by Tanya Huff
Rebecca nodded, pulled an old phone out from under the sofa, and plugged it into the jack. “I don’t like the noise when it rings,” she explained to Roland’s raised eyebrows. “I unplug it and it doesn’t.”
He could see a strip of white adhesive tape along the back of the receiver, the numbers printed on it visible from across the room. Darn’s number, he assumed and Rebecca did seem to be dialing it. Hooking a chair with one foot, he pulled it under himself, sat, and reached for the clasps on his guitar case. He always thought better when he was playing. Without his willing it, his fingers slipped into “Red River Valley,” the first recognizable piece of music he’d ever learned. From this valley they say you are going … He watched Rebecca on the phone and wondered why that was the only line he could remember.
Rebecca frowned, took a deep breath, and began speaking in a high, tight voice. “My name is Rebecca Partridge and it’s Saturday night and his name was Alexander and he lied to me, but then he died. We still have the knife, but we don’t know what to do, so please tell us.” She paused, wet her lips, and added, “Thank you.” Then she hung up.
“Answering machine?” Roland guessed.
“Un-huh.” She unplugged the phone and shoved it back under the couch.
“What if Daru calls?”
“She won’t be back all weekend. The machine said so. What do we do now, Roland?”
A very good question, Roland thought, picking out a minor scale. They couldn’t exactly report the death to the police, not without a body. Come to think of it, reporting this death, even with a body might not be such a good idea. He marveled at how calmly he was taking this—“this” including having his entire world view overtuned—and decided a major case of hysteria was on the shelf until the time was right. “I guess we wait for Daru to call.”
“But I want to do something now,” Rebecca protested. “Alexander was my friend and someone killed him.”
… and someone killed him …
Roland’s brain made the final connection; the little man didn’t just die, he’d been killed, murdered, offed, terminated with extreme prejudice. With an effort, Roland got a grip on his thought processes. “I guess we should find out who did it.” But how?
As if she’d been following his line of reasoning, Rebecca stood and said, “We’ll go see Mrs. Ruth. She’ll know. She knows everything.”
“Then why didn’t you go to her first?” Roland asked, putting his guitar away.
“’Cause she wouldn’t have come back with me and Alexander wasn’t dead then.”
“Well,” Roland stood and stretched the kinks out of his back, “if Mrs. Ruth knows everything, by all means, let us go to Mrs. Ruth. We’d better take the knife. It’s our only clue.” Even playing private investigator beat staying here with that accusatory stain on the bed. If Mrs. Ruth had answers, he was all for her. So far the night had been made up too entirely of questions. He checked his watch. It wasn’t quite ten o’clock.
Rebecca got a flowered towel from her tiny bathroom and managed to wrap the knife without touching it. “Are you taking your guitar?” she asked, dropping the bundle into her red bag.
“Where I go, it goes. Can your cat go out?”
“He’s not my cat,” Rebecca told him, getting a bowl of red pistachio nuts out of the cupboard and putting it on the table. “He’s his own cat.”
Tom ignored them both and sat staring at the door. When it was opened, he squeezed out and padded away on business of his own.
“Good-bye to bad news,” Roland muttered after him and stepped aside to let Rebecca lock up.
The walk to Bloor Street and Mrs. Ruth was an eye-opener for Roland in more ways than one. Rebecca led him through quiet residential neighborhoods that he’d never suspected existed so close to the noisy heart of the city. And Rebecca spoke to creatures he’d never suspected existed—period. The trees and shrubs along the way were home to more than squirrels and the red and golden eyes peering up through sewer grates did not belong to rats and cockroaches.
He ducked the clutching hands of something vaguely human perched on the lowest branch of a crab apple tree overhanging the sidewalk. “Where did all these things come from?” he wondered, staring at the creatures who were not moths fluttering around a streetlight.
“The littles? They’ve always been here.”
“Oh, yeah? Then why haven’t I ever seen them?”
Rebecca considered it for a moment. “Have you ever looked?” she asked.
“Looked?” He waved a hand at the shadows. “Why would I look for things I don’t believe in.”
“Then that’s why you never saw them.”
“But I see them now.”
She smiled. “Now you’re looking.”
“No I’m not, I …” After the undeniable reality of the dead little man, how could he help but look? How could he help but believe? “I … What the hell is causing that?” He pointed to where a larger than average front lawn undulated up and down, up and down, like some sort of turf-covered waterbed.
Rebecca stopped and studied it, head to one side, squinting a little in the uncertain light. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “Should we find out?”
“No!” Grabbing her arm, he pulled her quickly along. “I don’t think we should find out. I don’t think we should have anything to do with it.” He hung on until the disturbance was two blocks and a corner behind them, and then he let her go. She had a funny expression on her face and Roland hoped she wasn’t angry.
“Penny for your thoughts?” he asked gently.
“Okay.”
He waited.
“You offered me a penny,” she pointed out.
“That’s just a … oh, never mind.” He pulled a handful of change out of his pants’ pocket, separated a penny, and placed it in her hand. It seemed easier than explaining.
“I was just thinking that we haven’t seen a little since that lawn moved.”
Roland took her arm again. “Is that bad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Right.” He picked up their pace. “How much farther to this Mrs. Ruth?”
“Not far. We’re almost at Spadina. See?”
She pointed and Roland could, indeed, see the busy thoroughfare at the end of the quiet little street they traveled and he got the impression as they moved out into the light and the noise that they were stepping out into another world.
At least these dangers I understand. He herded Rebecca out to the road, then had to pull her from the path of a speeding truck.
“Rebecca? Oh, damn …” The girl’s eyes were wide, whites showing all around the irises, and her head whipped back and forth so quickly he was afraid she’d dislocate it. A car, swerved to miss them and she froze, her hand closing about his arm.
“Jesus!” His arm felt like it had been caught in a vise. “Rebecca, let go!” He couldn’t shake free of her. The Spadina bus went by and she wailed, a high-pitched keen that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “Rebecca! I won’t let anything happen to you, but we’ve got to get across the street.” He began to drag her forward; if he couldn’t get her to let go, he might as well get some use out of that deadly grip.
Spadina would have to be four fucking lanes wide, he thought when they at last reached the opposite curb. His arm, below the tourniquet of her hand, was starting to go numb.
She didn’t begin to calm until he got her a little way down the dark side street. Sagging against a tree, she released his arm and the wild look went out of her eyes.
“What do you do when you’re alone?” he asked, watching the marks left by her fingers turn from white to red. If she went that crazy crossing a street, how could this Daru person let her wander about?
“I go down to the stop lights …”
Roland dimly remembered a set of lights a block south of where they’d crossed.
“… and I cross on the green. I never try to race the yellow. Then I walk back to this street on the sidewalk.” She star
Her panic, he realized suddenly, had been partially about the speeding cars and partially about breaking what she perceived as the rules. This bothered him the same way the lists back in the apartment had. Rebecca lived a very fettered life although, he had to admit, probably a safe one if she always crossed on the green. Safer than his own, anyway.
“Are you ready to go on?”
Rebecca nodded. “We’re really close,” she said as she straightened. “Just down here and then turn and go to Bloor.”
“Can’t we stay out where it’s light?” Spadina would get them to Bloor just as easily.
Out on Spadina, two Jeeps and a BMW roared by and Rebecca winced, her expression speaking her preference very strongly.
“It’s okay,” Roland patted her shoulder, “we’ll go your way.”
Her smile made it worth the risk. He looked down the street to where the great bulks of chestnut trees seemed to soak up the streetlights. Almost.
The traffic sounds faded quickly as they walked and the silence grew. Roland began to get a very good idea of why the phrase, “It’s too quiet,” had become a cliché of old horror movies. Even the noise of his guitar case brushing against his jeans was curiously muted. The lit windows of the houses they passed seemed farther from the sidewalk than he knew they could possibly be. They saw no littles and, by now, Roland was definitely looking. He could feel sweat soaking into his T-shirt and it had nothing to do with the heat.
Rebecca pressed up against his side, her expression more wary than frightened.
“Don’t worry, kiddo,” he said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone, “it’s only …”
And then the lawn they were passing attacked them.
Except it wasn’t a lawn anymore. Roughly humanoid, it swatted Roland aside with one massive arm and lunged for Rebecca.
She stood her ground, the red bag holding the dagger clutched tightly under her elbow.
The thing touched her, jerked back, and crumbled formless to the ground; a harmless pile of man-shaped earth.
Roland scrubbed dirt out of his eyes and stood. He’d scraped an elbow raw hitting the pavement, but other than that and a bruise or two he wasn’t hurt.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded, his voice rising in a nervous shriek.
“A nasty thought,” Rebecca said seriously. She looked him over, nodded, knelt, and began to shovel handfuls of dirt off the sidewalk and back where it belonged.
“Say what?” He detected a distinct note of panic and forced himself to calm down. After all, no one had been hurt. By a lawn. Attacking. “I don’t think I want any more to do with all this,” he murmured, though he suspected it was far too late—that it had been too late when he’d let Rebecca drag him off.
“A nasty thought,” Rebecca repeated, continuing to lift double handfuls of dirt off the concrete.
“Right.” He checked his guitar case, thankful now that he’d spent the extra money on a good one. “What was it doing?”
Rebecca frowned. “I don’t know. But Mrs. Ruth will.
“Then let’s go see her, shall we?” His voice still sounded strained. He marveled that someone who couldn’t cross a street without falling into little pieces could take something like this so completely in her stride.
“In a minute.” She brushed the remaining soil into a pile and placed it carefully back on the ruin of the lawn. The little space for growing things left in the city needed to be taken care of. Frowning, she righted a small piece of sod. Only a very nasty thought would rip grass out of its home. “Maybe we should tell the person who lives here about this. So he can replant things.”
“Uh, no.”
“No?” She stood, wiping her hands on her jeans.
“No. He wouldn’t believe us. He’d think we did it.”
“But I’d never do something like that.”
Even in the darkness, Roland could see how hurt she looked. “I know, kiddo.” He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “How about we keep going? It’s getting late and we don’t want to catch Mrs. Ruth in bed.”
“We won’t.” Rebecca sighed and began walking again. “He really wouldn’t believe me?”
“No.” Roland rubbed his chest where he suspected bruises were rising to join the mark of Rebecca’s hand on his arm. Believing in something, he was forced to conclude, had nothing to do with its reality.
It turned out Rebecca had good reason to be so certain they wouldn’t catch Mrs. Ruth in bed; she didn’t have a bed. Mrs. Ruth lived under the lilacs at Trinity United Church.
What now? Roland wondered, as Rebecca beckoned him into a leafy tunnel. Then he shrugged and dropped to his knees, crawling past two heavily laden bundle buggies, sliding his guitar case along the grass. Well, it isn’t Delphi, but it is centrally located.
One of the exterior church lights shone directly above the small triangular area between the lilacs and the building, making it the best lit place Roland had been in since they’d left Rebecca’s apartment. That was about all it had going for it as it stank of urine and unwashed bodies. Roland breathed shallowly through his mouth, and got only as close as necessity dictated to Mrs. Ruth, who sat with her back against the limestone of the church.
A bag lady oracle. Why not? He hoped his expression remained noncommittal. It’s no weirder than anything else that’s happened tonight. In fact, it’s considerably less weird than being attacked by a lawn.
Mrs. Ruth appeared to be in her late forties or early fifties although Roland knew she could be younger; life on the streets tended to strip youth away in record time. The stringy hair that escaped from under her red kerchief was about fifty/fifty brown and gray and her eyes were a washed out hazel between pink lids. Rolls of fat kept her face from wrinkles and she had almost no eyebrows. In spite of the heat, her round little body hid beneath layers and layers of grimy clothing.
“So? So?” Her accent hovered somewhere in Eastern Europe. “What is it this time that you bother an old lady, bringing strangers to her home?”
“This isn’t strangers, Mrs. Ruth,” Rebecca told her earnestly. “This is Roland.”
“Roland?” Her brow furrowed and she dropped the accent. “Oh, yeah, the Bard.”
“Musician,” Roland corrected.
“Look, bubba,” her washed out old eyes focused on him and he had the strangest impression of being transparent, “you want my advice or not?”
“Well, yeah, I guess …”
“Then you can stop contradicting everything I say.” She pointed a grimy finger at him. “I say you’re a Bard, you’re a Bard. I say you’re a wienie, you’re a wienie. And,” she added, “I strongly suspect you’re a wienie.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Ruth, he isn’t. He Sees.”
Mrs. Ruth sighed, her breath smelling of mint gum. “You’re not listening again, Rebecca. I just said he was a Bard and all Bards have the Sight, so he must. Q.E.D., whatever that means. Now then, get to the point, why are you here? Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but I have things to do.”
Probably missing the midnight madness sale at the local dumpster, Roland speculated as Rebecca opened her bag and dumped the rolled towel out on the grass. Carefully she flipped back the ends, shaking her head sadly at the bloodstains on the cloth.
Mrs. Ruth sucked breath through yellow teeth. “Where did you find that?”
“In Alexander.”
“Who is?”
“Was. He was the little man in the tree outside my apartment building. Someone killed him.”
“And you think I know who did it?”
“Do you?” asked Roland.
“Sort of. It’s a long story.” She reached out, snapped off a dead branch, and poked at the dagger with it. “This weapon belongs to an Adept of the Dark Court.” Her mouth twisted into something close to a smile. “Should I start at the beginning?”
“Please,” Rebecca said. And Roland found himself nodding.
“Our world is a neutral area, a sort of buffer zone, between the Dark Court and the Light. Back in the bright beginning, creatures from both Courts wandered freely through it, fighting when they met. When life indigenous to the area developed, barriers were raised around it in order to give that life a chance to grow without interference.” Mrs. Ruth snorted. “Both Dark and Light, by their nature, love to interfere. Only the gray folk, the creatures with no alliance to either court were permitted to pass back and forth through the barriers at will.
“Unfortunately, both the Dark and Light still want in, seeking to use our world to strengthen themselves. The Dark chips away at the barriers and slips nasty bits through …”
“A nasty thought attacked us,” Rebecca interrupted, “on our way here.”
Mrs. Ruth tapped the knife. “This attracts them. How did it attack?”
“It made a body out of dirt.”
“Dirt?” She, snorted again. “Stupid.”
“Wait a minute,” Roland protested. “Do you mean to tell me we were actually attacked by a nasty thought wrapped in dirt?“
Mrs. Ruth shrugged. “You tell me. You were there.”
“Well, it … I mean, I …”
“Look, bubba, let’s just say you were attacked by a bit of unformed Darkness and leave it at that. Okay? Now,” she looked pointedly at him, “if there are no further stupid questions, I’ll go on. The Dark slithers in when and where it can, but the Light waits to be invited. Actually,” her expression softened, “you’d be surprised by the number of people who ask for a little bit of Light to enter their lives. The balance stays pretty even. The Light gains strength by conversion, free choice being part of its nature. The Dark couldn’t care less how it builds followers and finds terror the easiest tool.
“A dagger of this kind,” Mrs. Ruth glared down at it, “can only be wielded by an Adept of the Dark Court. Obviously, an Adept of the Dark Court has come through.”
“Can they do that?” Roland asked.
“Listen up, bubba,” Mrs. Ruth advised, “I just said they did.” She rubbed her chin, leaving a smear of dirt on the sweaty skin, and frowned. “Of course, it takes a lot of power and the Dark isn’t known for doing things without a reason, so it’s my guess that something big is coming down.”
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