The Little Country

by Charles de Lint

  The first music.

  She got up from where she was sitting and clambered up onto the stone, straddling it so that her stomach was pressed against it, her elbows in front, propping up her head, her legs dangling down either side. She lay very still then, quieting her mind‌—

  Think of nothing. Don’t think at all.

  ‌—trying to soak up the ancient stillness that was hidden deep in the stone below her, a stillness that was like‌—

  an old dance

  ‌—focusing on her heartbeat, on its rhythm, on how the blood that moved through her twinned that‌—

  hidden music

  ‌—until she was drifting in that state between sleep and wakefulness when all things are possible.

  And then she heard it.

  Dhumm-dum. Dhumm-dum.

  A distant, far-off sound like a hoofbeat. Coming closer. And she was floating, floating away. . . .

  Edern’s features drifted up in her mind. He was in the Barrow World, a look of worry making him frown.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Dreaming,” she said. “Dreaming magic.”

  Dhumm-dum. Dhumm-dum.

  His worry deepened into alarm.

  “You won’t ever be the same again,” he warned.

  “I know. But the music will go on.”

  “The Barrow World will be closed to you as well‌—because of your Iron World blood.”

  “I know.”

  Dhumm-dum.

  “I’ll become the music,” she added, “and I’ll never let it fade again.”

  He shook his head. “That’s too steep a price‌—”

  “I won’t die,” Jodi interrupted him. “I’ll go on forever.”

  “But changed,” he said.

  “But changed,” she agreed.

  “I didn’t mean for you to do this.”

  Dhumm-dum.

  “I chose to do this,” Jodi told him.

  “But‌—”

  Dhumm-dum. Dhumm-dum.

  The music was taking her away now. Parts of her dissolved to fuel it. It sang with her voice now‌—not the off-key voice with which she normally tried to sing songs, but with the pure, clear tones that lay inside her, echoing her heartbeat. She felt as though she were unraveling into the Men-an-Tol, becoming part of it. She followed the roots of its mystery as they spread away from the center of the hole in its stone, deep into the heartbeat of the land. The wind carried her across the moorland, through forest and over Bodbury to the sea.

  “Good-bye, Edern,” she said. “Remember me.”

  “How could I forget?” he asked as the crack between the worlds faded and he could see her no more.

  But the music went on, echoing and echoing forever, through the Barrow World and beyond. And this time it raised no tempests. It soothed the land, bringing the gift of logic to his world just as it brought the gift of magic to hers.

  Sustaining the Mystery, so that it echoed and echoed, on into forever.

  2.

  Denzil couldn’t concentrate that afternoon. He kept thinking of Jodi and the pointless argument that had sent her storming out of his loft earlier that day. The animals had been restless ever since she’d gone and that restlessness translated into a nagging feeling inside himself that he could no longer ignore.

  Finally he set his work aside.

  He’d been too harsh, he realized. She was still young and wasn’t youth allowed its fancies? Who was he to rein in her sense of wonder? The world itself would do that to her all too soon on its own. And then she might discover that there was a different kind of wonder in the world‌—not magic like in fairy tales, but a magic all the same. For what were the wonders of nature, but a magic?

  But she had to come to that realization herself. And until she did, what sort of a friend was he proving to be by constantly pointing out the errors of her thinking? There came a point when helpfulness merely became a kind of fussing criticism that would do neither of them any good.

  “Come along then, you,” he told Ollie as he put on his coat and hat.

  The monkey jumped from the back of the chair where he had been mournfully plucking at a bit of loose stuffing and crawled in under Denzil’s jacket.

  “We’ll see if we can’t find her,” he added.

  But once he was on the street below, he was at a loss as to where to begin. That odd nagging sensation returned, but this time it was a feeling of his having done this all before.

  There was a dream he’d had‌—one he should never have shared with Jodi because all she did now was talk of it‌—of when the Widow Pender had turned her into a Small and how they’d all gone to the old tolmen out on the moorland behind the town. . . .

  The certainty came to him then that that was where she had gone.

  Grumbling a little to himself, he set off up Mabe Hill. When he reached the moors beyond the old ruins of Creak-a-vose, Ollie grew increasingly restless where he was tucked away under Denzil’s jacket.

  “Stop your fussing, you,” Denzil told him, but he was beginning to feel a little light-headed himself just then.

  There was the sense of a storm approaching in the air, yet that was patently impossible, for the sky was clear as could be except for a small desultory smear of ragged clouds to the west. Ollie pushed himself out from under Denzil’s jacket and sat up on his shoulder, chattering urgently, tugging at Denzil’s hair as though to make him hurry. There was a sound in the air, an odd sort of thrumming like a drum playing a heartbeat tempo over a wash of wind that was almost like music.

  And Denzil thought he could recognize a melody in it‌—it was one he remembered from when he was a boy, an old tune that his father used to sing. It had always been Denzil’s favorite song. Today it filled him with foreboding.

  He stepped up his pace, feeling that same urgency as Ollie obviously did‌—an insistent need to reach the Men-an-Tol as quickly as he could.

  When he got there, he wished he’d never come.

  Ollie shrieked and bounded from his shoulder to scamper across the last few yards separating them from the holed stone. He bounded up to the top of the stone and turned a mournful eye to Denzil.

  “Oh, Jodi,” Denzil said. “What have you done?”

  Ollie plucked at the clothing that lay there on top of the stone, pushing his face against the all-too-familiar shirt and trousers that Jodi had been wearing when she’d stormed off earlier that day. Her jacket lay on the ground beside the stone. One shoe on either side of it. But of her there was no trace.

  The monkey whimpered, holding out the shirt to Denzil, but he was frozen where he stood, listening to the music.

  Remembering.

  A mad time: a night, a day, and then another night‌—of magic. Of Smalls and reanimated corpses. Of witches and stone.

  Especially stone.

  A longstone.

  He had been a longstone, enchanted by the Widow. . . .

  “Oh, Jodi,” he said again, his voice a bare mumble.

  The unearthly music sang all around him now and he swayed in time to its rhythm, tears blurring his sight. He could hear Jodi in that music, knew that she’d sacrificed herself to wake it.

  It’s got to be heard, she’d tried to explain to him more than once in the past week or so. Without the music, both worlds are doomed.

  He’d told her that was nonsense. There was no Barrow World.

  Can’t you remember anything about what happened? she had shouted. How can you be so blind?

  “I’m not blind,” he had replied. “I can see how the world is perfectly well, you.”

  All you see is the world the way a sleepwalker would, she had replied this morning in the latest installment of their ongoing argument.

  And then she’d stormed out, leaving only the echo of her words behind.

  The way a sleepwalker would.

  The tears streamed down his cheeks. He didn’t know how she had done it, but she had become the music. To prove it was real. To him. To all the
rest of the sleepwalkers. . . .

  A hand fell on his shoulder, but he never started. He only turned slowly to find Taupin standing beside him.

  “She . . . she’s gone,” Denzil said. “Into the music.”

  Taupin’s eyes were shiny as well. He nodded slowly.

  “I know,” he said. “I was . . . walking nearby . . . thinking. And then I heard it. And remembered. . . .”

  “I was wrong,” Denzil said. “I treated her poorly‌—without respect. But it seemed so mad, what she was saying . . .”

  “I treated her worse,” Taupin said. “I always knew, but somehow . . . somehow I forgot. . . .”

  “And now it’s too late. She’s gone.”

  Taupin laid his arm across Denzil’s slumped shoulders.

  “Into the music,” he said softly.

  His voice was filled with wonder, with sorrow.

  Into the music, Denzil repeated to himself.

  They stood and listened, arms around each other for comfort, as the sound washed over them. It reverberated in the marrow of their bones, sung high and sweet, heartbreakingly mournful, quick as a jig, slow as the saddest air. Their hearts swelled with its beauty, its mystery. With all it revealed, and all that it hid.

  They couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. They could only hold on to each other and stare at the holed stone with its scattering of clothing that lay upon it.

  They could only listen.

  And then slowly the music faded, faded to a soft murmur that became the wind breathing through the hole in the Men-an-Tol. A wind that still held an echo of that music, but allowed them to move once more, to stir and sadly sigh.

  Finally Denzil could lift a sleeve and wipe at the tears that spilled from his eyes. He looked at the stone where Ollie sat clutching Jodi’s shirt. The monkey’s thin little arms pulled the fabric close to his chest and rocked sadly back and forth. Denzil moved forward to collect the rest of Jodi’s clothes from where they lay.

  Then suddenly Ollie peered over the side of the Men-an-Tol that was hidden from Denzil’s and Taupin’s view. He tossed aside the shirt and jumped off the stone, landing on its far side with an excited chatter.

  “Jodi . . . ?” Denzil asked.

  His heart leapt as he rounded the stone, dropping when he saw no sign of her there. But Ollie had something in his hand. It looked like a little pink mouse that was squealing and flailing its limbs about. . . .

  But a mouse never had limbs like that, Denzil thought. Nor a shock of blond hair. And now he could make out what the little creature was saying.

  “Put me down. Put me down!”

  He knelt down quickly and pried Ollie’s paw open. A tiny nude Jodi Shepherd spilled out onto his palm. She immediately covered herself up with her hands. Denzil turned away, blushing, until Taupin shook the lint from a handkerchief that he pulled from one of his voluminous pockets and offered it to the diminutive Jodi. Denzil looked back at her, once she’d wrapped herself up in it.

  “Now do you believe me?” she asked in her high piping voice.

  Denzil nodded slowly. “What . . . what happened to you? I thought the Widow was dead.”

  “So you do remember.”

  “Ever since I heard the music,” Denzil said.

  “Well, the Widow is dead,” she told him.

  “Then how . . . ?”

  “Did I get this way?” Jodi said. “I gave up part of myself to make the music live. All that’s left of me now is a Small.”

  “But . . . that is, can you . . . ?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t change back. It’s not like when the Widow shrank me down. She kept that other part of me in her cloak. But I’ve given it away.”

  “To the music,” Taupin said.

  Jodi smiled. “To the music,” she agreed.

  “But what will we do with you?” Denzil asked.

  “Take me home, I hope. Otherwise I’ll have a very long walk ahead of me.”

  Ollie put a paw tentatively out towards her and she gave it a playful whack.

  “But don’t you dare think of exhibiting me at some scientific meeting,” she warned.

  “Or worse,” Taupin added with a grin, “a circus.”

  Jodi proved her new maturity by sticking her tongue out at him.

  “We can’t tell people,” she said. “Not about me‌—just about the stone. Everyone should come and listen to the music in the stone.”

  “But your aunt,” Denzil began.

  “Oh, we can tell some people, of course,” she allowed. “We’ll just have to be careful as to who.”

  Denzil could only shake his head.

  “Just think how much I can help you with your experiments now,” Jodi said. “Or I can go traveling about in Taupin’s pocket. There’s hundreds of things I can do.”

  “You’re daft, you,” Denzil said as they set off back across the moor towards Bodbury. “How could you do such a thing to yourself?”

  “Listen,” Jodi said, pointing back towards the stone.

  Denzil and Taupin paused and turned back, doing as she’d asked. They found that they could still hear the wind in the stone. And borne on it was an echo of the first music‌—just a whisper, it was true, just a hint, but enough. Enough for the wind to carry, away across the moor and perhaps, in time, across the world.

  “Don’t you think that’s worth it?” Jodi asked.

  Both Denzil and Taupin nodded.

  “Just don’t let them build a church around it or something,” Jodi said. “It needs to be free to work its magic.”

  Some Say the Devil Is Dead

  Gods that are dead are simply those that no longer speak to the science or the moral order of the day . . . every god that is dead can be conjured again to life.

  ‌—JOSEPH CAMPBELL, from The Way of the Animal Powers

  Charlie Boyd cradled the receiver and turned to his son.

  “That was himself,” he said.

  “The same man that rang us up at the farm this afternoon?” Dinny asked.

  Charlie nodded. “Considering what he had to say to me, I wouldn’t soon forget that voice.”

  “What did he say?”

  Charlie told him.

  “What does he mean by ‘wrong answer,’ do you think?” Dinny asked.

  “That it’s time for us to ring up the constable,” Charlie said.

  “But the note said‌—”

  “I know, son. It’s not a decision I care to make. But Janey’s not here and it has to be made.”

  Dinny sighed and went over to the front door as his father called the police. He looked out at the night. Chapel Place was quiet, except for a cat that was sitting in the middle of the street, washing its face. The windows of the cottages that lined the narrow street cast squares of light out onto the pavement‌—there the soft yellow glow of a reading lamp, a little farther down the blue-white flickering of a telly.

  To all intents and purposes, it was merely another peaceful night in Mousehole. Life went on. Except somewhere out in that same night a madman had taken their friend hostage.

  Dinny shook his head. This was a situation one might expect in Northern Ireland or the Middle East. Not here, not in Mousehole.

  His father joined him at the door after he’d made his call and laid a hand on his shoulder. He seemed about to speak, but then sighed as Dinny had. They just stood there, waiting. Trying not to think of the Gaffer or what they must tell Janey.

  Dinny felt his heart sink as he saw a familiar set of headbeams come down the steep hill from Paul. Moments later, Janey had parked her Reliant Robin beside the Gaffer’s yellow delivery wagon.

  “I think our troubles are all over,” Janey said as she got out of the little car.

  She had a cheerful bounce to her step that faltered as she took in the Boyds’ glum faces.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. “Gramps . . . ?”

  “It’s not good,” Charlie said.

  But before he could explain, the local constable arrived. The
policeman stopped Charlie before he could get too far into his tale to call the assistant chief at the subdivision station in Penzance to send for more help. When he finished his call, he turned back to Charlie.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s take it from the beginning again, shall we?”

  2.

  The Gaffer had been in tight situations before‌—during the war, of course, and too many times out on the bay when gales drove the sea against the cliffs, and sometimes boats with them. He didn’t consider himself a particularly brave man. He just did what needed doing, when it needed doing. When the Penlee Lifeboat, the Solomon Browne, went down in ‘81, attempting to save the crew of the Union Star that had run up on the Boscawen Cliffs, he’d been out there with the rest of the men of the village, not considering the danger nor whether he was brave or a coward, simply doing what needed to be done.

  If he had ever been brave, it was carrying on after the deaths of Addie and his son. That took more courage than he’d needed on either the beaches of Dunkirk or Mount’s Bay. Janey had seen him through that time. And it was only by thinking of Janey that he could face his present straits.

  For her sake, he must hold out. Because the longer his captor was busy with him, the longer it would be before he could turn his attention to her. By that time, he hoped that she would have had the good common sense to ring up the police.

  They would protect her.

  But until then, he needed to buy time and the coin was dear.

  The reek of petrol was strong in the air. His pant leg was soaked with the fluid. His arms ached from the rough way that he’d been tied to the chair. By the light of the electric lamp that the American had brought with him, he could see the strange gleam in the man’s pale eyes as he brought the lighter forward a second time.

  They were not the eyes of a sane man. They were the eyes of a man who took pleasure in pain‌—another’s pain. Pain that he inflicted upon them.

  The Gaffer couldn’t hold back a cry as the gas on his pant leg burst into flame. The gas ignited with a whoof of blue fire, the heat searing his eyebrows and hair as he whipped his head back. He pulled at his bonds, arching his back against the chair for leverage, but the ropes binding his arms and legs allowed him to do no more than feebly jerk against their tethering. There was a sudden cloud of black smoke and the stink of charred fabric and burnt hair. He could feel the heat on his leg. The skin blistering‌—