Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan (26 page)

***

The Queen of the Routewitches doesn't need to explain herself to dead girls,
which explains my collection, but she's a reasonable person, in her way, and she
doesn't make me wait for my reception. She's standing on the blacktop when the
truck pulls up, an old green-painted picnic table with an honest-to-God picnic
basket on it behind her. There's an older routewitch seated there, a woman I
don't know, with ribbons tangled in her oddly girlish ponytail.

The truck rocks and rumbles to a stop, and I hear the driver's-side door slam
before the previously unseen driver himself is there to open the back of the
truck, offering me his hands. I could balk, but it's better to pick your battles
when you can. I let him help me down. The feeling of solid ground beneath my
feet is a comforting thing. My type of ghost exists because of rides freely
given, not because of rides we never agreed to take. The L'il Abners climb down
after me, bowing deeply to the whisper-thin Japanese teen now walking toward us.

"Thank you so much for coming," she says, like I had a choice. Her gaze
flicks past me to her subjects. "Thank you for bringing her. You're free to go.
The Lady's hospitalities are open to you all."

Whatever that means, it must be good, because the routewitches are gone
almost before she's finished speaking, offering quick apologies and goodbyes as
they hustle toward the building. In a matter of seconds, the three of us—me, the
Queen, and the routewitch I don't know—are alone. I fold my arms, trying to look
defiant. "You could have called."

"You don't have a phone," counters the Queen. "He still hasn't taken you."

"Not for lack of trying." But that, right there, is what gives the Queen of
the Routewitches the authority to interfere with one of the restless dead. A man
named Bobby Cross wants my soul more than just about anything else—I'm the one
that got away—and the tattoo the Queen arranged for me to wear has stopped him
at least once. I owe her. "I'm guessing you didn't ask me here for dinner.
What's going on?"

"Dinner is a part of things. I asked you for a favor, and you promised to
grant it to me. Will you keep your word, here on the back of the Ocean Lady?"

"Do I look like an idiot? Of course I will."

"Then come, sit down, and eat with us. I'll explain what has to happen
tonight." The Queen gestures to the picnic table. I'm smart enough to recognize
an order when I see one, and so I walk past her to the picnic table and sit down
across from the older routewitch. The Queen follows, sitting next to me.

"Who's your friend?" I ask.

The older routewitch raises her head and looks at me. That's all she has to
do, because her eyes are familiar, even though they're filled with shadows, and
with screams. There's a thousand years of screaming in those eyes. Some small
part of me isn't quite convinced that that's enough.

"Oh," I say. "Hello, Bethany."

"Hello, Aunt Rose," she says, in a quivering voice that's just as old as the
rest of her.

The Queen of the Routewitches is laying out a picnic spread fit for,
ironically, a queen, and for once, I don't have any appetite at all. "And this
started out as such a
good
night," I say, plaintively.

Thankfully, both Bethany and the Queen have the grace not to reply.

***

"When Bobby Cross carried Bethany into the dark, I'm sure he meant to kill
her and render her soul for fuel," says the Queen matter-of-factly, as she
spreads mustard on a slice of white bread. "Unfortunately, he hadn't reckoned on
her belonging to your bloodline—which is ironic, given that it was her relation
to you that enabled her to trap you in the first place."

Something neither of them has apologized for, by the way. I frown. "What does
that have to do with anything?"

"You're protected from him. As blood of your blood, so is Bethany, if not
quite as...directly. He was able to take her into the twilight. He was able to
steal her youth, her innocence, and her hope. But he couldn't take her soul. In
your own way, you stopped him." The Queen's gaze is level as she turns it on
Bethany. "Amusing, given the situation."

"I could die laughing," I say, deadpan. Bethany reddens, looking down at her
untouched sandwich. "So why am I here? It sounds to me like things are in
balance. She tried to fuck me over, she got fucked instead. Case closed."

"Those books are balanced," the Queen agrees. "But as a routewitch, she has
the right to ask the Ocean Lady to aid, and the Lady answered her. I wouldn't
have called you if she'd come to me alone. As you say, some punishments, we
earn."

The routewitch relationship with the Ocean Lady—ghost of the oldest true
highway in America—is complicated. They treat Her half as a place, half as a
person, and all as a goddess. I've been learning a lot about routewitch religion
lately, and believe me when I say that I am not qualified to even begin to
explain. "So the Lady said she'd help. Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning you have to take me to the crossroads before the stroke of
midnight," says Bethany. It's the first time she's spoken since we acknowledged
each other.

I stare at her. "You're kidding."

The Queen of the Routewitches sighs, deep and tired. "Sadly, she's not.
That's how you'll pay your debt to me, Rose Marshall: by taking my subject, your
niece, to the crossroads to barter for her life."

"Fucking swell," I mutter, and the twilight all around us seems to agree.

"Have another sandwich," the Queen suggests. "You're going to need it."

At least there's pie.

***

Going to the crossroad, the quick and dirty version: as long as there have
been people, there have been roads, places where the footsteps of a hundred
strangers have worn a groove in the world and changed it in a way that might
seem superficial, but goes all the way down into the root of things. As long as
there have been roads, the places where those roads met have held a power
entirely their own. Towns spring up in the places where roads meet. Fairs are
held. Goods are exchanged. And sometimes, if you're desperate, or stupid, or
just have nothing else to lose, bargains are made. I don't know who made the
first crossroad bargain, and I don't need to know, because that groove, too, has
been worn into the root of things. Go to the crossroad at midnight when you need
to make a deal. Everyone knows that's how it works.

What the proverbial "everyone" doesn't know is how to get to the crossroad,
because there's only so much magic to go around these days, and not just any old
intersection will do. You need the right combination of place and time, madness
and longing, and you need to get there by the stroke of midnight, because that's
the way it has to go. I've never gone to the crossroad for myself. In the
decades since I died, I've only ever gone for other people, and even then, only
when there was no other choice.

"What makes you think I can even find the crossroad?" I ask, vainly hoping
the Queen will recognize what a lousy idea this is and get her piece of deceased
masonry to call off the trip. "It's been a long time since I had to go there."

"Twenty-six years," agrees the Queen. "It was in Coney Island that time,
wasn't it?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but yes." The girl I led there was
eleven years old and was born almost a hundred years before I was, and when she
found me, she had no shadow. I took her to the crossroad because I didn't know
any other way to get a shadow back, and I guess it worked, because after she
stood at that roadside for half an hour, she ran over and hugged me, shadow
chasing her heels. Then she kicked her feet away from the ground and flew away,
and I never saw her again.

"This is a bad idea," I say.

"I know," says the Queen.

"Can we just go?" asks Bethany.

The Queen's hand flashes out like a striking snake, and the sound of her palm
meeting Bethany's cheek is louder than it has any right to be. Bethany stares at
her, eyes young and hurt amidst their nest of wrinkles. The Queen glares back,
her own eyes briefly betraying her own greater age. "You will not speak to your
family with anything less than courtesy," she commands. "I am asking your aunt
to do this because the Lady bids it; were it left to me, I would call this a
just punishment for your actions. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," whispers Bethany.

"Good. Remember: you are here because you are a routewitch.
She
is
here because she's welcome."

That seems to be my cue. I sigh, standing. "Come on, Bethany. Let's go spend
the night doing something stupid and suicidal."

I don't wait to see if she'll follow me. I just start walking.

***

Bethany follows; of course Bethany follows. We walk down the drive to the
Rest Stop gates. The road beyond ripples slightly, unreal and undefined; it is
all roads, it is no roads, and it is, at least potentially, the road to where
we're going. "Take my hand," I order.

"Why?" asks Bethany, suspiciously.

"One, because you asked me for help, so it's not like I'm trying to walk you
into a trap, which, two, you've already done to me once, but mostly because
three, I'm going to go from the Ocean Lady to the ghostroads to the daylight,
and if you don't hold onto me, you're likely to get lost somewhere along the
way." I offer her a thin smile. "Unless you want to spend a few days wandering
one of the twilight layers without an escort?"

Bethany takes my hand.

"Good call," I say, and step through the open gate to the shimmering road
beyond.

For me, now, after being dead so long, moving between the layers is an
automatic thing most of the time, almost as easy as flexing the fingers of my
hand. Not with Bethany hanging onto me, mortal deadweight that understands, on
some profound, unaware level, that living flesh was never meant to do this sort
of thing. Bethany screams as reality flickers around us like a broken strip of
film, endless past and present roads tangling together. I keep pulling, keep
rising upward through the twilight, back toward the day. We're not going
all
the way, not quite—the crossroad exists in a place just below the surface of
full daylight, in a place where things become possible because no one's ever
told them that they can't be.

We're almost there when I realize that we're about to have another problem.
Bethany is still alive, and I, by definition almost, am not. Which wouldn't be a
problem if I had a coat, but my most recent coat is lying discarded in the bed
of a pickup truck a lot of layers of reality away from here. "Shit," I mutter.

"Shit?" demands Bethany. "What do you mean, shit?"

My fingers are already turning hazy in hers. She'd have noticed already, if
she wasn't so busy freaking out. "Just hold on!" I command, and try to pull us
through the layers even faster, anything to build up enough momentum that
Bethany will be carried with me when holding on ceases to be possible.

I've never tried anything like this before. I guess I shouldn't be surprised
when there's a blinding burst of light and everything goes away, replaced by
darkness. Darkness, and the distinct feeling that I've just screwed something
up. "Shit," I mutter again...and the world is gone.

***

I come to slowly. I'm sprawled in a nest of crushed corn stalks, scenting the
air all around me with the rich green perfume of harvest coming. That's the
first thing. The second is that I'm deeply—disturbingly—solid. I shouldn't have
been able to crush the corn. I sit up, and only an instinctive grab at the
fabric sliding down my chest keeps Bethany's coat from tumbling to the ground
beside me.

"Are you awake
yet
?" Bethany demands. I turn, still clutching the
coat, to see her standing next to me. "This cold is killing my joints."

"I hadn't noticed." I shrug into the coat as I stand, tugging it tight around
me. The feeling of solidity tightens with it. Back among the living once again.
"How long was I out?"

"Too long. I don't remember giving you permission to pass out."

"Well, since I don't remember giving you permission to ransom me to Bobby
Cross, I guess we're essentially even. Come on. We're burning moonlight." I turn
once to get my bearings—it's easier to get lost in a cornfield than it is to get
lost almost anywhere else in the world—and start walking briskly across the
uneven ground. At least we don't need to hold hands anymore.

Bethany swears and sputters as she stumbles after me. For all that she grew
up in Michigan, same as I did, she doesn't seem to have done much walking in
cornfields. Or maybe it's just her abruptly advanced age. It must be hard to
grow old gracefully when you do it overnight. "Slow down!"

"Speed up!" I shout back. "We're on a pretty tight schedule here."

"Why?" She's panting as she staggers to my side. I take pity and slow down
slightly. My debt to the Queen probably won't count as paid if Bethany drops
dead before I can get her to the crossroad. "I want this taken care of more than
you do, but doesn't midnight happen every night? If we miss it tonight, can't we
just try again tomorrow?"

"Nope." I can see from her expression that she doesn't understand. This seems
to be my night for taking pity. I sigh, and explain, "Once you start looking for
the crossroad, you're on one of the crossing roads. It's some sort of symbolic
thing, since you still need to find the roads in a physical sense, and I don't
really understand it, but them's the rules. We have until midnight."

"Or what?"

"We wait a year."

Bethany's eyes widen in undisguised alarm. "What? I can't wait a year like
this!"

"That's true. You may not
have
a year like this." I'm being
nasty—Bethany doesn't look
that
old—but it's difficult to really care.
This isn't how I planned to spend my evening. "So you'd better keep up."