Widdershins (4 page)

She held the last note, lightening the pressure of her bow on the strings until the note whispered away into silence. She tucked the fiddle under her arm and let the bow dangle from her forefinger. Opening her eyes, she regarded the little mound of dirt.

There, she thought. Now that felt right. Nothing should have to die, hard and alone, with no one to mourn their going. Not even in a dream.

She started to walk back to the car, then paused, realizing that, once again, she was no longer alone. Her pulse quickened as she turned. The moon was almost gone now, the night much darker than when her car had first broken down. At first she thought it was a huge deer standing behind her. Then she realized it was a man. Or at least the shape of a man, dressed in tunic and trousers of some kind of light-coloured cloth that made his skin appear to be very dark. On his shoulders he wore a headdress of a deer’s head, the tines of his antlers rising up into the starry sky like a smaller version of the elm at her back.

There was just enough light for her to see the glisten of tears on his cheeks.

“That was kindly done,” he said.

When she saw the lips move, she realized it wasn’t a mask, but for some reason that didn’t trouble her.

His voice was soft and warm, husky with emotion. She wondered if her dream had now conjured up the ghostly spirit of the dead animal for whom she’d played her funereal air. It didn’t matter. This was far better than the horrible little bogan men, or the brusque Indian, even if he had rescued her and used his magic to fix her car.

This was like the time that she and Siobhan had gone camping with her grandfather. Pappy always went to bed late, but he was an early riser, too. “Don’t need the sleep like I used to,” he’d say, “and I never needed much then.” The two of them were up and sitting on a log by the lake where the campsite touched the water when they heard a rustle behind them. Turning slowly, they saw a doe and her fawn stepping out across the dew-laden grass.

She’d never seen eyes so warm and deep and brown. Something rose up from deep in her chest, and she’d gripped Pappy’s hand as they sat there for a good fifteen minutes, watching the two creatures feed. And long after they were gone, that feeling stayed inside her, the same deep warmth that she’d seen in the eyes of the deer. Years later, that memory could put her in a dreamy trance that helped wash away hurts or sorrows or simply the feeling that the world was all the same, one day blurring into the next.

This moment was like that, a great wash of awe that didn’t make her feel small, but rather, made her feel connected to everything.

“I . . . thought he needed some kind of a send-off,” she said.

The deer man nodded, antlers dipping.

“Her name was Anwatan—‘calm water’ in your tongue. She was my daughter and I give you the knowledge of her name as a gift for the music you played to send her spirit on its way.”

“Thank you,” she said, not quite sure what else to say. She’d always been bad at condolences. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

His sigh of response held a world of sorrow and hurt.

“A father should not outlive his child,” he said.

“I can’t imagine what that must feel like.”

He dipped his antlers again. “I hope you never do. It . . . there’s an emptiness in me where she once was, and moment by moment it seems to only become larger.” His gaze found hers. “Sharing the gift of her true name with another helps only a little.”

That made Lizzie think of her rescuer.

You don’t need my name.

“Is there something special about names?” she asked.

She saw a quick flash of teeth—a smile, she realized, but it never reached his eyes. It was the smile that you saw at a funeral, when everyone’s trying to be normal, but you know it never will be. Or won’t for a very, very long time.

“Names are everything,” he said. “If you know the full, true name of a thing, it is at your mercy.”

“So it’s rude to ask someone their name.”

That got her another attempt at a smile. “It depends on who’s asking and why. If it’s someone who doesn’t know better . . .”

He shrugged.

“So that’s why he wouldn’t tell me his name,” she said.

She was speaking more to herself, but the deer man lifted his head, his nostrils working.

“I see,” he said. “There were others here—aganesha and a cousin of mine.”

“I guess I mean the cousin. Was he another deer man? He didn’t have antlers.”

The deer man shook his head. “He’d look strange with them, a bird with antlers.”

“A bird . . . ?”

“He’s corbae. My people are cerva. We’re cousins, but not close.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They’re just tribes,” he said. “His people usually sleep through the moon’s rise and set. Mine wander under her stillness because her light feeds our spirits, as food does our bodies. But we’re still cousins. If you need a speaking name for him, he’s been known to answer to Whiskey Grey—or just Grey.”

Lizzie smiled. “You make him sound like a bootlegger.”

“Well, I’ve heard that old jay does like his drink. He has his own sorrows, they say. Old ones. I don’t know the details.”

Neither spoke for a moment. Lizzie looked past the deer man for a moment to see the last part of the moon slip under the horizon.

“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” she said.

“No. This is
Kakagi-aki
—your world. The dreamlands lie on the other side of the between.”

“It still feels like dreaming.”

The deer man nodded. “Perhaps it’s better if you see it that way.”

“That’s what Grey said. He told me to forget about all of this. To go on with my life like it had never happened. But how can I do that if it’s real?”

“I’m told forgetting can be easy, if it’s what you wish. But . . .”

When he didn’t finish, Lizzie prompted him. “But what?”

“You might not be allowed to forget. Or it might be better if you didn’t. Not if the aganesha have marked you. It would be better to be prepared, should they decide that you owe them for your intrusion into their business tonight.”

Lizzie looked nervously around them. “Do you mean the bogans? Is that what you call those little men?”

“A bogan is a kind of aganesha, yes.”

“So aganesha is your word for fairies.”

The deer man nodded. “It’s what we call all the beings that came with your ancestors to our world.”

“But you’re not aganesha yourselves?”

He made an angry sound that rose from deep in his chest and spat on the ground.

“We are the spirits of
this
land,” he said. “We don’t steal from others.”

Lizzie took a step back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”

“No,” the deer man said. “I should apologize. How could you know? Until tonight, it seems you knew nothing about any of us.”

“So these aganesha are trying to steal your lands from you? I guess the way Europeans did from the native people?”

“Not all of them. Most are content to keep to the territories spoiled by your people. But the green and the wild, these are still ours. Until you build upon it, the aganesha have no claim to the wild places.”

Lizzie gave a slow nod. “So your people stay in the forests and the aganesha stay in the cities.”

“We go where we please,” the deer man said. “We can live in your cities—it is still our land under the concrete and steel. But most of us don’t choose to.”

He looked to the sky, reading something in the position of the stars, Lizzie assumed from what he said next.

“I must go. I have still the sad tale of my daughter to tell my family, and the hour grows late.”

“I really am so sorry about what happened to her.”

“I know. I heard that in the lament you played for her. I saw it in the reverence with which you laid her flesh in the ground. I—my family—we are in your debt.”

Lizzie shook her head. “No, I just did what anybody would have done.”

“Then you don’t know many people. Most would have left what they found of her alongside the road like so much refuse.”

“But I don’t want anything from you.”

“I know that, too. But you could still have brought more trouble upon yourself from those aganesha. If they come after you, call for me and I will come. My speaking name is Walks-with-Dreams. My friends call me Walker and I hope you will, too.”

“I . . . do I really have to worry about those bogans?”

“Probably not. But it’s better to be careful. My daughter wasn’t.”

“Grey said to play music—that it would stop them.”

“It might give them pause. But you’d do better to call for me.”

“I travel a lot.”

“Distance doesn’t mean the same thing to my people as it does to yours. If you call for Walker, I will hear you, no matter where you are.”

“Okay. My name’s Lizzie—”

“Careful,” he said before she could finish. “The night has ears, and we are too newly met for you to entrust me with your true name.”

“But among my people we use them all the time.”

He gave a slow nod. “And so squander the power of it. Unless the names you use are speaking names, and you simply don’t know your true names.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

The deer man nodded. “Neither would I. That’s a puzzle for the shaman to worry over, not common folk like you and me.” He lifted his hand. “Keep your strength, Lizzie. And thank you once more.”

And then he, too, like Grey and the bogans before him, was simply gone.

Lizzie stood for a long moment, listening to the quiet night around her. Finally, she turned and walked back to the car, her head brimming with all she’d been through since her car broke down. The first part had been scary, and handling the deer meat had been kind of gross, but talking with Walker, just being in his presence, had woken a song in her heart that she didn’t want to lose.

Maybe this
wasn’t
a dream. And if it was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to wake up from it.

Because for the first time in longer than she could remember, the world seemed to have weight to it. Everything seemed to have importance and meaning, and she felt connected to it in a way that never happened unless she was deep in a tune, lost in her music.

She made it back to Sweetwater without further incident and found the garage that Grey had recommended. There was an old and battered sign above the door to the work bay that read Tommy & Joe’s. The whole place seemed sort of run-down and nothing about it really instilled much confidence in her, but she decided to leave her car all the same. Grey
had
saved her life.
And
he’d gotten her back on the road. What reason would he have for steering her wrong now?

She wrote out a note describing the problem and where she was staying. Hesitating a moment, she turned off the ignition. The engine went quiet. She tried to start it again, just to see, but nothing happened. The car was as dead as it had been back at the crossroads.

She wrapped the key in her note and slipped it through the mail slot in the front door. Collecting her fiddle and knapsack from the car, she set off the few blocks down the road to the Custom House and hoped that Siobhan hadn’t taken in a guy for the night because, until Lizzie had decided to drive back to Newford, they were supposed to share a room. That’s about all these places would spring for: separate rooms for the boys and girls. Con and Andy would be sharing the other room, and she wasn’t about to go knocking on their door.

The front door of the hotel/bar was unlocked, but there was no one at the desk. Lizzie stepped behind the counter, took the extra key for the room from its hook and went up the stairs. Inside the room she was as quiet as she could be undressing and using the toilet, and then finally she was lying down in her bed. In the other twin bed, Siobhan slept soundly and moments later, Lizzie was, too.

Geordie Riddell

When I stepped out of the door
by the loading bays, the parking lot was empty except for my brother’s old station wagon, still parked where I’d left it late last night. There was the start of a morning glow on the eastern horizon, and the cloudless sky above promised another beautiful day even though there were still patches of snow on the ground. But this was March in Newford. Some years we get more snow in this one month than we do through the whole winter. So far, we’d been lucky. The temperature was mild this morning and the promise of spring—officially here already, but yet to make an actual physical appearance—was in the air. Living in this part of the country, you took what you could get.

“Sure you won’t stay?” Galfreya asked.

I turned to look at her, shifting my fiddlecase from one hand to the other.

“Not tonight.”

“It’s morning now.”

I smiled. “So it is. But I should get Christy’s car back to him.”

If anybody else was here with us, they’d think I was crazy for turning down the invitation. Galfreya’s gorgeous. Sloe-eyed—as they say in the old trad ballads—and tall, her waist-length hair a messy storm of braids and loose curls decorated with multicoloured barrettes, feathers, ribbons, tiny bones, and other found objects.

This morning she was wearing her usual platform high-tops and a pair of black, hip-hugging cargos, but instead of one of her skimpy midriff-baring tops, she’d opted for a baggy sweatshirt, black like her cargos with the words NO FEAR stenciled on the front in bold yellow letters. She dressed like a skateboarder, no question, but the scruffy wardrobe only seemed to accentuate her fine-boned beauty, and it couldn’t hide the regality of the fairy queen she was.