Someplace to Be Flying (67 page)

Margaret looked up into the vault of stars that hung above them. “I’d like to think so.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

He capped his flask and returned it to his pocket.

“Well, darling,” he said. “I want to thank you for coming by and sharing your thoughts with me. But I’m guessing you’ve got places to go, people to meet.”

Margaret set the tin mug down on the dirt by the fire.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” she said. “You always want people to think the worst of you.”

“What were you expecting from me?”

“Nothing I guess. I thought maybe we could travel awhile together, get to know each other. See if we couldn’t leave some of these bad feelings in the past where they belong and make a few better ones.”

Cody cocked his head. “Raven sent you to keep an eye on me, did he?”

Margaret regarded him for a long moment. Then she stood up.

“I see I’m wasting my time,” she said.

As she started to walk away, Cody jumped up from where he was sitting. She stepped out of the firelight before he was able to catch her arm. She shook his grip off. But what startled Cody was that she seemed genuinely sad.

“You really mean this, don’t you?” he said. “You really just came along to say how-do and be friendly.”

“It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”

Cody gave her a long, penetrating look. “Damn right it matters. I’m just not that good at having people treat me kindly.”

Margaret didn’t move.

“What I’m trying to say, darling, is I’d be honored if you’d sit with me a spell, maybe walk down the road with me a ways. I could sure use the company. Hell, who knows? Maybe a corbæ and a canid can be friends.”

“There was never any reason that they couldn’t.”

Cody shrugged. “The only thing I ask is, if I start to get a yearning after that pot of Raven’s again, you just give me a slap across the back of my head and knock some sense into me.”

That got him a smile.

“You don’t have to worry about Raven’s pot,” she said. “Way things worked out, it’s not something to be used anymore. It’s something to celebrate.”

“So that part of the story’s true, too?”

Margaret shook her head as if to say, didn’t he get it yet?

“That’s what Raven figures it was all about, Cody,” she said. “Keeping the Grace in this world. Maybe her light’s not as strong as it once was, maybe the world’s gotten darker since the first day, and it’s still getting darker, but something’s shining on. In you. In me. Everywhere you look, if you take the time to pay attention. So we’ve got two choices. We can let the darkness win, or we can celebrate the Grace and shine her light stronger.”

Somewhere in the lonesome dark that Cody thought of as his heart, he felt an ember stir. Maybe it was only a glimmer of hope. Maybe it was the novel idea that loneliness didn’t have to be his lot. Or maybe it was a flicker of the Grace’s light that could be fanned into a brighter flame.

“You reckon?” he said.

Margaret gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “Yeah, I reckon. So what do you say, Cody?”

He stepped back and gave her that coyote grin of his.

“I feel like dancing, darling,” he said.

“Dancing.”

He held out his arms to her. “Like you said. Celebrating the light.”

She looked at him for the space of a few drawn-out heartbeats and shook her head before she let him waltz her back into the firelight.

And long after the coals of Cody’s fire had burned down to ash, they were dancing still.