Widdershins (18 page)

“Probably.”

“Maybe we should we tell them. They would owe us a favour then.”

“They would. But I’m curious . . .”

Her voice trailed off. Edgan waited patiently for her to finish her thought and share it with him.

They were in the central part of the mall, sitting on the stairs leading up from the food court. Below them fairies were dancing and gossiping, but Mother Crone looked past them, her gaze on the night that lay outside the mall’s glass doors.

“If they’re walking to this place . . .” she began.

“Sweetwater. Yes.”

“How far is it?”

Edgan shrugged. “A few hours by foot.”

He’d come back to the court when he realized he had time to give the information to Mother Crone and still catch up to the bogans and their mysterious companion before they reached Sweetwater, if she thought he should. He had no reluctance to go by the between. Truth was, like most fairies, he preferred it because it meant there was no chance he’d run into any of the green-brees on their own lands. The between belonged to no one and everyone. And while Mother Crone was right—it
was
impossible to hide your presence there—the reverse was also true. It was easy to sense the presence of others and so keep out of their way.

“I don’t trust bogans,” Mother Crone said. “Especially not Big Dan. And I wonder why anyone would ally themselves with them. They’re hardly formidable.”

“They’ve been trying to fill the shoes of the hard men these past few years,” Edgan said.

He saw her eyes fill with memory.

“Now
they
were dangerous,” she said.

Edgan nodded. “But something in the wild and the green swallowed them whole and never spat a bit of them back out.”

“And you think the bogans are trying to take their place?”

“You should see the way they swagger about—they’re worse than ever.”

Mother Crone gave a slow nod. “I’ve not really been paying much attention to them. Are they feuding with the corbae?”

Edgan shrugged. “No one much cares for the blackbirds.”

“They always struck me as minding their own business.”

“Trouble is,” Edgan said, “no one really knows what their business is, so it’s easy to get on the wrong side of them.”

Mother Crone gave him a sharp look.

“Have our people been having trouble with them again?” she asked.

“Not like when the mall was being built.”

That had been a bad time. The developers had bulldozed a crow roost to make the mall and the corbae had been furious, doing their best to make the building process as unprofitable as they could. But the fairies had been delighted with a new safe incursion into forbidden lands and made a point of helping the builders, all of which had caused no end of trouble between the two. It took a meeting between the oldest of the local corbae and the Queen of all the Newford fairy courts to finally set the matter to rest. With the accusations and demands that flew back and forth between both sides, it had not been an easy task, even for such level heads as Lucius Portsmouth and Tatiana McGree.

Mother Crone gave a slow nod.

“Was there anything in the database about this Grey the bogans and Odawa spoke of?” she asked.

“It’s a common speaking name,” Edgan said, “among our people as much as among theirs.”

“So we only know that he’s corbae. Fair enough. Are you willing to go to Sweetwater to see what else you can learn?”

“Of course.”

“And you’ll be careful?”

“I’m always careful. It’s how I’ve come to live as long as I have.”

She smiled. “Only be doubly so tonight, as a favour to me.”

Edgan stood up and gave her a little bow.

“I will,” he said.

Then he stepped into the between and was gone.

Geordie

I’m never happier than when I’m playing music
and this gig at the Custom House was the perfect venue to simply fall into the music and let it take me away. The afternoon crowd was large and appreciative, but the room was packed wall-to-wall with people for the evening show, and they greeted us with a roar of approval as soon as we took the stage. We hadn’t even played a note yet.

The kids were great to play with—okay, they’re in their late twenties, early thirties, but they seemed like kids to me. Young and full of energy and sass. I’d played with Con before, but Lizzie was a revelation on the fiddle and, next to Miki Greer, I decided that Andy was the best accordion player to come out of the Newford Celtic music scene. Their arrangements were inventive, but never so far out that you lost the magic of the tune, and they kept me on my toes. Which is good, because if it’s not challenging, what’s the point in playing?

So I was having a good time, the band and crowd were having a good time, and even Siobhan—relegated to the merch table where Jilly had joined her—was grinning and bobbing her head, though I knew she’d rather be up here on stage. I didn’t blame her. I love going to see a good band, just sitting back and letting the music wash over me, but there’s always a part of me that wants to be up there
playing,
it doesn’t matter how good the music is. When you’re a musician, you want to play.

We had Siobhan up for a few songs in the first show—singing lead on one and harmony on the others—and again in the earlier part of the evening show. Near the end of our last set for the night, with the Corona clock over the bar reading twelve-thirty, she got up to sing “The New Doffing Mistress” with Lizzie. I stopped her before she could leave the stage at the end of the song.

“What’s your favourite tune?” I asked.

She gave me a puzzled look. “God, I don’t know. There are so many great ones.”

“Sure. But if you were going to play a tune right now, what would you play?”

“Something fun and fast,” she said, “like ‘The Mouth of the Tobique,’ or maybe ‘The Bucks of Oranmore.’ ”

“Hold that thought,” I told her.

I went to the back of the stage, put my fiddle in its case and got her fiddle out of hers. I gave the tuning a quick check, adjusted the E string, then brought it back to the front of the stage and handed it to her. We could have used my fiddle, but I wanted her to be as comfortable as possible. And I know, fiddles and bows all seem pretty much the same, but they’re not. Every player gets used to the minute variations and idiosyncrasies of his or her own instrument.

“I really can’t play,” she said, “though lord knows I want to.”

“You just have to do the fingering. I’ll do the bowing.”

She grinned. “No way.”

“Come on. Aren’t you game?”

“I’m sure to mess it up, but I’ll give it a shot.”

“You won’t mess it up,” I said as she got her fiddle up under her chin.

I got in close behind her, brought my arm around in front and stroked her fiddle’s strings a couple of times with my bow. The crowd roared with approval when they figured out what we were doing.

“I’ll need you to count us in,” I said.

“Andy usually does that.”

So I turned to him.

“We’re doing ‘The Mouth of the Tobique,’ ” I said. “Would you count us in? And don’t hold back—she wants it fast.”

Andy shook his head, but he smiled. “This I’ve got to see. One-two-three
-four!
”

And we were off.

Except we weren’t, because Siobhan’s fingers stumbled in the first couple of bars. She turned to Andy.

“Again!” she cried.

This time she got it, and we really were off, blasting through ‘The Mouth of the Tobique’ at hyper-speed. Con joined us on his guitar when we got to the third part of the tune, but Lizzie and Andy waited till we’d gotten through the whole tune once on our own before they came in as well.

I thought the roof was going to come off the place when we finished. Siobhan was beaming from ear to ear. She put her mouth near my ear, said “Thank you” over the roar of the crowd, then kissed my cheek.

“Couldn’t let you sit out the whole night without playing a tune,” I told her.

She handed me her fiddle and waved to the crowd as she made her way back to the merch table. I caught Jilly’s gaze and smiled at the approval I saw in it. I replaced Siobhan’s fiddle in its case, retrieved my own, and then we were off with another set of reels.

The easy camaraderie between the four of us up here on the stage got me thinking about my conversation with Christy yesterday. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to put together a real band and do some touring. I loved the music and I didn’t really mind travelling. So I’d have to record a CD to get the gigs and have something to sell after the show. Was that really such a big deal? Everybody else did it, so why shouldn’t I? I could even put some of my own music on it. For that matter, I had enough tunes I’d written over the years that I could fill a CD with them and still have some left over.

Con sang a song after we finished the reels, then Lizzie led us off on a truly magnificent version of “The Stray away Child.” Slow and stately, filled with heart and grace.

I switched to harmonies in the second position when we began to repeat the tune. Lizzie looked at me and smiled, then closed her eyes again, leaning into the music. I let my gaze drift over the crowd until it was drawn to a tall figure standing by the door at the back of the room. I couldn’t really see much of him, what with the dim lighting and the cigarette smoke, but something about him grabbed my attention, and it wasn’t because he was wearing sunglasses. It took me a moment to realize what he was. The dark glasses were a typical fairy touch, considering how they can see as well in the dark as we can in the middle of the day. But fairy like to stand out, even when they’re playing at being human.

At the end of the tune, I stepped closer to Lizzie.

“Is that your friend Grey?” I asked. “Standing over there by the door—the tall guy with the sunglasses.”

She looked for herself.

“I don’t see anybody,” she said.

She was right. The tall man was gone, though a hint of his presence remained in the room, like an afterimage in your eyes when you’re momentarily blinded by a car’s headlights.

“What made you—” Lizzie began.

But Andy was already counting us into our last set for the night, and there was no time to talk again until much later. We finished the set, did a couple of encores. The band signed their CDs and chatted with their fans. I started taking down the gear, putting away instruments and mikes, coiling cables. I was almost done before any of the others could join me to help finish up. Then we commandeered a couple of tables near the stage: the band, Jilly and me, Eddie, and a few hangers-on—local musicians that the band had met over the weekend.

The others were having a rousing discussion about the merits of various single malts when Lizzie pulled a chair over to sit beside me.

“What made you think you saw Grey earlier?” she asked, finally getting to finish the question she’d started earlier.

I shrugged. “I didn’t know it was him, exactly, just that it was somebody who walks between the worlds. I guess I assumed it was him because of the way he was watching you play—if anybody from the otherworld was going to be that interested in you, he seemed the best bet.”

“How could you tell that’s where he was from?”

“You learn to recognize it after awhile. They carry a shimmer—like there’s a heat mirage pushing up against the edges of where they interact with the world.”

“Is that like an aura?”

“I suppose, only without the colour. It’s not something that’s very obvious, unless you know to look for it.”

“How did you learn?” she asked.

“Nobody taught me. It’s just something I picked up. I’ve spent a lot of time in a fairy court over the past couple of years.”

“What’s that like? God, I’m so full of questions, aren’t I? I must be driving you crazy.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“So what
is
it like?”

I smiled. “The music’s better on a regular basis and people generally look different. Sometimes so different, they’re not even people.”

“I still can’t believe all these stories my grandfather told Siobhan and me are actually true.”

I gave her another smile. “Well, like my brother says, ‘Just because one impossible thing is true, doesn’t mean they all are.’ ”

She gave me a slow nod. “So they all have this . . . shimmer about them?”

“Everybody does who’s spent any amount of time in the otherworld. I’ve got it. Jilly’s got it, though she has another kind of shine, too—like her spirit’s too big for her body, so it escapes through the pores of her skin.”

Lizzie looked across the table to where Jilly was laughing with one of the local players. I think Con told me his name was Neil.

“I don’t see anything,” she said.

“Like I said, it takes time to learn how to see it. And it’s not of much use, except to tell when some fairy or one of the animal people is wandering around in human skin.”

Her eyes got wide at that.

“Come on,” I said. “You saw it for yourself the other night when you met that deer man.”

“Except he had a deer head, so it was pretty obvious he wasn’t human.”

I nodded.

“Look,” I said. “Don’t get all caught up in trying to figure out who’s human and who’s not, or what it all means. Mostly—at least when we’re talking about the ones that interact with humans—they’re just like us. There are certainly amoral fairies out there—and I’m talking real nightmare material—but it’s not like the human race is all sunshine and light, either. Just treat whoever you meet the way you’d want them to treat you and you’ll be okay.”