Widdershins (17 page)

After awhile he went looking for an electric outlet and plugged himself in to charge the batteries of his new iPod and his other peripherals. The outlet he’d chosen was near the big windows at the front of the store, giving him a view of the big parking lot. Across the lot he could see the dark bulk of the Woodforest Plaza Mall where the rest of his court were going about their business. He would rejoin them soon enough, but for now he was happy to sit beside the cash register, kicking his heels against the counter, which made a cheerful thumping sound—

Until he saw a halfdozen of the Bogan Boys go ambling across the parking lot.

He stopped kicking the counter and hid behind the register, hoping he hadn’t been seen. It wasn’t so much that he was afraid of them, as that the Bogan Boys were always up to no good, and the trouble that followed them had a tendency to spill over onto anyone unfortunate enough to be in their vicinity.

Over the past few years, they had become more and more like those old Irish wolves, the hard men. The hard men had been a pack of shapechanging spirits who’d once held the city under their sway until, rumour had it, the green land itself arose and swallowed them whole. But where the hard men were tall, with old dark hurts burning in their eyes, the Bogan Boys were half the size of a fullgrown human and carried only spite in their small dark eyes. What they lacked in height, they made up for in muscle, stocky as dwarves, but quick and cunning. Their heads were large, their hair raggedy, their teeth sharp. And they were not at all pleasant company.

But Edgan wasn’t looking for their company. He hadn’t been looking for them at all and would be quite content to keep his own counsel, and let them keep theirs. Except, like any treekin, he had too much cat in his blood—a deep-rooted feline twitch that would travel the length of his nerves to tickle his mind at the faintest sign of a mystery, no matter how small. He could no more let a riddle go unsolved than he could pass by the perfect length of colourful wire without picking it up. So curiosity had him unplug himself from the outlet and then slip out of the store through a bodach door to trail along behind the little pack, his head brimming with questions.

What were bogans doing out tonight in their grey hunting leathers, knives strapped to their waists, bows and arrows in hand? Because hunts were forbidden in the city, and who was brave or foolish enough to go out into the green and wild to dare the wrath of the first people, from whom immigrant humans and fairies had already stolen so much? Not Big Dan Cockle and his little hard men for all their strutting bravado, yet here they were all the same, armed for a hunt at the north edge of the city, where protection for fairies ended unless you kept to the man-made highways and roads.

Edgan hesitated when the bogans stepped from the safety of the parking lot into the adjoining field, their footsteps crunching the dry, dead weeds underfoot. He looked across the field. In a half year, if not sooner, the bulldozers would come to clear this land, too, and some new enormous store would spring up in its place. Concrete and glass and steel. And with the man-made structure in place, it would be safe for fairies to venture out into it.

But until then it belonged to the green-brees, the native spirits of the wild and the green. Fairy-kind were not welcome in their lands—especially not to hunt. Though perhaps Big Dan and his men only carried weapons because they ventured into those chancy lands, to protect themselves in case of attack. Which didn’t begin to explain the
why
of their daring the green-brees’ anger.

Edgan looked across the field. A fair distance from where he stood, he could see a small copse of wintered oaks, bare limbs reaching skyward with clusters of twigs grasping for the stars. A thicket of scrub brush grew out of the jumble of rocks at the feet of the oaks. The snow that lay in patches in the field would be thicker in there, crusted with ice.

As he watched, the Bogan Boys made their way steadily across the field toward that oak copse. Edgan hesitated a moment longer, then entered the field himself, pinpricks of nervousness worrying between his shoulder blades. Unlike the bogans, he chose his route carefully and didn’t make a sound. Halfway across the field, he sensed a presence in the air above him long before he actually heard the sound of wings. He immediately dropped to the ground and crouched motionless in the browned weeds until the presence was gone.

Owl, he saw when he felt he could take the chance to look. He watched the broad wings of the bird in the sky ahead of him, though in its present shape he couldn’t tell if it was an ordinary bird or a green-bree. It appeared to be making for the same copse the Bogan Boys were, but then it swerved and sailed toward the line of trees at the far edge of the field.

Of the Bogan Boys there was no sign—not until the owl had passed the copse. Then their grey bogan shapes rose from the cover of dead weeds and they continued toward the oaks, dry vegetation breaking under their boots.

Edgan hurried after them, but they disappeared in amongst the trees before he could catch up. When he reached the edge of the copse himself, he listened for a long moment. He could hear the murmur of conversation. Bogan voices and another, unfamiliar one, low and resonating.

Now would be a good time to turn around and go back, because if the bogans caught him here, they’d know he was spying on them—something that would put any fairy in a bad humour. And considering that bogans were bad-humoured in the first place and could carry a grudge forever, retreat was the sensible option.

But he’d come this far, and a secret meeting between Big Dan’s Bogan Boys and some mysterious stranger, all the way out here in the wild and green, was far too enticing to resist. Gossip and stories were like coin in the fairy realms and this had the potential for a grand tale, depending on who the bogans were meeting and what they were up to. In the right ears, a tale like this could have Edgan rich in favours owed him.

And if they didn’t catch him spying, then none would be the wiser, would they?

So he crept over the boulders, avoiding the patches of ice and snow as he followed a rabbit trail through the brush that took him in the direction of the voices. When he was close enough to hear what was being said, he pushed the “record” button on the PDA that was wired into his upper arm.

“. . . unlikely that Grey has taken a human under his protection. He dislikes them almost as much as he does your people.”

Edgan didn’t recognize the stranger speaking, but his low voice seemed to wake a sympathetic quiver in the rocks underfoot. It was a voice that had to belong to an old and powerful spirit, and not one from any of the local fairy courts or he would recognize it. Sooner or later, everyone came by to see Mother Crone.

“I’m only telling you what happened, Odawa,” Big Dan responded. “Are you calling me a liar?”

Odawa, Odawa, Edgan repeated to himself, trying to find a reference. Oh, if only he was connected to his database back at the court. If the name was in there, he’d know in a moment who the bogans were meeting with in secret.

“I’m not calling you anything,” Odawa replied. “I’m merely making an observation.”

“Well, observe this: your Grey has him a human doxie, and that’s a plain fact because we took the thumps to find it out.”

“It’s a shame you weren’t able to give as good as you got.”

“Wasn’t from lack of trying.”

Edgan decided to dare a peek. He took one look, rising just high enough so he could see over the rocks he was hiding behind, then quickly dropped out of sight once more. In that moment he’d seen the Bogan Boys lounging about under the trees. Big Dan and the man he’d called Odawa stood together in a pool of moonlight, a few steps away from the others.

Edgan shivered in his hiding place. No wonder he hadn’t recognized the stranger. He was neither human nor fairy, but a green-bree. Some old spirit of this land, tall and grim faced with a sheen like scales on his skin, his lips thin, his eyes an eerie milky-white. Those were a seer’s eyes—blind in this world, seeing far into others.

A blind green-bree, Edgan thought. Powerful and with a speaking name of Odawa. He didn’t need his database to tell him that this was something new. And if a green-bree was meeting and making plans with bogans, it meant real trouble.

Oh, this was big—too big to bargain with. He’d take this to Mother Crone and give it to her free. But first he needed to learn more.

“You’re certain they’re lovers?” Odawa asked.

“That or close friends, but who beds a friend, and what else is a woman good for except for bedding?”

That brought a chorus of snickers from the other bogans.

“Of course,” Odawa said in a tone of voice that made Edgan, at least, know the green-bree wasn’t of the same opinion. “And you know where to find her?”

“Oh, sure. She’s a musician—plays our music, she does, the little pluiker, but licks the ass of the corbae.”

“You’ve seen her do this?” Odawa asked, his voice dry.

“Nah, but you know she would if he told her to. Those damn blackbirds have everyone treating them like they’re the kings of Shite Hill.”

“I gave her a push down the stairs,” one of the other bogans said, “but I got the wrong one. Her sister or something. Still, she went down hard.”

The other bogans laughed.

“Why?” Odawa asked.

“ ‘Cause I pushed her.”

“No, why did you push her?”

“She were mouthing off about us.”

“Deserved it,” another bogan said. “It ain’t right, guttermouths like that, disrespecting us.”

They should come by the mall, Edgan thought, and see what was for sale on the shelves of the toy stores and gift shops. Enough pretty little fairies to turn your stomach—as though there were only flitters and nothing else in the Fairy realm. A quick tour of such stores would show them the real meaning of disrespect for every denizen of Fairy who wasn’t tiny and sweet.

“So she’s a musician,” Odawa said.

“And they’re not bad,” Big Dan told him—reluctantly, Edgan thought. “She and that band of hers. Saw her outside with Grey between their sets last night.”

“What were they doing?”

“Talking. But we weren’t stupid enough to get to close to
him,
so who knows what it was about?”

“When she’d be licking his ass,” one of the bogans put in.

They all laughed, except for the green-bree.

“We just had us a look so we’d have something to tell you,” Big Dan said. “Like you asked us to. Keeping our eyes open and all that shite.”

“I appreciate your making the extra effort.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like we care for any of them. The blackbirds and their like won’t even let us have a ramble through their lands.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re hunting their kin,” Odawa said. “How would you feel if they hunted your people?”

“I thought you didn’t like the bugger.”

“I don’t. I’m merely showing you how it might seem from their perspective.”

“Who gives a flying shite about their perspective?”

“Point taken.”

They fell silent for a moment, and it was so quiet Edgan could hear the harsh breathing of the bogans.

“Take me to her,” Odawa said then.

“They’re in Sweetwater and that’s a ways, ‘less we step between.”

What a strange comment, Edgan thought. Why should stepping between matter to a green-bree? The between and otherworld were as free for them to use as for any spirit. Walking to Sweetwater would take them a few hours, unlike travelling through the between where they could be there in a fraction of the time. So why did the green-bree feel he needed to avoid the between?

“We have time,” Odawa said. “And it’s such a fine night for a stroll, don’t you think?”

Which didn’t answer Edgan’s curiosity. But it didn’t seem to mean anything to the bogans, one way or another.

“You know best,” Big Dan said.

“ ‘Course he does,” a bogan close to where Edgan hid whispered to his companion. “Isn’t he supposed to know everything?”

They both snickered, and Edgan filed away that comment with the few other bare bones of information he’d managed to glean concerning this spirit.

When they set off, he shut off his PDA and stopped recording. He gave the group a few moments head start before he followed after them, pausing when the protection of the trees ended and there was only the open field in front of him. The others were already halfway across, making for the highway.

What now? Edgan wondered. Follow them to Sweetwater, or take what he already had to Mother Crone?

“How curious,” Mother Crone said after she’d had Edgan play back the conversation for a third time. “You said he was blind?”

Edgan nodded. He turned off his PDA.

“I didn’t get much more than a glimpse,” he said, “but he was certainly blind and definitely—”

He almost said “a green-bree,” but caught himself in time. Mother Crone didn’t feel the same animosity toward the native spirits that so many fairies did, nor did she approve of negative references to them.

“—one of the spirits native to this land,” he finished. “And an old and powerful one, too. I didn’t dare chance taking a photo, but I dearly wanted to.”

“No point in showing your hand,” Mother Crone agreed.

“But maybe you would have recognized him. There’s no reference in the database.”

Mother Crone nodded. “It’s a big land, this Turtle Island, filled with spirits and more emigrating to it every day. It would have been more surprising if you
had
found a reference.”

She was right, of course, but that hadn’t stopped Edgan from checking. All that was to be found there was the information he’d downloaded himself when he got back from the oak copse.

“Why do you think this Odawa won’t travel by the between?” he asked.

Mother Crone smiled. “Maybe he really does enjoy walking at night.”

Edgan snorted.

“But more likely he’s avoiding someone,” she went on. “It’s not so easy to hide your presence once you leave this world to walk in another.”

Thinking back on the conversation he’d recorded, Edgan said, “This is corbae business. That’s who he’s hiding from.”