by Tanya Huff
“Something big?”
“Something that’ll let them recoup the power they lost and then some. Something that the death of your little friend was just the barest beginning of. Or to put it bluntly, you’ve got a whole heap of shit to deal with.”
“Deal with?” Roland groaned.
“Deal with … Ignore …” Mrs. Ruth shrugged. “Your choice. You can always let the world and every living soul on it plummet down into eternal Darkness. Let anger and fear and uncaring rule. Don’t get involved.”
Rebecca turned to him, eyes wide, and he saw again the little man bleeding out the last of his life on her bed. Saw the headlines in the newspapers he’d stopped reading because war and pain and hunger held no thrills for him. Sighed. “Why me?”
“Beats me, bubba. You wouldn’t be my first choice.”
“What do we do?” Rebecca wanted to know, leaning forward eagerly.
“You start by asking for help. This whole mess has knocked the balance of Dark and Light enough out of kilter that an equivalent Adept of the Light should be able to get through the barriers if invited.”
An Adept of the Light? Roland repeated to himself. Oh, wonderful, more weirdness. “Why do we need help?”
A cracked, yellow nail tapped on the towel just beside the dagger’s blade. “You know how to deal with this?
“No,” he admitted.
“Then call someone who can.”
“Call someone? Right. I suppose they’re in the book?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Ruth told him, “they’re in The Book.” The capital letters were very apparent in her voice. “But you’ll never get your hands on a copy. Use the gray folk. Have them carry a message.”
“But Alexander was the only little I actually spent time with,” Rebecca protested. She paused. “Except the troll, but he never travels. And you know how long it takes before a little trusts you.”
Mrs. Ruth sighed and patted Rebecca’s knee. “No, I don’t. I’ve never heard of a gray one trusting anyone but you. As you’ve no time now to make new friends, I suggest you send a message with the dead.”
To Roland’s surprise, Rebecca nodded thoughtfully and said, “I could do that.”
He poked her shoulder. “With the dead?”
“Uh-huh.” She smiled. “I know a ghost.”
“Great.” He began to back out of the bushes. “I guess that’s it, then.” Trouble was, he had no trouble at all believing Rebecca did, indeed, know a ghost.
“I wouldn’t worry about ghosts, bubba,” Mrs. Ruth chuckled, correctly interpreting the expression on his face. “If they’re the worst you have to deal with before this is over, you’re luckier than you deserve to be.”
“Oh, that’s really bloody encouraging,” Roland muttered, not caring if the old lady heard.
Rebecca scooped up the dagger with the towel and stuffed it back in her bag. “We’d better keep this. We can give it to the Light when he comes.”
“Couldn’t we …” Roland began.
“A very good idea,” Mrs. Ruth interrupted him sternly.
Rebecca beamed and began to follow Roland out. “Sometimes I have one.”
Free of the bushes, Roland straightened and took a deep breath. Even the car fumes that lay over Bloor Street like a blanket were an improvement. He figured he’d carry Mrs. Ruth’s distinctive perfume with him for the rest of the night.
“Hey, Bard!” Her red kerchief was a splash of contrast amidst the dark green leaves. “Two things!”
He turned.
“First, don’t get cocky. You’ve barely finished your first fourteen years. You’re still in training.”
He waited and wondered if the second thing would make as little sense.
“Second, you got a buck for a cup of coffee?”
Chapter Three
Walking back the way they’d come, down dark, tree-lined residential streets which now seemed threatening rather than quiet, Roland considered the nature of good and evil. He’d never really thought much about the subject before but then he’d never had a night like this before. Somehow, the mythic tale of Light and Dark made sense coming from Mrs. Ruth. The bag lady—like Rebecca, he realized—was just too real to doubt. And about Light and Dark once roaming the world? Well, it made as much sense as any other creation myth. Mrs. Ruth hadn’t said at what speed indigenous life developed, so that took care of Darwin and—Rebecca’s bag bumped against his thigh and he could feel the weight of the black dagger—some pretty solid evidence seemed to be piling up on her side.
Spotting the dark on dark shadows of the destroyed lawn, he took hold of Rebecca’s arm and tried to steer her out onto the empty road.
“But, Roland,” she twisted free, “walking on the road is dangerous!”
“So is being attacked by landscaping,” he pointed out.
“But the nasty thought has left.” Rebecca turned slowly about, scanning the neighborhood. “I think.”
“Let’s not take any chances, okay?” She looked unconvinced, so he added, “Too much depends on us.”
“Oh.” She thought about it for a moment. “We could go back to the corner and cross?”
“Yeah, fine.” They could go back to Bloor Street and take the subway for all he cared, he just had no intention of passing that lawn. “You lead, I’ll follow.”
And that, he added to himself, about sums it up. He didn’t really need to believe any of this. He’d deal with it the way he’d dealt with almost everything else life had thrown at him over the years—by not dealing with it at all, letting it carry him willy-nilly where it would. He doubted he’d even get around to having the hysterics any normal person would feel entitled to. Someday, he thought as Rebecca turned them south, I’ve got to develop a backbone.
A wild and overgrown rosebush reached past the fence intended to confine it, hooked into the shoulder of Roland’s T-shirt, and hung on. He tugged, it stuck.
“Wait a sec, Rebecca, I don’t want to tear …” He turned his head and came face to face with a tiny little person, sexless as far as he could tell, clinging to his T-shirt with both miniature hands, its green-brown legs wrapped around the branch of the bush. It grinned maliciously at him as he tried to twitch free. The rose bush whipped back and forth, but the creature lost neither hold.
Rebecca peered up at it. “You let go right now,” she commanded.
It stuck out a surprisingly pink tongue.
“This man is a Bard,” she warned, “and if you don’t let go, he’ll write a song about what you do with bugs.”
The creature looked indignant and let go. Its fingers, Roland saw, ended in claws almost as long again as the fingers themselves. One of those fingers snapped up in a rude gesture, then it scampered down the branch and out of sight.
“What does it do with bugs?” Roland asked as they walked on.
“I don’t know.” Rebecca shrugged, then stared at him very seriously. “You mustn’t let the littles get away with things, ‘cause the more things they get away with, the more things they do. Pretty soon you wouldn’t have any quiet. None at all.”
Roland had a sudden vision of his apartment crawling with tiny little men and women, each with tiny little brains, and tiny little opposable thumbs. And I thought roaches were a problem….
They came out on Harbord Street, a block from Spadina, and headed for the lights.
“Rebecca, where are we going?”
“To see the ghost.”
“No, I mean where in the city.”
“Oh.” She took a deep breath and pronounced each syllable carefully, her usual habit with words of more than two, “To the university.”
The University of Toronto took up a large area in the center of the city, its old, ivy covered buildings an interesting contrast to its young, denim covered students. They’d cut across a corner of it on their way to see Mrs. Ruth. Now, they headed into its heart.
“I didn’t know there was a ghost at the university.”
“You didn’t?”
&
“But he’s famous. He’s been on television.”
“The ghost was on television?”
She thought about that while they waited for the light to change. “No,” she admitted. “But they told his story.” She thought a moment longer. “But they didn’t tell it very well. They got lots of stuff wrong. I don’t think they talked to Ivan at all.”
“Ivan? That’s his name?”
“Uh-huh.” The light changed and she took his hand. “Come on.”
This crossing of Spadina differed drastically from their first. Rebecca walked quickly, but she stayed calm and Roland marveled at the difference.
“Rebecca?”
“Yes?” She kept her eyes on the walk sign they were approaching.
“What do you do if there aren’t any lights. At all.”
“Then I cross at the corner and I look both ways and I don’t run ‘cause then I could fall. ‘Cept I wouldn’t, but Daru says I might. Or I use a magic crossing.”
“A magic crossing?”
“You know.” They stepped up on the curb and she turned to smile at him. “With the big yellow lights and the lines on the road where you stick out your finger and the cars stop.”
Crosswalks, Roland realized she meant, although magic crossings were as good a name for them. Personally, he was afraid every time he stuck his finger out he was going to lose it; that some jerk in a Firebird would roar by and take it off.
“Uh, Rebecca, this ghost of yours …”
“He’s not my ghost. He’s the university’s ghost.”
“Whatever … he’s not, uh …” Roland searched for the word. A number of movie ghosts, with gaping wounds and grayish-yellow skulls visible beneath decaying flesh paraded across his mind. Finally he pulled the word from Rebecca’s vocabulary. “… icky?”
Rebecca understood and shook her head. “Oh, no. He’s a little misty sometimes, but he’s not icky. It’s a really sad story.”
“If I’m going to meet him …” And Roland was not thrilled about that, he had problems with dead people that didn’t stay decently dead in fiction. He didn’t know how he was going to react in real life. “… perhaps you’d better tell me.”
“I’ll remember better if I sit down, ‘cause then I won’t have to think about walking, too.”
They were on the campus now and Roland graciously waved her to the grass surrounding the university library. Between the streetlights and the floodlights on the building, shadows didn’t stand a chance and the brittle brown lawn looked about as threatening as a bowl of shredded wheat. With most students home for the summer, the area was deserted.
Rebecca sat down, putting the bag with the knife on the ground beside her. She waited patiently until Roland got settled, and then she began.
“His name is Ivan Reznikoff and he’s a stonemason. That means he makes buildings and stuff out of stone. Well, he doesn’t anymore, but he used to.” She paused, Roland nodded, and she went on. “He was born in Russia, but he’s been in Canada so long that he’s a Canadian now. He’s been a ghost for over a hundred years.”
“But how did he become a ghost?” Roland prompted.
“He died.”
She isn’t doing it on purpose, Roland reminded himself and he kept his voice calm as he asked, “How did he die?”
“His friend stabbed him and threw him down the stairs and his body fell into an air shaft and no one knew it was there and no one looked ‘cause he was just some poor dumb Russian and no one cared.”
Roland heard the stonemason’s voice in the last few words.
“See, his friend made a gargoyle thing that looked like him and Ivan got mad and started to make one like his friend. Actually,” she confided, “it doesn’t look at all like him so I guess he had a reason to get mad. Anyway, he saw his friend, ‘cept they weren’t real friends now, with his girlfriend—her name was Susie and he talks about her a lot—and he ground his teeth and she said, What’s that sound? and the friend said, It’s only the wind just like in the story with Sister Anne.”
She’d lost Roland at that point, but he nodded anyway.
“And then he attacked his friend with an ax. He says he was drinking or he wouldn’t have done it and he’s pretty sorry about it now. His friend ran inside and the ax hit the door—I can show you the door—and then they chased each other up to the top of the tower and Ivan got stabbed and pushed down the stairs and he died. And now he’s a ghost.”
“What happened to Ivan’s ex-friend?” Roland asked, fascinated in spite of himself.
“Nothing. See, they didn’t find the body for years and years, not until after the big fire. The tower wasn’t finished and Ivan’s friend …” She frowned. “I wish I could remember his name ‘cause he wasn’t Ivan’s friend anymore. Anyway, this person put the body deep in an unfinished part, then I guess he finished it and no one found it, then they had this big fire and they found him. Maybe the person and Susie got married and lived happily ever after.” Sweeping her fingers lightly over the grass, she added, “I don’t think we should say that to Ivan.”
“Uh, right. No point in hurting his feelings,” Roland agreed. Putting aside for the moment the question, “Do ghosts have feelings and if so, can they be hurt?” he stared at Rebecca. There had been, for an instant, another Rebecca superimposed over the one he knew. It had looked, Roland thought, both more and less like the Rebecca he knew. Had looked like the Rebecca that should have been….
“What are you staring at, Roland?”
He started and forced a nervous smile. “Nothing.” For nothing remained but the memory. A trick of the light, he decided, although given the night he’d had he wouldn’t be at all surprised to find he was seeing things. Things that weren’t there as opposed to things that were there but he didn’t believe in even though he could See them. Life was a lot less complicated yesterday.
“Can I keep going, Roland?”
“Yeah, please, keep going.”
“Okay. Anyway, when they found Ivan they buried him in the square place, ‘cept back then it wasn’t square because the new part made it square and that’s where we’re going to find him now.”
“At his grave?”
“Uh-huh.”
“On the university campus?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Rebecca, I don’t think that’s legal.” The story had sounded pretty plausible until she’d gotten to the burial. Now Roland was beginning to think the whole thing existed only in Rebecca’s head. “You can’t just bury people in the closest bit of unoccupied dirt.”
“He wasn’t people by then. Just bones.”
“Still … Who told you all this?”
“Ivan.”
Roland sighed. Ivan was an authority hard to argue with. He got to his feet and held out a hand to Rebecca. “Let’s go, then.” His watch said it was twenty to eleven and a lifetime of horror books and movies told him he didn’t want to meet this guy—giving the story the benefit of the doubt—at midnight.
Rebecca slung her bag over her shoulder and stood. Where the bag had rested, the grass appeared scorched. Rebecca looked down at it and shook her head sadly.
“Grass doesn’t have a lot of protection,” she sighed.
“Yeah, right. Are you sure you should be carrying that thing?” He shifted to put a little more space between himself and the bag.
“You mean the dagger?” She patted his arm comfortingly. “It’s okay. I’m stronger than grass.”
Roland allowed himself to be hustled along, glancing back only when they got to the corner and had to wait for a green light. The scorch was a clearly visible puddle of darkness against the dull yellow grass. He blinked and looked again. Beside it, arcing out in a gentle curve about six inches wide and four feet long, grew a swath of new green grass. In his memory’s eye, Roland saw Rebecca absently stroking the lawn in front of her as she talked.
I’m stronger than grass.
Does she even know she did it? he wondered, staring down at the top of her head and remembering the other face that had briefly masked hers.
The light changed and they stepped off the curb. Roland, his eyes still on Rebecca, tripped over his guitar case.
Rebecca caught him, steadied him until he found his feet, and then propelled him across the intersection. “You have to be more careful crossing the street,” she chastised.
Roland twisted around and took one last look at the two marks on the lawn. “Yeah, right,” was all he could find to say.
They turned south, down behind a block of residences, onto one of the many footpaths that crossed the campus. Every twenty feet or so, an old-fashioned lamppost stood in a circle of light and Roland got the impression that they hurried from one island of safety to another with the darkness between wrapping about them, trying to get to the dagger. He peered down at Rebecca, but she seemed unconcerned so he tried to take his cue from her. It didn’t quite work.
“So Ivan hangs around the university, eh?
“Uh-huh. When people who don’t See see him, the university is in danger.”
“Does he ever haunt the place where he died?”
“No. He didn’t die until he got to the bottom of the stairs, and it’s in a cupboard in the principal’s bathroom now. If he haunted that, no one would ever see him.”
“How do you know all that?”
“Ivan told me, He watches them fix things up, do reni … reni …”
“Renovations?”
She beamed, becoming for a moment one more circle of light. “That’s it. He likes to keep an eye on things.”
They reached a small open area and Rebecca pointed down a fire access to a wrought iron gate set in the space between two buildings, one of new yellow brick, the other old and gray.
“We’ll go in through there.”
“Isn’t that a private section?” In his experience, gates meant keep out.
“No, it’s a green part,” Rebecca explained, “and green parts belong to everyone.”
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