Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection (17 page)

“They were dancing, weren’t they? All of a sudden, that’s not enough? You used to complain that all they’d do is just sit there.”

“I know. I like it when they dance. It’s just—”

Terry caught her arm. Putting a finger to his lips, he nodded to a pair of women who were walking by, neither of whom noticed Lorio and Terry standing in the club’s doorway. One of them was humming the chorus to the band’s last number under her breath:

I don’t need nobody staring at me, stripping me down with their 1-2-3, I got a right to my own
dignity—who needs pornography?

“Okay,” Lorio said when the women had passed them. “So some-body’s listening. But when I went to get our money, Slimy Ted—”

“Slimy Toad.”

Lorio smiled briefly. “He told me I could make a few extra bucks if I’d go out with a couple of his friends who, quote, ‘liked my moves,’ unquote. What does that tell you?”

“That I ought to break his head.”

“It means the people that I want to reach
aren’t
listening.”

“Maybe we should be singing louder?”

“Sure.” Lorio shook her head. “Look, say hi to Jane for me, would you? Maybe I’ll make it next time.”

She watched him go, then set off in the opposite direction to-wards Stanton Street. Maybe she shouldn’t be complaining. No Nuns Here was starting to get the decent gigs.
In the City
had run an article on them—even spent a paragraph or two on what was behind the band, instead of just dismissing what they were trying to say as post-punk jingoism like their one two-line review in
The Newford Star
had.

Oh, it was still very in to sing about women’s rights, gay rights,
people’s
rights, for God’s sake, but the band still got the “aren’t you limiting yourselves?” thrown at them by people who should know better.

Still, at least they were getting some attention and, more importantly, what they were trying to say was getting some atten-tion. It might bore the pants off of Joe Average Jock—but that was just the person they were trying to reach. So where did you go? If they could only get a decent gig. A big one where they could really reach more

She paused in mid-step, certain she’d heard a moan from the alleyway she was passing. As she peered into it, the sound was repeated. Definitely a moan. She looked up and down Yoors Street, but there was no one close to her.

“Hey!” she called softly into the alley. “Is there someone in there?”

She caught a glimpse of eyes, gleaming like a cat’s caught in the headbeams of a car—just a shivery flash and they were gone. Ani-mal’s eyes. But the sound she’d heard had seemed human.

“Hey!”

Swallowing thickly, she edged into the alley, her guitar case held out in front of her. As she moved down its length, her eyes began to adjust to the poor light.

Why was she doing this? She had to be nuts.

The moan came a third time then and she saw what she took to be a small man lying in some refuse.

“Oh, jeez.” She moved forward, fear forgotten. “Are you okay?”

She laid her guitar case down and knelt beside the figure, but when she reached out a hand to his shoulder, she touched fur instead of clothing. Muscles moved under her fingers—weakly, but enough to tell her that it wasn’t a fur coat. She snatched back her hand as a broad face turned towards her.

She froze, looking into that face. The first thing she thought of were the orangutans in the Metro Zoo.

The features had a simian cast with their close-set eyes, broad overhanging brow and protrud-ing lower jaw. Reddish fur surrounded the face—the same fur that covered the creature’s body.

It had to be a costume, she thought. Except it was too real. She began to back away.

“Help ... me ....”

This
couldn’t
be real.

“When they track me down again ... this time ... they will ... they will kill me ....”

The gaze that met her own was cloudy with pain, but it wasn’t an animal’s. Intelligence lay in its depth, behind the pain. But this wasn’t a man wearing a costume either.

“Who will?” she asked at last.

For the first time, the gaze appeared to really focus on her. “You ... you’re a Gypsy,” the creature said.
“Sarishan, Romani chi.”

Lorio shook her head, unable to accept what she was hearing. “The blood’s awfully thin,” she said finally. “And I don’t speak Romany.”

Though she knew it to hear it and remembered the odd word. The last person to speak it in her presence had been her uncle Palko, but that was a long time ago now.

“You are strangely garbed,” the creature said, “but I know a Gypsy when I see one.”

Strangely garbed? Well, it all depended, Lorio thought.

Her long curly hair was dyed a black too deep to be natural and grew from a three-inch swatch down the center of her head. Light brown stubble grew on either side of the mohawk where the sides of her head had been shaved. She wore a brown leather bomber’s jacket over a bright red and black Forties dress, net stockings, and her running shoes. A strand of plastic pearls hung around her neck.

Six earrings, from a rhinestone stud to threaded beads, hung from her right ear. In her left lobe was a stud in the shape of an Anarchy symbol.

“My mother was a Gypsy,” she said, “but my father—”

She shook her head. What was she doing? Arguing with a ragged bundle of orange fur did not make much bloody sense.

“Your people know the roads,” the creature said. “The roads ofthis world and those roads beyond that bind the balance. You ... you can help me. Take my place. The hound caught me before—before I could complete my journey. The boundaries grow thin ... frail. You must—’’

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lorio said. “God, I don’t even know what you are.”

“My name is Elderee and this time Mahail’s hound did its job too well. It will be back ... once it scents my weakness ....” He coughed and Lorio stared at the blood speckling the hand-like paw that went up to his mouth.

“Look, you shouldn’t be talking. You need a doctor.”

Right. Maybe a vet would be more like it. She started to take off her jacket to lay it over him, but Elderee reached out and touched her arm.

“You need only walk it,” he said. “That’s all it takes. Walk it with intent. An old straight track ...

there for those who know to see it. Like a Gypsy road—un
Romano drom.
It will take you home.”

“How do you know where I live?”

And why, she asked herself, am I taking this all so calmly? Proba-bly because any minute she expected Steven Spielberg to step out and say, “Cut! That’s a take.”

“Not where you live—but
home.
Where all roads meet. Jacca calls it Lankelly—because of the sacred grove in the heart of the valley—but I just think of it as the Wood.”

Lorio shook her head. “This is a joke, right? You’re just wearing a ... a costume, right? A really good one.”

“No, I—”

“Sure. It’s almost Halloween. You were at a party and you got mugged. The Gypsy bit was a good guess. I can handle this—no problem. Now we’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

“Too ... too late ....1)

“Jeez, don’t fade out on me now. I can ...”

Her voice trailed off as she realized that the man in the monkey suit was looking behind her. She turned just in time to see a dog-like creature materialize out of nowhere. It came with a
whufft
of dis-placed air, bringing an unpleasant reek in its wake. Crouching on powerful legs, it looked like a cross between a hyena and a wolf, except for the protruding canines that Lorio had only seen in zoo-logical texts on extinct species such as the saber-toothed tiger.

“Flee!” Elderee croaked. “You can’t hope to face a polrech ....”

His warning came too late. With a rumbling growl that came from deep in its chest, the creature charged. Lorio didn’t even stop to think of what she was doing. She just hoisted her guitar case and swung it in a flailing arc as hard as she could. The end of the case holding the body of her guitar struck the creature with such force that it snapped the beast’s neck with an audible crack.

Lorio lost her hold on the case and it flew from her hands to land in a skidding crash well beyond the polrech that had dropped in its tracks. She stared at the dying creature, numb with fright. Adrena-line roared through her, bringing a buzz to her ears.

Saliva dripped from the creature’s open mouth. The pavement of the alley smoked at its acidic touch.

A pair of red fiery eyes glared at her. Taloned paws twitched, trying to reach her. When the light died in the creature’s eyes, its ‘shape wavered, then came apart, drifting away like smoke. A spark or two, like coals in a dying fire, hissed on the pavement, then there was nothing except for the small hole where the creature’s saliva had pooled.

Lorio hugged herself to keep from shaking. Slowly she turned to look at her companion, but he lay very still now.

“Uh ... Elderee?” she tried.

She moved forward, keeping half an eye on the alley behind her in case there were more of the hounds coming. Gingerly she touched Elderee. His eyes flickered open and something sparked between them, leaving Lorio momentarily dizzy. When her gaze cleared, she saw that the life-light was fading in his eyes now.

He had been holding his left arm across his lower torso. It fell free, revealing a gaping wound. Blood had matted in the fur around it. A queasy feeling started up in Lorio’s stomach, but she forced it down.

She tried to be calm. Something weird was going on—no doubt about that—but first things first.

“You must ...” Elderee began in a weak voice.

“Uh-uh,” Lorio interrupted. “You listen to me. You’re hurt. I don’t know what you are and I can’t take you to a regular hospital, but you look enough like a ... like an orangutan that the Zoo might take you in and hopefully patch you up. Now what I want you to do is keep your mouth shut and pretend you’re an animal, okay? Otherwise they’ll probably dissect you, just to see what makes you tick. We’ll figure out how to get you out of the Zoo again when that problem comes up.”

“But ...”

“Take it easy. I’m going to get us a ride.”

Without letting him reply, she bolted from the alleyway and ran down Yoors Street. She didn’t know how she was going to explain this to Terry—she wasn’t sure she could explain it to herself—but that didn’t matter. First she had to get Elderee to a place where his injury could be treated. Everything else had to wait until then. The Fan loomed up on her left and she charged into the restaurant, ignoring the stares she was getting as she pushed her way to Terry and Jane’s table.

“Lorio!” Terry said, looking up with a smile. “So you changed your—”

“No time to talk, Terry. I’m taking you up on that offer of a ride—only I need it right away.”

“What’s the big—”

“We’re talking desperate here, Terry. Please?”

The bass player of No Nuns Here exchanged a glance with his girlfriend. Jane shrugged, so he dumped a handful of bills on the table and hurried out of the restaurant with her, trying to catch up to Lorio who was already running back to the alleyway where she’d left her monkeyman.

It was a twenty minute drive from downtown Newford to the Metro Zoo, and another twenty minutes back again. Terry pulled his Toyota over to the curb in front of Lorio’s apartment building on Lee Street in Crowsea. She shared a second floor loft with a traditional musician named Angie Tichell in the old three-story brick building. The loft retained a consistent smell of Chinese food because of the ground floor that specialized in Mainland dishes.

Terry looked back between the bucket seats and studied Lorio for a moment.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

Lorio nodded. “At least they took him in,” she said.

They’d stayed in the Zoo parking lot long enough to be sure of that.

“I’m sure they’ll do the best they can for him.”

“But what if they can’t help him? I mean, he
looks
like an orang-utan, but what if he’s too alien for them to help him?”

Terry had no answer for her. He’d been shocked enough to see the ape with its orange-red fur lying there in the alleyway, but when he’d heard it talk ...

“Just what
is
he?” Jane asked.

Lorio wore a mournful expression. “I don’t know.” She sat there a moment longer, then stepped out of the car. “Thanks for the lift,” she told Terry as he got her guitar out of the back for her. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. You too, Jane,” she added, leaning into the open window on the passenger’s side of the car for a moment.

Jane touched her arm. “You take care of yourself,” she said.

Lorio nodded. She stepped back as the Toyota pulled away and stood watching its taillights until it turned west on McKennitt and was lost from view. Turning, she faced the door to her building and wished her roommate wasn’t away for the weekend. Being on her own in the loft tonight didn’t hold very much appeal.

That’s because you’re scared, she chided herself. Don’t be a baby. Just go to sleep.

She gave the night street one last look. A cab went by, but then the street was quiet again. No pedestrians at this time of night; everybody was sensibly in bed and asleep. The rain had stopped, the streetlights reflected in the puddles that it had left behind. Up and down the street the second floor windows were dark above the soft glow of the lit-up display windows of the stores on the ground floors.