"Perhaps Cynthia only made it recently."
"She's been dead since-" the old woman stopped in mid-sentence. "Yes, perhaps she did."
Csucskari matched his pace to what Madam Moria could keep up with, and said no more as he walked.
SOMETIME
Who can ever know your heart,
who will ever tell?
No one will believe, my friend,
All that you'll receive, my friend.
Before she locks you in your private Hell.
"THE FAIR LADY"
The Fair Lady wriggles Her toes and frowns. '"Well, " She says, "I can hardly blame you, 1 suppose." The woman-child stares with eyes like twin moons at the full. The Fair Lady thinks of a Wolf howling at the moon, and has to force Herself not to shudder. "A jackal followed the trail you left and thought you were his prey, the Raven drove the jackal off so Badger wouldn't slay. The Badger brought him to the Wolf who would not eat him down. So now the Raven leads them all until the Dove be found."
The woman-child, left arm held tight by the liderc, says nothing. The Fair Lady thinks she is as frightened as She has ever seen a mortal. "But at least we have you, now,and that should be bait for both Wolf and Raven, shouldn't it?"
The girl clutches something tightly in her right arm. The Fair Lady notices it for the first time, and says, "What is that?" Her voice doesn't tinkle or chime, now, it snaps,and carries a shock like plunging into ice-cold water. The girl starts to cry. "What is it?" repeats the Fair Lady, but the girl is too frightened to answer.
Screams from the little room, and the girl stops crying.Her eyes get bigger, if that is possible, and she looks that way. The Fair Lady smiles. "An old woman," She says,"who thought to thwart me. You won't make that mistake,will you?"
The girl trembles and shakes her head.
"Good. Now, what is that you're holding?"
It takes a long time for her to speak, and when she does,her voice is so small it is almost lost in the crackling of the fire. But she says, "His fiddle."
"His?" The Fair Lady frowns. "The Raven's?" And then She smiles. "You've brought me his fiddle? You've pulled his wings and brought them to me. There may be hope for you, girl."
The girl sobs.
"Give it to me, then, and you will not be punished. "
The girl sobs again and shakes her head.
"What?" cries the Fair Lady. "You think to defy me? Give me the fiddle!" There is another scream from the next room.
The girl sobs once more, clutches the fiddle tightly, and,again, shakes her head.
The Fair Lady's eyes are cold as ice, cold as snow, cold as the space between Her world and ours, cold as the heart of the midwife. She speaks to the liderc. "Take her away and bring her back when she's changed her mind."
They open the door to where the old woman is crying out from the pain of the hot coals the nora is pressing to the bottoms of her feet. The girl sees this and stumbles, almost falls, and her tears flow now in rivers.
"Well," demands the Fair Lady. "Will you give me what I want?"
But she shakes her head once more. The fair lady scowls and nods to the liderc, who pushes the girl into the room and closes the door. The Fair Lady stares into the fire, thinking.
17 NOV 01:48
I can't hear the fiddles when you hum.
I can't see where the raven flies,
I can't hear the rhythm for the drum.
And I can't see the forest for your eyes.
"GYPSY DANCE"
Ed set down the receiver. "No luck. Guy at the rooming house says your Coachman hasn't come back. Bitched at me about the rent being overdue, too." He flung himself down in a saggy overstuffed chair and looked up at the ceiling.
"Where else does he hang out?" Durand demanded of Daniel, who was sitting beside him on the couch. Durand balanced a mug of coffee on his knee. Daniel held his with both hands, as if to still their shaking. They looked, Stepovich, thought, more like college buddies than a cop questioning a suspect. Stepovich took a sip of coffee, settled his shoulders against the door jamb again. "Bars?" Durand suggested. "Does he have a favorite? Is there a woman, a friend he'd go to?Where would he go?" Stepovich and Ed exchanged glances. Durand was pushing Daniel to answer before he'd had a chance to think.
Daniel shrugged wearily. "I don't know, I told you,I've only been here a short time. I haven't been living in his pocket."
"I saw blood in that carriage," Stepovich said suddenly. "Madam Moria didn't look hurt. Neither did the Coachman, but he might be able to take a bullet and not let it show for a while. So think about this;kid: If he was hurt, maybe bad, where would he go?"
"We could try phoning hospitals," Ed suggested."It's tedious, but it's paid off before."
"If we have to," Stepovich shrugged. "But let's have the kid think on it, first."
Daniel was trying. The strain showed in his face."With this Madam Moria, perhaps?" he suggested.His shoulders sagged suddenly. "I'm only guessing," he admitted wearily.
Stepovich fought back a yawn. "It's worth checking."
"Let's phone," said Durand,
Ed just looked at him. Stepovich said, "If she says he's there, we have to go get him. If she says he's not there, we still have to check. And we don't want to warn him, anyway."
"In the morning?" Ed suggested.
"Now," Stepovich and Daniel said in unison. Stepovich wondered if the gypsy lad felt the same strange urgency he did about this. Restlessness was running down his back with cold rat feet. He had that prickly feeling that something was happening, right now-something he should be in on. He caught his jacket up from the back of the chair, slung it on impatiently. Ed went to the door, jingling his keys. Durand came to his feet, stretching. Daniel rose, swayed slightly, squinting his eyes against pain or dizziness, but when Durand reached a hand to steady him, he waved it away. Tougher than he looked.
Ed drove, with Stepovich up front beside him.Daniel and Durand were in the back. Stepovich sat sideways on the seat; he couldn't quite trust his back to the gypsy. Not yet. He'd been good to Laurie, all right. But that didn't mean he was a good guy, not completely. Durand smothered another monstrous yawn. The kid was tired.
"Tell me why we got to find this Coachman guy tonight?" Durand complained rhetorically.
But Daniel took the question seriously. "There were three of us," he said, in the voice of a tale told many times. "The Owl, the Dove, and I."
"The Raven," Stepovich said, unaware of speaking aloud.
"Yes."
Durand was sitting forward, his lantern jaw slightly ajar, and Stepovich was aware of Ed listening as only Ed could, with every pore of his body as he let the big car drift down the road.
"We were brothers," but Csucskari, the youngest,he was a Taltos. He didn't eat, and he didn't drink, and he never felt the heat or the cold, and the animals would speak to him, and trolls feared him, and he fought dragons, while we followed him.
"And the Coachman was the one who sent us here,who brought us from a tale to a place where tales are told, because that was ever the Coachman's power. Why did he send us? Why did we go? Because of the Fair Lady, who had crossed the bounds of Her world; The Fair Lady, who brings the diseases that waste the body, who brings the sickness that rots the soul. She is in this world now, having Her way here.
"Owl said that She had left our world, and I tracked Her to this one, but it was the Coachman who brought us here, and the Coachman who can take us back,when our task is done. We each do our part-everyone who conquers his fear and greed long enough to repair some of the rot does his part. But the Dove,Csucskari, is the only one who can drive Her away."
He sighed. "For that, he needs us, the Owl and I. We didn't know this, at first. Csucskari came to this world alone, and with every step he took he lost apart of himself, until at last he was wandering, alone,not knowing who or what he was or what he had to do. Years later, my brother and I tried to follow him. We found his trail in France before the Great War,and in New Orleans after it, a
nd here and there since then, but at last, hopeless, we quarreled and went our own ways.
"Now the call has come. The Coachman was bringing us together, but the Fair Lady struck first. I don't know what She has done to the others, but to me She sent a woman whose kiss was to be my death. And it would have been if-"
He stopped. Stepovich stared at him, waiting.
He shrugged. "But I was lucky enough to be hit on the head by the wrong man, so the right man changed his mind."
In the darkness of the car, their eyes met and locked. A dozen possible comments rattled through Stepovich's mind. He could snort and say, "Fairy tale!" He could remind him that Laurie was no woman, but only a little girl playing dress up. He could lean back and whisper that the "right" man hadn't had a chance at him yet.
But any of those would be- pretense. Because he believed Daniel, fairy tale and all. This gypsy was telling the truth. Stepovich could feel Ed reading that conclusion from his own body language, and accepting it as Ed had often accepted Stepovich's other hunches. And Durand was watching them stare at each other, with no idea of what was passing between them. Just like when he'd told Durand, however long ago it was, that the Gypsy with the scarred face wasn't the man they wanted, even if he did match the description.
So to the gypsy he said nothing, and to Durand he gave only a "wait and see" nod to keep the kid steady. Durand returned it, a barely perceptible movement.
"So," Daniel continued, as if he had not paused at all, "There are three of us, my brothers and I, and there are three of you. And as the Coachman has brought us three here, he will see us all three home. And as for you…" Daniel paused. "I will tell you how it was, for the Owl and me. Csucskari was gone. It is hard for me to describe for you what that means. Without him," Daniel paused, struggled for a smile. "Try to weave with no warp or woof, or to paint a picture without canvas to hold the colors, to, to…"
"To shoot with no target," Stepovich filled in softly.
"Yes. To live with your own purpose hidden from you. Your actions without form, no pattern or effort to what you do. We are one with our brother, a part of his tale. When he was gone, we were lost, though we traveled still with our kin over paths we knew well, and stood together upon the road, with the fires and the laughter of our kumpania at our backs. And there came a coach, such as we had not seen in many a year, drawn by horses such as no longer stir the dust of any road. And high on the box was the Coachman, with his fine cloak and coiled whip. And he halted his horses, and to each of us he said, "I offer a ride and I offer it but once. Whither away lies the dream of your soul?" And our bellies dreamed of rich food and potent wine, and our loins of beautiful women and the wealth of children they could bear us, and our ears were full of the music of days we had thought lost so long ago. But our hearts spoke first, and loudest, crying out, "Only put us upon the road our brother has taken and we will be content."And the Coachman's smile faded, and he said, "For good or ill, you have chosen," and the door opened to us and we entered the coach. And this place of yours is where he brought us, many and many a year ago."
Daniel paused. The Caddy was idling at a stop light. The bright headlights of a turning car washed through the interior, illuminating each of them in turn. "Suppose he comes to you?" Daniel said softly. "Suppose he ways, 'I offer a ride, and I offer it but once' What will you answer? Think well on it, while you have time."
Daniel fell silent. Stepovich watched Ed look at his hands on the wheel and flex them, perhaps seeing the small age spots, the way the tendons stood out, an old man's hands, and here he was still driving the same streets he'd driven for all his years as a cop.He'd always told Stepovich that some day he'd seethe rest of the country. But was it the dream of his soul, or only the consolation of a life that, despite danger and action, had always seemed limited by his love for this stupid miserable city he'd grown up in?
He looked at Durand, who twitched and flexed and felt his untried strength hanging on him like a suit of clothes too big, perhaps wondering if and when he'd prove himself, and if he'd die young like his dad.Perhaps he felt unfinished, untried. Or maybe he wanted power; maybe he dreamed of becoming a captain, or a commander, and laying down the rules that were so important to him.
But Stepovich thought only of one moment in time,one brief instant when he could have simply said,"I'm sorry. I didn't meant to hurt you." And he could have stayed, and listened to her yell, and then held her as she cried, and then made love to her to mend their quarrel, one more time, one more effort at making it work, instead of walking out and taking the car and going to the motel, never knowing that he'd already had the last night he'd ever spend in a bed holding her while she slept, never knowing that his heart's desire would someday be to have that one moment back to do over.
The Caddy rolled on, full of silence and dreams,through streets blacker than nightmare. Slowly, one at a time, Ed rolled his shoulders and shook his head; and Durand cracked his knuckles and twitched his jaw; Stepovich wondered what they had been thinking of as each came back to himself.
"The Coachman," Stepovich prodded lightly."He likes his liquor," Daniel said quietly, "The good stuff when he has money, but anything the rest of the time. There are horses in his life, always, and those are the tales he tells when he drinks, of fine-blooded horses full of spirit and strength, as another man might speak of wealthy highborn women he had bedded. Look for him where there are horses-liveries,riding stables, breeding farms, race tracks. And he likes to drive. He will work as a chauffeur, or even a taxi driver if he can find nothing better. But if there is a place where he can sit high and hold the reins in his own hands, then we should look there first."
Stepovich looked at Ed, who shrugged. The Caddy rolled on quiet as the wings of an owl through the night, through the night.
SOMETIME
I touch your hand. your brow, your lip;
Hidden by the green,
Emerging to a weeping bush
And laughing tambourine.
"GYPSY DANCE"
Even after the thing tormenting the old women left, Laurie couldn't stop shaking. Her breath kept making a gulping, hiccuping noise in her throat. "This isn't real," she whispered aloud, and then, wailing, "This isn't real, none of this is real, please. God, tell me this isn't real."
The woman was very old, and her skin was a terrible color, as if someone had let all the blood out from under her once olive skin, and replaced it with milk. A skim milk in cold coffee color. She drew her skinny old legs and ruined feet up under her long skirts then felt about herself absentmindedly, as if looking for something. "None of this is real," she agreed in her cracked old voice. "And that's the worst part of it, you know. Real things end, somewhere,sometime."
"It'll end," Laurie whispered, unable to get enough air for real words. "It'll end when they kill us."
"I'm sorry, my dear," the old woman said slowly."But you're so very wrong. Why, for me. it didn't even begin until I was dead." The old woman casually examined her feet. The burns on them were black places, not red, nor swollen, nor bleeding. Black, as if the coals had been held to a wooden statue or a china doll.
"If you're dead, how can they keep hurting you?"Laurie wailed. Already she was seeing it happen to her. She clutched the fiddle case as if by holding it tightly she could hold herself together as well.
"They can do almost anything to me," said the old woman. She looked around the room, a sly look creeping over her face as she did so. "Almost anything they can do to me. But they must keep me here. And while they keep me here, there is much I can do to them." Once more she looked around carefully."Come here, child." she said.
Laurie's legs quaked under her as she crossed the room. The closer she got, the more she knew the old woman was dead. There wasn't an odor, but there was something she smelled with her skin, not her nose; when Laurie finally crouched down beside her,she knew that, while the old woman was dead, this was not her dead body. Rather it was as if the old woman was inside a mannequin, cunning as any trap.A body
the Fair Lady had fashioned-one She could hurt endlessly. Laurie shivered.
The old woman looked at her shrewdly. "You've the Eye to you, then. It seldom comes to much, in one such as you, but it's a help to us here. It's probably what She didn't see about you at first, probably what drew the Raven closer to you than She'd planned. Yes, hug his fiddle tight, for it's all that stands between you and Her. Or, maybe not. Open the case, girl. Let's see what he's left in there for us."
Laurie hesitated, then set the case on her lap and unlatched each fastener. The case was lined with some deep green fabric, not felt, not velvet, not like anything Laurie had ever seen inside an instrument case. The bow was secured in its holder, and a storage box supported the neck of the fiddle and held it firmly in place. The old woman tapped the box wit hone arthritic finger. "In there," she whispered."Where he keeps his odds and sods. Look in there."
Laurie lifted out the fiddle and leaned it against her shoulder. The storage box had a tiny catch on it. She worked it and then eased back the lid. Inside was a worn cube of rosin, showing infinite tracks of bowstrings; white paper packets that held spare strings;smudged papers, folded up small, with musical notes on them like bird tracks; a button off a shirt; and a brush like a makeup brush. "What else, is that all? It can't be all. Look again, girl!"
"There's some lint. And a feather."
"Ah!" the old woman exclaimed with satisfaction."Pass me that here." She took the small black feather from Laurie's shaking fingers, whetted it once, twice,thrice across the amber rosin. She smiled an old smile."Now answer me a riddle, if you can. Why is the fiddler's music like the count's coach?"
Laurie stared at her. She'd stopped shaking. She was numb with terror now, still in the grasp of hopelessness.
The old woman smiled again, a hard smile. "You don't know, child? Why, they're both drawn forth by horses." She ran the edge of the rosin ed feather down the horse hair strings of the fiddle's bow. It made a breath of sound softer than a baby's whisper. "The right touch," she murmured to Laurie, "can draw them forth together." She handed the bow to Laurie and said, "Play now."
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