The Little Country

by Charles de Lint

  He took the portable phone from the knapsack that lay beside the jerricans and punched up the number for the house on Duck Street.

  “There,” he said. “It’s ringing. Scream all you want now. It’s just going to add to the . . . validity of the call.”

  He smiled at the tight line that the Gaffer’s lips made.

  “Who’s this?” he said into the receiver when the connection was made.

  “Charlie Boyd,” came the reply.

  “Wrong answer,” Bett said.

  He hung up and put away the phone. With an exaggerated sigh, he rose to his feet and shook his head.

  “Gee, I’m real sorry about this, old-timer. But the ball’s really in your court now.”

  He unscrewed the top of the jerrican and stepped over to the chair, pouring the gasoline over one of the Gaffer’s legs. With a show of great care, he took the can back across the small space and put it next to the others, then returned to stand in front of his captive.

  “Anything you want to tell me?” he asked as he pulled a lighter from his pocket.

  The Gaffer’s eyes were round with fear, but he shook his head.

  Bett sighed again. The old coot had balls. No doubt about that.

  He really wished that he did have the girl instead. There’s no way she’d’ve lasted out fifteen minutes of this. Splash a little gas on her face and explain how pretty she was going to look when the fire got to her skin. . . .

  Guys always had to prove how tough they were‌—even an old bird like this one here.

  “You’re not being brave,” he told the Gaffer as he flicked the lighter into life. “You’re just being stupid.”

  The Gaffer’s gaze locked on the light’s flame. Bett could see the whole world narrowing in for the old man, focusing on that one spot of flickering light.

  He brought the flame close to the gas-soaked pant leg, laughing when the Gaffer shut his eyes and flinched. Bett snapped the lighter shut.

  “Hey, but we’re having fun‌—right?” he said when the Gaffer’s eyes opened to glare at him.

  Bett fed on his captive’s fear, drinking it in.

  “Okay,” he said. “This time it’s for real.”

  He opened the lighter again, spun its steel wheel against the flint.

  The flame leapt up from the wick, an inch and a half high.

  5.

  Janey had a forewarning that neither of her companions did.

  Her version of the Dunthorn novel had predicted this very situation, from the magic of the Men-an-Tol through to Madden’s arrival. Not perfectly‌—the details were different. But all the same, she could almost smell the stink of a bog in the air . . . could almost see the Widow’s sloch, twisting and writhing on the moorland behind the intruder’s tall figure.

  The whistle tune faltered on her lips, fell still.

  She saw Felix go down‌—curling up into a ball like a threatened hedgehog‌—rapidly followed by Clare who looked as though all her muscles had just turned to jelly on her. She started to take a step towards them, but then Madden’s eerie gaze was turning on her. The magnetic intensity of his will bore down on her, sending a knifeblade chill up her spine, turning her heart to stone, until she heard a small voice, coming to her as if from far away, from a dream.

  Don’t look in his eyes. Don’t listen to what he says.

  And she remembered the little man in the Dunthorn book. The Small. . . .

  Before Madden’s magnetic gaze could lock fully on her will, she managed to turn her head away and lift the whistle up to her lips again.

  She’d never been that fond of this particular Eagle brand tin whistle; she’d bought it on a whim, for the way it came apart in two pieces, which made it easy to tote about in a pocket or purse, rather than for its tone. It was fine in the lower register, but the upper one always sounded as though the instrument was being overblown, no matter how much she controlled her breath. It was hard enough to control its tone, little say play a tune.

  But at the moment what was important was that it did play a tune, no matter how faulty the upper register notes sounded. All she needed was its music. It wouldn’t have the magic of that other music‌—the first music, she thought, naming it as the characters had named it in the Dunthorn book‌—but so long as it kept her from hearing Madden, from looking into his eyes, it would be magic enough.

  She started up a version of “The Foxhunter’s Jig”‌—a slip jig in 9/8 that rang out far jauntier than she was feeling at the moment. She leaned into the long B notes in the second part, wishing she had her pipes with her so that she could really bend the note, and then realized it was working.

  Madden’s presence was a buzz that lay behind the music. He spoke, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying, and so long as she didn’t look into his eyes. . . .

  The tune faltered as it skirted into the high notes of the third part. It was partly the whistle’s fault‌—making her overblow the notes‌—but all the blame couldn’t be laid on the instrument.

  There was Madden.

  She couldn’t hear him. She refused to look at him. But she could feel him approaching her. His presence was a dark shadow in her mind‌—an ugly buzz. It set up a discordance‌—not only in the music, but in the night itself. Because she could feel him, drawing nearer, step by step.

  And she didn’t know what she was going to do.

  She fumbled the run in the fourth part of the tune that took it back into the lower register. And heard‌—

  “‌—at me. You will look‌—”

  She centered all her attention on the music, circling around the stone, away from his approaching presence. But there was a crack in her concentration now. A hole in the music.

  She could feel his eyes boring through it.

  She tried to imagine sheet music in front of her.

  The eyes burned through it.

  She switched to a faster 4/4 tempo, same tune title, but a different tune. “The Foxhunter’s Reel.”

  His eyes were the hounds and she was the fox; his will was the hunter’s gun, its muzzle bearing down on her.

  The tune grew ragged and she began to flub notes.

  She could hear his voice again‌—a wordless sound that prodded and pushed at her. Her fingers faltered on the whistle’s finger holes. The tune came tumbling to a halt.

  Her gaze locked on Felix, lying almost at her feet, still curled up in a fetal position. Clare was lying like a dead fish a little farther away. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she could hear Kempy whimpering, but she had no idea as to where the border collie had hidden himself.

  She still couldn’t hear what Madden was saying, but the tone of his voice was slowly turning her face towards him, his eyes drawing her gaze to them like a shark snagged on a mackerel-baited hook and hauled towards the sharking boat.

  The mouthpiece of the whistle was still at her lips, but she couldn’t seem to draw the breath needed to blow it awake again. Her throat was dry, raspy as sandpaper.

  She could run. Off across the moor, into the darkness. He’d never catch her because she had to be faster on her feet than he could ever be, and fear would fuel her.

  But Felix‌—and Clare‌—she couldn’t leave them.

  She bowed her head and looked at the ground as her traitorous body turned completely around and faced Madden. She refused to look up.

  Think, she told herself. What happened in the book?

  So much of what had befallen in its storyline was happening to her now that there had to be a clue in it. But the Small’s voice was silent.

  Salt, she thought. They’d used salt.

  But she didn’t have any, and whatever paranormal powers Madden had, she doubted very much that salt would do anything to stop them.

  Her head was slowly lifting.

  Tears, she remembered then. The music had been called up and the witch’s own tears killed her. But that was back to salt again and she wasn’t sharing Madden’s memories. Neither could she call up the music
. That needed calm, a relaxed mind. A twinning of her heartbeat to the music’s ancient rhythm‌—

  Dhumm-dum. Dhumm-dum.

  ‌—only her heart was jackhammering the blood through her veins. Quick tempo. No old slow dance tune this, but some mad Eurobeat rhythm.

  Slow down, she told herself.

  She forced her foot to tap on the packed earth around the Men-an-Tol.

  Pat-pat. Pat-pat.

  That was almost the beat. A simple rhythm‌—deceptively simple, because now that she was starting to get it, she couldn’t understand how she might ever have forgotten it. Was it the Small from the Dunthorn book or Peter Goninan who had said . . . something about . . .

  The magics of the world are far simpler than we make them out to be.

  She could hear the voice in her head. And with it, a hint of music. That music. Thrumming to its hoofbeat rhythm.

  Dhumm-dum. Dhumm-dum.

  It put a brake to the jackhammering of her heart, slowing her pulse until it was beginning to twin the music’s own stately rhythm. But it came far too late.

  Her head had been lifting higher all the time until she was looking at Madden’s chin, the thin frown of his lips, the hawk’s nose. . . . Every detail, every tiny hair, every pore of his skin, stood out in sharp clarity‌—never mind the darkness. She could almost see below the skin, to the blood moving through his veins and arteries below it, the pull of his muscles as his jaw worked, the fiery webwork of his nerves. . . .

  The heartbeat rhythm of the first music steadied inside her. The strains of its melody were whispering in the distance. It lay just over that gentle sweep of land on the Men-an-Tol’s moor. Just around that corner of her mind. Coming from the deep well of magic that was the Barrow World, into this Iron World where its enchantment was almost forgotten.

  She tried to shut her eyes, to let the magic fill her, but her lids wouldn’t close. It was as though they’d been locked open.

  And then Madden’s gaze connected with her own and her head filled with a babble of voices that drowned out the music.

  Tell me, tell me, tell me. . . .

  What have you done. . . .

  Tell me. . . .

  Give me the secret. . . .

  TELL ME.

  Madden’s voice ringing in her head multiplied a hundredfold into a deafening jabber. Amplified and ringing. Drilling through her mind. Pulling her into him.

  Tell me, tell me. . . .

  She tried to fight him, but it was like trying to stem a storm on the bay with a sieve. The waves of his voice lashed against her mind with a gale force‌—raging, demanding. Allowing her not a moment’s respite.

  She dropped to her knees, never feeling the jarring impact with the ground. Her head tilted up, gaze still trapped, still locked on his. The music was lost now, somewhere under the roar of his thundering voice as it stormed through her. And with it hope.

  All that remained of herself was a tiny core of being, crouched in a corner of her mind. Hidden, as Madden’s will smashed through her feeble defenses. Buried in those few memories that Madden had not yet overturned in his raging search, secreted away as Dunthorn’s riddle had been hidden from him for all those years. But not for long.

  She knew it couldn’t last.

  So she let herself go. Let herself fall into him, as the heroine of the Dunthorn book had let herself become a part of the witch that was tormenting her. And found. . . .

  Not his life, laid out before her in all its layers of memory as the witch’s had been for Jodi, but the world as Madden perceived it through his heightened senses. She became a part of how he connected to the ancient heartbeat of the land, and saw how the webwork of the land’s secrets and mysteries shaped a pattern, even in its apparent confusion; how it created a harmony despite its differences‌—because of the differences.

  Floating there, a disembodied spirit trapped in another’s mind, she finally understood what Peter Goninan had meant about the discrepancy between being asleep and awake. If this . . . if this was how it felt to almost be awake . . . a wide-awake equivalent of that moment that lies between sleep and waking when anything was possible. . . .

  What more can you want? she asked her captor.

  The secret, Madden demanded. Dunthorn’s secret.

  But you already have it, she said.

  For she saw what he did not, that for all his manipulations and self-interest, he was ignoring the real truth to this mysterious patterning that underlay the world. It was the sheet music to the first music, there to be read for any who could perceive it.

  Listen, she said.

  To what?

  It was unbelievable, Janey thought. Madden was tuned in to the existence of the hidden meaning that resonated to the first music, had been for years, but he couldn’t hear it. He took bits and pieces and used them to override other people’s wills, to give himself power, but he never once saw it for what it was, never guessed, never heard‌—

  The music.

  So she called it up.

  Dhumm-dum. Dhumm-dum.

  The deep bass rhythm boomed like ancient thunder on the first day of the world. Harp strings plucked an ethereal counterpoint against a skirling wash of fiddles and flutes and whistles. And there, taking the melody and imbuing it with a power that Janey could never have duplicated, was a set of pipes; drones, deep and rumbling, like the speech of mountains, stone grinding against stone, rock faces speaking from the sides of time-rounded hills; the chanter wailing like all the winds of the world blown through its bore with perfect control‌—the melody both bitter and sweet, quick tempo and slow air, all music distilled into one flawless sound.

  She had no fear of giving the first music to Madden for she knew that no matter how he might have manipulated the bits and pieces of it that he’d borrowed or stolen over the years, it was impossible for any one being to control. It required the joint accord of every being, of every single part of the world.

  Perhaps of worlds.

  Like the world that lay through the hole in the Men-an-Tol.

  Loosing the music inside Madden was like waking magic in the Barrow World. The music ran wildly through him. The more he fought it, the stronger it grew, unbalancing him.

  But Janey, by letting it simply flow through her, by accepting it, and, rather than attempting to control it, by merely welcoming it, she shivered with the gift of its beauty.

  At first she floated there in Madden’s mind and remained unaffected by the storm that he fought. But after a time, she visualized herself in her own body and went walking through the dark corridors of shifting shadows that was Madden’s mind. In the rooms that led off from the corridors‌—which were pockets of memory or thought, she realized‌—she came upon knots and dark, twisting patterns that she loosened and set free.

  In one such pocket, she found Kempy’s spirit. The border collie was trapped in a dream. Men surrounded him and whenever he tried to move, to break free of their circle, the men’s booted feet would lash out at him, driving him back into the center again.

  Janey slipped in between the ghost figures of the men and lifted the dog in her arms. When she turned to leave the circle, the men had vanished and there was only the moor surrounding them. She set Kempy down.

  “Go on,” she said.

  But the dog merely pushed his head against her leg and followed her as she went on down the corridor.

  And found Clare.

  Her friend lay in an absolutely featureless place, sprawled on the floor, limbs splayed out around her. She looked as though she were dead. But her gaze tracked Janey’s movement as Janey stepped closer and then crouched down by her head. Janey stroked Clare’s head, brushing the hair from her brow.

  “What’s the matter, Clare?” she asked.

  “I‌—I can’t move. Not just my . . . legs. But nothing. Only‌—only my head. . . .”

  The ancient wisdom of the first music still sang through Madden’s mind, still filled Janey.

  “It’s not true,” sh
e said. “Madden’s just making you think it is.”

  Clare blinked back tears. “I can’t move!”

  Janey continued to stroke Clare’s hair, her touch tender.

  “Listen,” she said. “Listen to the music.”

  “I can’t. . . .”

  “Listen,” Janey repeated, softly but insistently.

  Then, as Clare finally heard the ancient strains, Janey helped her friend to her feet. Clare wasn’t even aware of what she was doing until she was standing beside Janey.

  Clare moved her hands in front of her eyes, touched her upper arms, hugged herself.

  “I . . .”

  But words failed her.

  Janey smiled at her and put an arm around her shoulder for support.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’ve still got to find Felix.”

  They came upon him, sitting alone on a vast stage, an enormous audience jeering at him and throwing beer cans and rotting fruit at where he huddled on his chair, arms wrapped around his accordion. Kempy growled at the audience as the three of them picked their way through the litter on the stage, but that only made the audience laugh more.

  Janey handed Clare her whistle.

  “Play a tune,” she said. “Something simple. Something old.”

  Clare looked at the audience, her eyes blinded by the spotlight. Her gaze turned back to Felix and in that moment Janey saw Clare’s love for him reflected. A deep, hopeless love.

  “But . . .” Clare began.

  The first music stirred its wisdom inside Janey.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never knew. But he loves you, too, Clare. Not in the same way, but . . .”

  Even the first music’s wisdom failed here.

  Clare blinked back tears and nodded slowly. “I know.”

  She brought the whistle to her lips and began “The Trip to Sligo,” a jig that was one of Felix’s favorites. Its bouncing rhythm was almost lost as the audience ridiculed her. Clare faltered on the tune. The whistle, with its faulty upper register, didn’t make it any easier. But Janey nodded encouragingly to Clare as she bent down beside Felix.

  So Clare played on.

  The tune changed on her as she kept at it. Her playing grew more assured as the first music took hold of her instrument and sang through it.