Drink Down the Moon (4 page)

“Come on,” Henk said as the band finished “Baby Love” and left the stage.

He made his way behind the stage to where the band was relaxing with friends on the broad lawn of the tall three-storied house that towered over the proceedings. Johnny followed, the tight feeling in his chest still there. He wasn’t sure if he was nervous, or afraid. Maybe a little of both.

We call ourselves sidbe

.

There was something weird going on and he was beginning to have second thoughts about getting involved in it. The last thing he needed was to get mixed up with a bunch of

what? She’d said nothing last night to make him afraid. All she’d done was talk about Tom. She’d been nice about it all. Only why had she come when he’d played that tune? Why had she given him the carving. How had she pulled off that vanishing trick?”

He thought of just leaving, then and there, but then it was too late for second thoughts.

“Hey, Jemi!” Henk was calling. “I’ve got a friend I’d like you to meet.”

She turned at the sound of her name, a beer in hand. She appeared taller than last night, her hair was a little longer. But, then, she was wearing black pumps now, and her hair had been gelled to stand up in spikes.

“Hi, Henk.” She glanced at Johnny. “What’ve you got in there?” she asked, looking at his fiddle case. “A clarinet?”

“No. It’s a—”

“I know. A fiddle. I was just teasing.”

Johnny tried to think of something to say, but she was already looking back at Henk.

“What brings an old hippie like you out of the woodwork?” she asked, a quick smile taking any possible sting from the question.

“Thought I’d take Johnny slumming,” Henk replied. “You know— show him what it sounds like when white folk play black music.”

David Blair, the drummer, was standing near.

“This isn’t exactly a deep tan,” he said, holding out a dark-skinned arm.

“Well, that’s all the band’s got going for it, isn’t it? Solid rhythm.”

David grinned. “Yeah. And I play great basketball, too.”

Greg appeared at David’s elbow. “Hey, you guys want a drink? We’ve got pop and beer.”

“Sounds great,” Henk said.

As everyone started to drift off, Johnny touched Jemi’s shoulder.”

“Fiaina,” he said.

She turned towards him, a strange look in her eyes. “What did you say?”

Her eyes didn’t seem as big now as they had last night. Eye shadow was dark around them. She wore rhinestone earrings, each with three gleaming strands, and a necklace of fake pearls, tight like a choker around her neck. The thin spaghetti straps of her dress were pale against the brown tan of her shoulders.

“How did you do that last night?” Johnny asked. “How’d you just vanish?”

“Wait a sec— let’s back up a minute. Right now’s the first time I’ve met you.”

Johnny shook his head. “I played the tune, like Tom said I should, and you came. I’m not about to forget it. And you gave me this.”

Jemi had tossed her friends a quick glance and was backing away when Johnny brought the bone carving from his pocket and held it out to her on an open palm.

“I never

” Jemi started to say.

Her voice trailed off as she looked at the bone fiddle. She reached out with one finger and touched it.

“Where did you get this?” she asked, her gaze lifting to meet his.

“Last night. You gave it to me.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t me— but I think I’m beginning to get an idea of just who it was you did meet.”

“It was you,” Johnny said.

“Wasn’t. We had a rehearsal last night that went on till around two. Ask around if you don’t believe me.”

“But—”

“You met my sister. Jenna.”

“She said— you said your name was Fiaina.”

“Fiaina’s just a generic term,” Jemi told him. “It’s not a name. It’s like saying a Scotty dog. Or a Clydesdale horse.” She took pity on his confusion. “Look, I know what Jenna can be like. Are you planning to stick around for the rest of the show?”

“I guess so. Sure.”

“Okay. Let’s go get you a beer and relax a bit. I really don’t feel up to getting into anything too heavy on a break— I’ve got to get up and play again in a few minutes, you know? But afterwards, we’ll talk.”

“This Jenna—”

“Afterwards,” Jemi said firmly.

She grabbed him by the arm and steered him to where Henk and some of the others were talking around a cooler.

“Here,” she said as she got him a beer. “Your name’s Johnny— right?”

“Johnny Faw.”

She pointed at his fiddle case. “Are you any good with that?”

“I’m all right.”

“Great. Maybe we’ll play a couple of tunes together later. Do you know ‘Jackson’s’? Ever heard it played on a sax?”

Johnny shook his head. “But I’ve heard Moving Hearts.”

“Great band. I jammed with their piper once. Boy. Pipes and sax trading off on trad tunes— you wouldn’t think they’d sound so sweet together. Course, they’re both reed instruments, so—”

“Okay, kids!”

They looked over to see Greg waving his arms around as though he were leading a cavalry charge.

“Time to go wow ‘em again,” he said.

The Eurythmics tape that had been playing during the break faded out as the band began to get back on stage.

“Stick around— okay?” Jemi said.

Johnny nodded. “Break a leg,” he said.

Jemi shook her head. “In this band,” she told him, “it’s stub a toe.” She grinned when he smiled. “Get out there and dance, Johnny. I’ll be watching for you.”

And then she was gone, bounding onto the stage and strapping on her sax. Johnny drifted around to the front of the stage as the band kicked into “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

“She’s okay, isn’t she?” Henk said as he joined Johnny. “Did she give you any hot leads?”

“Things’ve gotten a little more complicated,” Johnny said.

“How so?”

“She looks just like the woman I met last night, only she says that woman’s her sister.”

“Go on.”

“No, really. She’s going to talk to me later.”

“So you’re going to stick around?”

Johnny nodded.

“Well, I’m taking off. Mountain Ash are playing up at Patty’s Place and I haven’t seen either of those guys for a long time. Maybe we can meet there later.”

“I don’t know. It all depends on what Jemi’s got to say.”

“Okay. Then maybe I’ll just call you tomorrow.”

“Sure.”

As Henk left, Johnny turned back to the stage and met Jemi’s gaze.

“Dance!” she mouthed at him.

The Jack of Kinrowan’s Tower, formerly the residence of Kinrowan’s Gruagagh, Bhruic Dearg, was an old three-storied house. It faced Belmont Avenue in Ottawa South, while its backyard looked out on Windsor Park. When the Gruagagh had lived there, the building had always had a deserted look about it. The new owners soon changed that.

Outside, the lawns were mown, the hedges and shrubberies trimmed, the flowerbeds weeded. The backyard held a small vegetable plot now, and if the rear hedge was a little unruly, that was only to ensure privacy from the park beyond. Three tall oak trees, two by the hedge and one closer to the house, stood watch over the yard, throwing their shade over most of it except for where the vegetable garden was laid out, close to the house.

Inside, things had changed as well. Bhruic Dearg had lived frugally. The downstairs rooms had ranged in decor from spartan to bare, for the Gruagagh had only used two rooms on the second floor. Now the downstairs had a homey, if somewhat cluttered, air to it. There were Oriental and rag carpets on the floor, bookcases overloaded with books, two sofas, three fat easy chairs, cabinets for the stereo and records, side tables, funky old standing lamps, and every kind of personal knickknack and treasure.

The kitchen had a nook with a small table and four chairs in it. There were pots, pans and utensils hanging from its beamed ceiling and the walls. Pictures of wild animals, English cottages— at least five of Anne Hathaway’s, showing the famous garden— and barnyard scenes hung wherever there was room.

Upstairs, there were two bedrooms in constant use, with a pair of guest rooms and a large bathroom. It was on the third floor that the building retained the strangeness of a wizard’s tower.

There were bookcases all along one wall here as well, but its books held the lore and histories of Faerie as fact, unlike the books that Johnny Faw’s grandfather had collected, which contained only mankind’s view of Faerie. Another wall held a long worktable, with a window above it. On either side of the window were hundreds of tiny drawers, each filled with herbs, medicines and remedies. The table itself was a clutter of jars and bottles, notebooks, quill pens now long dried, various knives, pestles and mortars, and tools. Against a third wall were a pair of comfortable reading chairs with a low table and a reading lamp between them. The fourth wall held a large window. Leaning on its sill and looking out was the Jack of Kinrowan.

Jacky Rowan was a young woman in her early twenties with short-cropped blonde hair and a quick smile. She was dressed casually in faded jeans, moccasins, and an old patched sweater. Her eyes were a dark blue-grey, her gaze intent on what she studied through the window.

The curious property of that particular window was that the entire city could be seen from it, every part of it, in close enough detail that individual figures could be made out and recognized. It was a gruagagh’s window; an enchantment born of Faerie.

The Tower itself stood on a criss-crossing of leys, the moonroads that the fiaina sidhe followed in their rade to replenish their luck. In this Seelie Court, it was the Gruagagh who had been the heart of the realm, gathering luck from the leys and spreading it through the Laird’s land of Kinrowan. As Jacky had taken his place, she was now Kinrowan’s heart as well as its Court Jack. The realm that the window looked out upon was all under her care.

Her attention was focused on a house in the Glebe, an area just north of Ottawa South that the faerie called Cockle Tom’s Garve. Earlier in the evening she had noticed a greyish discolouration about the house— a vague aura of fogging that emanated from every part of the building. As that house also stood on a crossing of a number of leys— though not so many as the Jack’s Tower— it was a matter of some concern.

Jacky looked down at the book she had propped up on the windowsill beside her, running her finger down half a page as she read, then returned her gaze to the house.

“Basically,” she said, “it just says it’s some kind of depression.”

“How so?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jacky said, feeling frustrated.

She turned and sat on the sill to look at her friend.

Kate Hazel was sitting on a tall stool by the worktable, a number of other books and one of the Gruagagh’s journals spread out in front of her. She was Jacky’s age, a slim woman with dark brown curly hair that was tied back in a short ponytail. Jacky envied Kate’s natural curls. Jacky’s own hair, if she let it grow out, tended to just hang there.

“Well, according to this,” Kate said, tapping one of her books, “a grey hue on a building or place— especially one situated on one or more lines of power— means something’s interrupting the flow.”

“And that means?”

“That it needs to be fixed, or we’ll have a problem. If the flow of the leys gets too disrupted, or if it spreads out through their networking lines

Dum da dum dum.”

Jacky sighed. “How can a house be depressed?”

“I think your book’s referring to the flow rate of the current being depressed,” Kate said. “Not that the house is bumming out.”

“Does your book say how to fix it?”

Kate shook her head, then grinned and waved at the wall of books. “But I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.”

“Oh, lovely. One day we really should take the time and index them.”

“I’ll bet one of the wallystanes would do the trick.”

“We’ve only got six left,” Jacky replied. “I think we should save them for something important.”

Jacky had won the wallystanes in a bargain with another Jack— nine of them, all told. They were spellstones, the proverbial wishes of fairy tales, though unfortunately, they weren’t quite as all-encompassing as in the stories.

They’d wasted their first one trying to wish Jacky into being a gruagagh. All that had happened was that she’d walked around for a few weeks in Bhruic Dearg’s shape until they found a hob skillyman who could take the charm off. The next two had been used for them each to gain a working knowledge of the languages of Faerie so that they could read the books that the Gruagagh had left them. After that, Jacky had hoarded the remaining six stones like a miser might her gold.

“I think an index is of prime importance,” Kate said, looking at the wall of books.

She stood up from her stool, stuffed a loose tail from the white shirt she was wearing back into the waist of her skirt, and walked over to where Jacky stood.

“Show me the house again,” she said.

Jacky started to point it out when the doorbell sounded downstairs.

“Who’s that?” Jacky muttered.

“That was the back door,” Kate said.

She had a better ear for that sort of thing than Jacky did. Only faerie came visiting at the back door.

“Maybe it’s Finn,” Jacky said as she led the way downstairs. “Do you think he knows anything about ley depressions?”

Kate laughed. “You sound like a pop psychiatrist.”

“Ho ho.”

They had reached the kitchen by then. Jacky flung the door open— a “Hello, Finn,” on her lips— but though it was a hob standing there, it wasn’t their usual visitor. Instead it was a younger cousin of Finn’s— one of the Laird’s foresters.

“Dunrobin Mull, if you please, Missus Jack,” the hob said. “At your service.”

He was nervously turning his red cap in his hand and the two women knew immediately that whatever his reason for coming was, it wasn’t to bring good news.

“You’d better come in,” Jacky said.

Four

The dance ended at eleven— in accordance with city noise ordinances. Johnny pitched in, helping the band and their friends dismantle the stage and load all the equipment into the van and pickup truck that it had come in. By a quarter past twelve, he and Jemi were saying their farewells and started to walk slowly down Chesley towards Bank Street.