Widdershins (83 page)

“Then I’ll call you tonight.”

He tipped a finger against his brow.

“Until tonight,” he said, and then he took a step and simply disappeared.

“Oh.”

Surprise made the sound just pop out of her mouth.

One thing was for certain. With everything she’d experienced, she certainly wasn’t going to get used to this sort of thing anytime soon.

She took a last look behind her. The sun was up over the hill now and the water shone as though all the lights of fairyland were lit up under its surface.

Smiling, she started back up the stairs.

She hoped Con was still asleep, keeping the bed warm.

Jilly

I wake up snuggled against Geordie’s side
like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And maybe it is. Maybe I’ve been out of step all these years, and I’m just now getting into the real balance of my life, coming at it all raggedy-ass backwards, the way I seem to do all too often, but so what? It doesn’t matter how I got here because I’m here now.

I realize that Geordie’s awake. Those soft brown eyes of his are open and looking right into mine. His face is so close to me I could just lean forward a couple of inches and kiss him.

So I do.

“Hey,” he says around a smile.

“Straw’s cheaper.”

He groans, but there’s laughter in his eyes. This time he kisses me.

I could stay here all day, just the two of us in the bed, in this room. Let the world go on without us. Surely it can do without us for one day. It can certainly do without me. It’s not like I’ve produced one piece of art in years that I’d actually allow to be hung in a gallery.

I make some jokey comment about it to Geordie.

He sits up and leans against the headboard.

“You shouldn’t say that,” he tells me.

“Oh, don’t go all serious on me, Geordie, me lad. I wasn’t trying for the oh-poor-me vote. I was trying for the let’s-be-cozy-here-all-day one.”

“I know. But your art’s such a huge part of who you are. It kills me to see you without it.”

“Oh, pooh,” I say. “I’ve gotten along fine without it. Look at me lying here, all bold and happy and with nary a paintbrush in sight.”

We both know I’m lying, but I can’t seem to stop with the bravado, even here, even now, where I actually feel safe lying naked beside a guy in a bed, instead of getting all trembly and turning into Anxious Girl.

“You don’t have to be without it,” he says.

“Do you have a miracle cure up your sleeve?” I ask, then I whip back the sheets. “Nope. You don’t even have sleeves.”

“I don’t have a cure,” he says, “but the crow girls do. We talked about this last night.”

I sit up so that I can lean against his shoulder. I trace the bumps of his ribs with a finger.

“I know,” I say.

“So let’s just do it.”

“Except we can’t,” I tell him. “I don’t have the feathers anymore. I can’t remember what happened to them after the crow girls arrived.”

And I realize I don’t mind. They were used for a good cause and I’d rather be in my present condition than not have brought Geordie back in the world of the living.

“You’re just stalling,” he says.

“No, I’m not. I really don’t have them. I can’t even guess where they are. And you know what the crow girls are like—they come and go at their own whim, never when you expect them to.”

“Do you really think you need the actual feathers in your hand?”

“Maida and Zia sure gave me that impression when they handed them to me way back when.”

“Maybe you just need to call them to us the way we did Walker.”

I lean back a bit so that I can see his face.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Oh, that’s right. You weren’t here. Remember Walker told Lizzie he’d help her whenever she needed him? All she was supposed to do was call his name and he’d come.”

“I remember.”

“So when we didn’t know what to do, we went into the woods and did just that, and sure enough, he just showed up out of nowhere. He wasn’t so happy when he arrived, but he did come.”

“Why would that work with the crow girls?”

“Don’t you think they’re expecting you to call them?”

I give a slow nod. “I guess I could make it out to the woods, so long as we don’t go too fast and we don’t have to go too far.”

“Why do that? I’m sure we can call them from here. We only went into the woods to call Walker because—well, we weren’t sure what exactly would show up, and it didn’t seem so smart to do it in the hotel room.”

There’s no point in arguing, and I don’t know why I am. I’m so sick of being the Broken Girl. Why shouldn’t I take the crow girls’ magical help?

I guess it’s just ingrained in me to do it on my own. I’ll take help from my friends because they’re like my family—my real family, the one I chose—but I don’t like reaching beyond them.

But I let Geordie—I was going to say win, or maybe, have his way, but it’s not like that at all. He’s so totally doing it for me. It’s been killing him to see how I’ve been. It’s been killing everybody close to me.

Oh, why am I pretending otherwise? It’s been killing me, too.

But I know the real reason I’m fighting this. I don’t want the crow girls to show up and then do their laying on of hands, or whatever it is that they’ll do, only to find that they still can’t fix me. That everything I went through with Del hasn’t changed anything. That the darkness in me is like a set of those Russian dolls that fit inside each other.

First I thought it was Raylene. Then I found out about Mattie.

What if there’s another shadow? And then another and another and . . .

“Jilly?” Geordie says.

I blink and look at him.

“Right,” I say. “Time to stop stalling.”

So we get dressed.

“Maybe we should call room service and ask for a couple of bowls of sugar,” he says while I’m struggling with my T-shirt.

Sometimes it’s just so hard for me to get my arms up over my head—especially in the morning when I’m the least flexible.

Geordie comes over and gives me a hand.

“Or sugar packets,” I say. “I bet they’d love little sugar packets.”

Geordie ends up going downstairs and comes back with a coffee for each of us and a handful of chocolate bars for them.

“Well?” he says when we’ve finished our coffees.

I nod and set my empty cup on the windowsill. I look out the window at the hills, the sun gleaming bright on the spruce and pine, shadows pooling under their heavy boughs. The light’s amazing, still so focused and almost primal, the way it can be at the beginning or end of the day.

There was a time when I’d be just itching to get it down on paper with a pencil or pastels, yearning to capture that light before it changes, but these days, when the impulse comes to me, the first thing I do is push it away.

There was a time when I’d look out the window and feel the weight of the winter just past ease away because it’s so beautiful outside and if it’s not quite blossoms-spring-forth spring, it’s not deep-drifts-of-snow winter anymore, either. I’d insist on us going out and tramping through the woods. I could be out there all day and relish every moment.

That’s another impulse I push away, when it comes.

But if I could have it all again . . .

So I call their names.

Maida and Zia. Zia and Maida. Crow girls.

I feel kind of stupid, sitting in my wheelchair, calling to them. Geordie waits quietly on the bed, nodding encouragingly when I glance in his direction.

I call them again. The third time.

There’s no response.

I look at Geordie.

“Once more,” he says.

I nod and do it again, my gaze on him, watching him mouth their names with me.

And then suddenly they’re here.

One moment, it’s just Geordie and me, sitting in our hotel room, and in the next a tumble of black hair and black clothes lands on the bed in a tangle of limbs, squirming and giggling on the bedclothes, their eyes bright with laughter.

“Hello, hello,” Maida says.

She flops onto her back and looks at me from an upside-down vantage. Zia, sprawled across her stomach, spies the chocolate bars.

“Oh, look,” she says. “Bribes.”

Maida sits up and grabs one.

“Don’t be rude,” she tells Zia.

“They’re not bribes?”

“Why would our veryvery good friends Geordie and Jilly ever need to bribe us?”

Zia shrugs. “So that we’ll behave?”

“Don’t mind her,” Maida says to me. “She was brought up in a tree by an old magpie.”

Zia nods. “Oh, yes. Ancient and decrepit.”

“Wheezing and bony.”

“With long grey hair, tangled like a bird’s nest.”

“And there,” Maida says, throwing out her hand in a dramatic flourish, “is where we lived.”

They each open a chocolate bar and eat them in what seems like two bites. But while they obviously relish the chocolate, something about them changes when they’re done. Sitting on the edge of the bed, kicking their heels against the box spring, they face me with suddenly serious eyes and solemn faces.

“So, is it time?” Maida asks.

“Of course, it’s time,” Zia answers before I can. “Look how she glows. All the shadows have been burned away.”

Maida nods. “Except for that one.”

She points at me, but I have no idea what she’s pointing at.

“But that’s only a shadow of a shadow,” Zia says. “A memory, nothing more.”

Maida slides off the bed and walks over to my wheelchair.

“This will probably hurt,” she says as she stands on my right.

Zia joins her, standing on the other side of the chair.

“Not because we want it to,” she adds.

Maida nods. “Because we don’t.”

“But because they are old hurts.”

“Skin and bone and muscle has to be pulled back into shape.”

“Fresh hurts are much easier.”

“But messier.”

They each hold one of my arms against the chair. Maida puts a hand against my chest, pressing me back.

“This is for the screams,” Zia tells me, which is hardly comforting.

I don’t know what she means until she puts her hand across my mouth. That’s even less comforting.

I decide I want to talk about this a little more, but I can’t move my mouth. They might look like skinny little teenage girls, but they’re shockingly strong. Their faces lean in close to mine.

“Here we go,” Maida says.

A sudden sharp pain, like someone chipping at the raw nerve of a tooth, tears through my whole body. My back tries to arch, but it can’t move because of Maida’s hand pressing me back. But I’m only dimly aware of that. Just as I’m only dimly aware of their murmured, “Sorry, sorry.”

There’s only the pain.

It feels like my arms and legs are being torn apart and whenever I think it can’t get worse—that it has to end now—it only gets worse.

I don’t think I can bear it.

I
know
I can’t.

If Zia didn’t have her hand over my mouth, I’d be screaming my throat raw.

I don’t know how long it lasts.

A few moments.

Forever.

I think I pass out for one blessed moment, then the searing pain spins to a crescendo. My ears pop.

And then it’s gone.

The worst of it’s gone.

The crow girls continue to murmur their sorrys. They stroke my brow and push the wet hair back from my face.

I’m soaked with sweat and trembling from head to foot. My temples throb with a headache that seems mild and soothing after what I’ve just been through. I feel nauseous and weak and if it wasn’t for them holding me, I’d fall right out of my wheelchair.

I realize my eyes are tightly shut and I open them slowly, wincing as the light intensifies the pain in my head. But as the crow girls continue to stroke my brow, the headache begins to recede, then goes away. The nausea fades. I’m still trembling, but it’s for a different reason now. I feel filled with more excess energy than I know what to do with.

I see Geordie standing in front of me wearing an expression that’s a weird mix of horror and worry.

“I . . . I’m okay,” I tell him.

“Of course, you are,” Zia says.

Maida nods. “You’re veryvery brave. I’ve seen big old wolves wet themselves over less pain.”

“I’m pretty wet,” I say.

Though thankfully I didn’t pee my pants. But my clothes and hair are soaked and plastered against my skin.

“Up you get now,” Maida says.

She takes one hand, Zia takes the other and effortlessly, they pull me to my feet.

I stand there feeling wobbly, trying to adjust my balance. Everything feels wrong until I realize why that is. There’s no more numbness. There’s no more pain. My bad leg takes my weight without wanting to give way from under me.

The crow girls let go of my hands and I flex my fingers, delighting in the painless movement.

“Oh, god,” I say.

Zia shakes her head. “That wasn’t any old spirit that fixed you.”

“It was a gift of the Grace,” Maida says.

Geordie takes a step toward me, but I close the distance and throw myself at him, my arms wrapped around his neck. I swing there, banging my feet, first against the wheelchair, then against the end of the bed, but I don’t care.