
"How're you doing, Cody?" she asked.
He shrugged. "You're a long way from home, darling. Come to have yourself a laugh at how I screwed up again?"
She shook her head. "When're you going to understand that nobody's got a problem with you. You're the one with the chip on his shoulder and the only person who keeps stepping up to knock it off is your own self."
"You reckon?"
"I think that pretty much sums it up."
"Except you're forgetting something," Cody said. "You're forgetting all the people who get hurt in the process."
Margaret made no comment.
"Like that little granddaughter of Ray's," Cody went on. "What was I thinking?"
"What were you thinking?" Margaret asked.
"Damned if I know." He looked out over the lower ranges of mountains, then slowly returned his gaze to her face. "No, I know what I was thinking. I was thinking, if the world's going back to how it was in the first days, then it didn't matter if one little girl with some of our blood in her gave up her life to make it happen. I told myself I wasn't really sacrificing her. She was never going to have existed in the first place anyway—not if things had worked out the way I was thinking they would."
"That's hard," Margaret told him.
Cody gave a slow nod. "I can't even say that realizing how I was using her even changed my mind. That didn't come until I finally figured out what Dominique was really after. Once I knew she wasn't working on a return to the old days like I was, that she was only hungry for corbae blood, I couldn't be a part of it. We've had our differences, but even this old dog knows that the world doesn't turn without the firstborn in it."
They fell silent for a while. Looked at each other through the thin trail of smoke that rose from the fire. Listened to the crackle of the wood as it burned.
"Raven says you're not to blame," Margaret said finally. "Says you're just susceptible to things that move outside the world."
"And what kinds of things would those be, darling?"
Margaret shrugged. "Spirits, I guess. Whatever they are, Raven says they were around before him. Says they've got their own agenda. Usually they just leave us alone, but every once in a while they start in on scheming, make plans for us that we can never understand."
"Well, I sure don't understand."
Cody pulled a silver flask out of the inside pocket of his jacket and offered it to her.
"Sure," she said.
He poured a couple of fingers of whiskey into a tin mug and passed it over, then took a swig from the flask.
Margaret took a sip. "Did you hear about Jack?" she asked.
Cody gave a slow nod. "Word travels fast." He sighed. "Every time I get my hands on that damn pot I come away regretting what I've done, but I think maybe I regret this time the most."
"I was told he chose to go."
"There wouldn't have been a choice necessary, darling, if I hadn't been messing with things. I'm going to miss him."
"We'll all miss him."
"That story his daughter tells, about him and Nettie finally meeting up in the medicine lands. You think it's true?"
Margaret shrugged.
"Because I don't remember the medicine lands."
"No one does," she said. "Not even Raven."
"I didn't even think it was, you know, a place. Not really."
Margaret had another sip of whiskey.
"So what do you think, darling?" Cody asked. "Is that where we go when we die?"
Margaret looked up into the vault of stars that hung above them. "I'd like to think so."
"Yeah. Me, too."
He capped his flask and returned it to his pocket.
"Well, darling," he said. "I want to thank you for coming by and sharing your thoughts with me. But I'm guessing you've got places to go, people to meet."
Margaret set the tin mug down on the dirt by the fire.
"You just don't get it, do you?" she said. "You always want people to think the worst of you."
"What were you expecting from me?"
"Nothing I guess. I thought maybe we could travel awhile together, get to know each other. See if we couldn't leave some of these bad feelings in the past where they belong and make a few better ones."
Cody cocked his head. "Raven sent you to keep an eye on me, did he?"
Margaret regarded him for a long moment. Then she stood up.
"I see I'm wasting my time," she said.
As she started to walk away, Cody jumped up from where he was sitting. She stepped out of the firelight as he caught her arm. She shook his grip off. But what startled Cody was that she seemed genuinely sad.
"You really mean this, don't you?" he said. "You really just came along to say how-do and be friendly."
"It doesn't really matter anymore, does it?"
Cody gave her a long, penetrating look. "Damn right it matters. I'm just not that good at having people treat me kindly."
Margaret didn't move.
"What I'm trying to say, darling, is I'd be honored if you'd sit with me a spell, maybe walk down the road with me a ways. I could sure use the company. Hell, who knows? Maybe a corbae and a canid can be friends."
"There was never any reason that they couldn't."
Cody shrugged. "The only thing I ask is, if I start to get a yearning after that pot of Raven's again, you just give me a slap across the back of my head and knock some sense into me."
That got him a smile.
"You don't have to worry about Raven's pot," she said. "Way things worked out, it's not something to be used anymore. It's something to celebrate."
"So that part of the story's true, too?"
Margaret cocked her head as if to say, didn't he get it yet?
"That's what Raven figures it was all about, Cody," she said. "Keeping the Grace in this world. Maybe her light's not as strong as it once was, maybe the world's gotten darker since the first day, and it's still getting darker, but something's shining on. In you. In me. Everywhere you look, if you take the time to pay attention. So we've got two choices. We can let the darkness win, or we can celebrate the Grace and shine her light stronger."
Somewhere in the lonesome dark that Cody thought of as his heart, he felt an ember stir. Maybe it was only a glimmer of hope. Maybe it was the novel idea that loneliness didn't have to be his lot. Or maybe it was a flicker of the Grace's light that could be fanned into a brighter flame.
"You reckon?" he said.
Margaret gave him a light punch on the shoulder. "Yeah, I reckon. So what do you say, Cody?"
He stepped back and gave her that coyote grin of his.
"I feel like dancing, darling," he said.
"Dancing."
He held out his arms to her. "Like you said. Celebrating the light."
She looked at him for the space of a few drawn-out heartbeats and shook her head before she let him waltz her back into the firelight.
And long after the coals of Cody's fire had burned down to ash, they were dancing still.
###
AFTERWORD
There’s a question that authors get asked a lot, and no, I don’t m
ean, “Where do you get your ideas?” We do get asked that quite often, but the other common question is, “What’s your favourite of your own books?”
If your answer isn’t, "the one I'm writing right now," then you’re in trouble. Because why would you be working on it if it wasn’t the most interesting, utterly captivating book you could imagine?
But admittedly, we authors do also have favourites among our completed books and stories. For me, it’s usually one where I learned something in the writing of it, or did something different. Special affection for a work also comes if we fondly recall good circumstances in our lives when we were writing it.
Someplace to Be Flying is one of those books for me. It ticks the learned something box, the did something different box, and the good memories box.
Prior to this novel, the magical beings in my stories remained mysterious, for the most part. We encountered them through the eyes of humans, which is one of the best ways to evoke a sense of wonder since an firsthand encounter with magic changes everything in a character's life.
But the question I asked myself when I started this novel was, could I write some of this story from the point of view of the magical beings without losing, well, their magic and mystery. I wasn't sure it could work. I didn’t want the magical beings to be like human characters, but they still had to have enough touchstones that readers would identify with them.
I write my first drafts for myself. I use my own guage as to whether a story is working: If I stay engaged with the characters and their goings on—writing the book I’d like to read that no one else has written yet—then there’s a good chance readers will enjoy the experience as well.
I loved the process of writing Someplace to Be Flying. It just pulled me right through the whole story. But the ultimate test is the reaction of one's readers, and when finally the novel finally hit the bookstores, readers responded with enthusiasm far beyond my highest hopes and expectations. They sent countless letters and emails, and waxed enthusiastic about these magical characters—especially the crow girls—at book events and signings.
Earlier I spoke of circumstances or life experiences evoking affection for a particular book and one of my favourite memories links strongly to this one. MaryAnn and I were in Arizona staying with Terri Windling, exploring the gorgeous Sonoran desert just before I went out on a book tour for Someplace to Be Flying. In among our hikes and such, MaryAnn and Terri were coaching me on talking about the book since both of them know that I tend not to talk much about myself or my work (I know—how ridiculous is that when you’re going off to promote a book).
At one point we got into a discussion about a genre designation—because you always get asked what kind of a book it is. None of us felt that Someplace to Be Flying fit comfortably into any of the accepted genres at the time.
“We should just make our own genre,” Terri said, and that’s how the term mythic fiction came about. I honestly no longer recall which of us came up with it—probably Terri, because she's brilliant—but it’s still how I like to describe my books if I can’t simply use the broader term, fiction.
And another great thing happened after the book came out. My lifelong affection for corvids caught on and resonated across my readership.
I grew up in a rural area and got to observe the corvid family on a daily basis. They’re classified as songbirds and I've always found their raucous conversations fascinating.
Probably one of the most amazing things I observed as a teen was what’s known as a crow’s parliament: a huge circle of crows gathered in a field with a handful of birds in the center. It’s also referred to as a trial because, supposedly, the larger group of crows is holding court over the smaller one, its members having been accused of having committed some sort offense. The story goes that if these birds in the center are found guilty, they are killed by the larger court.
I didn’t witness any such violence, but I did watch for quite a while as various crows out of the hundreds in the circle spoke out. Very eerie. Almost as strange as one morning years later, when our entire yard and all the trees on our property were suddenly descended upon by what seemed like thousands of crows. MaryAnn and I had just flown home the night before from the World Fantasy Convention, where I'd won the World Fantasy Award. The crows were so loud and raucous that we went outside to investigate and only then noticed that they were just on our property. Not one had landed elsewhere. MaryAnn claimed that they were there to congratulate me. After making a wonderful racket for an hour or so, they all rose up in a cloud and flew away.
Most of you know that corvids are smart and endlessly watchable, but I realize that not everyone feels that way. Most of the time they’re depicted as evil in fiction or films, or as a portent of some upcoming tragedy. I really wanted to rectify that reputation in at least one book.
I wasn’t surprised that other corvid lovers had appreciated what I’d done. But I was surprised and delighted by how, in more emails and conversations than I can count, people have told me that they’d always disliked crows until reading Someplace to Be Flying, and now they’re as fascinated with them as I am.
And as I said above, I loved how readers took to the crow girls. Like a handful of other characters of mine, they came as a gift, fully-realized in my head as soon as it was time for them to step on stage. They’re sweet and silly, loyal to a fault, but with an underlying steel to their demeanor if you cross them or do something they consider to be morally wrong.
Over the years, many readers have shown up at events dressed as crow girls. Sometimes they don’t even have to dress up or change anything about themselves at all, and that’s all the more fun.
And it’s not only readers who have taken them to heart. My friend Andrew Vachss brings them up in his novel Pain Management, and I remember another compatriot, Joanne Harris, ruefully writing to me one day to tell me that as she corrected the page proofs for her novel Coastliners, she realized that she’d been channeling the crow girls for her two old nuns characters, and did I mind? I didn’t. I considered it a homage, similar to how Moth and his junkyard family in this book were a homage to Andrew’s work.
A last thought: As the original wild spirits, the crow girls probably don’t make good role models (for instance, just consider how much they like to help themselves to things that belong to others), but I’m delighted that so many of my readers, especially young women, have taken them to heart.
Because the crow girls care for each other. They don’t take crap from anybody. They live in the moment and pay attention to everything.
Now, that strikes me as behaviour that we should all embrace.
Ottawa, 2013
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to MaryAnn, Terri, Rodger, Andrew and Alice Vachss, Kiya, Amanda, Beth and Ginette for inspiration, guidance and crow stories.
Thanks and appreciation to these kind folks for permitting me to use their material:
Kiya Heartwood for the use of lines from her song "Wyoming Wind" from the album Singing with the Red Wolves by her band, Wishing Chair (Terrakin Records). Copyright © 1996 by Kiya Heartwood, Outlaw Hill Publishing. Lyrics reprinted by permission. www.kiyaheartwood.com
Ani DiFranco for the use of lines from "If He Tries Anything" from her album out of range. Copyright © 1994 by Ani DiFranco, Righteous Babe Music. Lyrics reprinted by permission.
www.righteousbabe.com
MaryAnn Harris for the use of lines from the title cut of her EP Crow Girls. Copyright © 1996 by MaryAnn Harris. Lyrics reprinted by permission.
www.sfsite.com/charlesdelint/music/crowgirls.htm
John Gorka for the use of lines from the title cut of his album Jack’s Crows. Copyright © 1991 by John Gorka, Blues Palace Music/ASCAP. Lyrics reprinted by permission.
www.johngorka.com
Chris Eckman for the use of lines from his song "The Light Will Stay On" from the Walkabouts album, Devil's Road, Virgin Schallplatten GmbH. Copyright © 1995 by Chris Eckman, Wolff Songs/EMI Publishing GMPH. Lyrics
reprinted by permission.
www.thewalkabouts.com
Thanks to Connie Walkley Shade and MaryAnn Harris for proofreading the ebook edition. If you noticed errors, I would appreciate hearing from you. My contact info is on my site.
www.charlesdelint.com
###
About the Author
Charles de Lint is a full-time writer and musician who makes his home in Ottawa, Canada. His many awards include the World Fantasy Award, the Canadian SF/Fantasy Aurora Award, and the White Pine Award, among others. Modern Library's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century poll (voted on by readers) put eight of de Lint's books among the top 100. With 37 novels and 18 collections of short fiction published to date, de Lint writes for adults, teens and children. His new middle grade book is The Cats of Tanglewood Forest, illustrated by Charles Vess (Little Brown, 2013). His most recent adult novel, The Mystery of Grace (Tor, 2009), is a fantastical ghost story and a heart-wrenching tale of love, passion and faith. His newest young adult novel is Over My Head (Triskell Press, 2013). His latest collection of short fiction is The Very Best of Charles de Lint (Tachyon Publications, 2010). For more information, visit his web site at http://www.charlesdelint.com.
You can also connect with him at:
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Someplace to Be Flying
First published by Tor Books, 1998. This Triskell Press edition published in 2013.
Someplace to Be Flying Page 52