Very Best of Charles de Lint, The (17 page)

Marguerite sat up so suddenly that she knocked over her water glass on the night table. Luckily it was empty.

“Arnold?” she asked, looking around. “Are you here?”

Well, not exactly here, as it were, but I can hear you.

“Where have you
been
?”

Waiting for you to make your wish.

“I’ve really missed you,” Marguerite said. She patted her comforter with eager hands, trying to find Arnold’s egg. “How did you get back here?”

I’m not exactly
here
,
Arnold said.

“How come you never talked to me when I’ve been missing you all this time?”

I can’t really initiate these things,
Arnold explained.
It gets rather complicated, but even though my egg’s with someone else, I can’t really be their wish until I’ve finished being yours.

“So we can still talk and be friends even though I’ve lost the egg?”

Not exactly. I can fulfill your wish, but since I’m not
with
you, as it were, I can’t really stay unless you’re ready to make your wish.

“You can’t?” Marguerite wailed.

Afraid not. I don’t make the rules, you know.

“I’ve got it,” Marguerite said. And she did have it too. If she wanted to keep Arnold with her, all she had to do was wish for him to always be her friend. Then no one could take him away from her. They’d always be together.

“I wish…” she began.

But that didn’t seem quite right, she realized. She gave her dyed forelock a nervous tug. It wasn’t right to
make
someone be your friend. But if she didn’t do that, if she wished something else, then Arnold would just go off and be somebody else’s wish. Oh, if only things didn’t have to be complicated. Maybe she should just wish herself to the moon and be done with all her problems. She could lie there and stare at the world from a nice long distance away while she slowly asphyxiated. That would solve everything.

She felt that telltale feeling in her mind that let her know that Arnold was leaving again.

“Wait,” she said. “I haven’t made my wish yet.”

The feeling stopped.
Then you’ve decided?
Arnold asked.

She hadn’t, but as soon as he asked, she realized that there was only one fair wish she could make.

“I wish you were free,” she said.

The feeling that was Arnold moved blurrily inside her.

You what?
he asked.

“I wish you were free. I
can
wish that, can’t I?”

Yes, but… Wouldn’t you rather have something…well, something for yourself?

“This
is
for myself,” Marguerite said. “Your being free would be the best thing I could wish for because you’re my friend and I don’t want you to be trapped anymore.” She paused for a moment, brow wrinkling. “Or is there a rule against that?”

No rule,
Arnold said softly. His ticklish voice bubbled with excitement.
No rule at all against it.

“Then that’s my wish,” Marguerite said.

Inside her mind, she felt a sensation like a tiny whirlwind spinning around and around. It was like Arnold’s voice and an autumn leaves smell and a kaleidoscope of dervishing lights, all wrapped up in one whirling sensation.

Free!
Arnold called from the center of that whirlygig.

A sudden weight was in Marguerite’s hand and she saw that the brass egg had appeared there. It lay open on her palm, the faded velvet spilled out of it. It seemed so very small to hold so much happiness, but fluttering on tiny wings was the clay crow, rising up in a spin that twinned Arnold’s presence in Marguerite’s mind.

Her fingers closed around the brass egg as Arnold doubled, then tripled his size in an explosion of black feathers. His voice was like a chorus of bells, ringing and ringing between Marguerite’s ears. Then with an exuberant caw, he stroked the air with his wings, flew out the cottage window and was gone.

Marguerite sat quietly, staring out the window and holding the brass egg. A big grin stretched her lips. There was something so
right
about what she’d just done that she felt an overwhelming sense of happiness herself, as though she’d been the one trapped in a treadmill of wishes in a brass egg, and Arnold had been the one to free
her
.

At last she reached out and picked up from the comforter a small glossy black feather that Arnold had left behind. Wrapping it in the old velvet, she put it into the brass egg and screwed the egg shut once more.

* * *

That September a new family moved in next door with a boy her age named Arnold. Marguerite was delighted and, though her parents were surprised, she and the new boy became best friends almost immediately. She showed him the egg one day that winter and wasn’t at all surprised that the feather she still kept in it was the exact same shade of black as her new friend’s hair.

Arnold stroked the feather with one finger when she let him see it. He smiled at her and said, “I had a wish once…”

Into the Green

Stone walls confine a tinker; cold iron binds a witch; but a musician’s music can never be fettered, for it lives first in her heart and mind.

* * *

The harp was named Garrow—born out of an old sorrow to make weary hearts glad. It was a small lap harp, easy to carry, with a resonance that let its music carry to the far ends of a crowded commonroom. The long fingers of the red-haired woman could pull dance tunes from its strings, lilting jigs or reels that set feet tapping until the floorboards shook and the rafters rang. But some nights the memory of old sorrows returned. Lying in wait like marsh mists, they clouded her eyes with their arrival. On those nights, the music she pulled from Garrow’s metal-strung strings was more bitter than sweet, slow airs that made the heart regret and brought unbidden memories to haunt the minds of those who listened.

“Enough of that,” the innkeeper said.

The tune faltered and Angharad looked up into his angry face. She lay her hands across the strings, stilling the harp’s plaintive singing.

“I said you could make music,” the innkeeper told her, “not drive my customers away.”

It took Angharad a few moments to return from that place in her memory that the music had brought her to this inn where her body sat, drawing the music from the strings of her harp. The commonroom was half-empty and oddly subdued, where earlier every table had been filled and men stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the bar, joking and telling each other ever more embroidered tales. The few who spoke did so in hushed voices; fewer still would meet her gaze.

“You’ll have to go,” the innkeeper said, his voice not so harsh now. She saw in his eyes that he too was remembering a forgotten sorrow.

“I…”

How to tell him that on nights such as these, the sorrow came, whether she willed it or not? That if she had her choice she would rather forget as well. But the harp was a gift from Jacky Lantern’s kin, as was the music she pulled from its strings. She used it in her journeys through the Kingdoms of the Green Isles, to wake the Summerblood where it lay sleeping in folk who never knew they were witches. That was how the Middle Kingdom survived—by being remembered, by its small magics being served, by the interchange of wisdom and gossip between man and those with whom he shared the world.

But sometimes the memories the music woke were not so gay and charming. They hurt. Yet such memories served a purpose, too, as the music knew well. They helped to break the circles of history so that mistakes weren’t repeated. But how was she to explain such things to this tall, grim-faced innkeeper who’d been looking only for an evening’s entertainment for his customers? How to put into words what only music could tell?

“I…I’m sorry,” she said.

He nodded, almost sympathetically. Then his eyes grew hard. “Just go.”

She made no protest. She knew what she was—tinker, witch and harper. This far south of Kellmidden, only the latter allowed her much acceptance with those who travelled a road just to get from here to there, rather than for the sake of the travelling itself. For the sake of the road that led into the green, where poetry and harping met to sing of the Middle Kingdom.

Standing, she swung the harp up on one shoulder, a small journeypack on the other. Her red hair was drawn back in two long braids. She wore a tinker’s plaited skirt and white blouse with a huntsman’s leather jerkin overtop. At the door she collected her staff of white rowan wood. Witches’ wood. Not until the door swung closed behind her did the usual level of conversation and laughter return to the commonroom.

But they would remember. Her. The music. There was one man who watched her from a corner, face dark with brooding. She meant to leave before they remembered other things. Before one or another wondered aloud if it was true that witch’s skin burned at the touch of cold iron—as did that of the kowrie folk.

As she stepped away from the door, a huge shadowed shape arose from where it had been crouching by a window. The quick tattoo of her pulse only sharpened when she saw that it was a man—a misshapen man. His chest was massive, his arms and legs like small trees. But a hump rose from his back, and his head jutted almost from his chest at an awkward angle. His legs were bowed as though his weight was almost too much for them. He shuffled, rather than walked, as he closed the short space between them.

Light from the window spilled across his features. One eye was set higher in that broad face than the other. The nose had been broken—more than once. His hair was a knotted thicket, his beard a bird’s nest of matted tangles.

Angharad began to bring her staff between them. The white rowan wood could call up a witchfire that was good for little more than calling up a flame in a damp camp fire, but it could startle. That might be enough for her to make her escape.

The monstrous man reached a hand towards her. “Puh-pretty,” he said.

Before Angharad could react, there came a quick movement from around the side of the inn.

“Go on!” the newcomer cried. It was the barmaid from the inn, a slender blue-eyed girl whose blond hair hung in one thick braid across her breast. The innkeeper had called her Jessa. “Get away from her, you big oaf.” She made a shooing motion with her hand.

Angharad saw something flicker briefly in the man’s eyes as he turned. A moment of shining light. A flash of regret. She realized then that he’d been speaking of her music, not her. He’d been reaching to touch the harp, not her. She wanted to call him back, but the barmaid was thrusting a package wrapped in unbleached cotton at her. The man had shambled away, vanishing into the darkness in the time it took Angharad to look from the package to where he’d been standing.

“Something for the road,” Jessa said. “It’s not much—some cheese and bread.”

“Thank you,” Angharad replied. “That man…?”

“Oh, don’t mind him. That’s only Pog—the village half-wit. Fael lets him sleep in the barn in return for what work he can do around the inn.” She smiled suddenly. “He’s seen the kowrie folk, he has. To hear him tell it—and you’d need the patience of one of Dath’s priests to let him get the tale out—they dance all round the Stones on a night such as this.”

“What sort of a night is this?”

“Full moon.”

Jessa pointed eastward. Rising above the trees there, Angharad saw the moon rising, swollen and round above the trees. She remembered a circle of old longstones that she’d passed on the road that took her to the inn. They stood far off from the road on a hill overlooking the Grey Sea, a league or so west of the village. Old stones, like silent sentinels, watching the distant waves. A place where kowries would dance, she thought, if they were so inclined.

“You should go,” Jessa said.

Angharad gave her a questioning look.

The barmaid nodded towards the inn. “They’re talking about witches in there, and spells laid with music. They’re not bad men, but any man who drinks…”

Angharad nodded. A hard day’s work, then drinking all night. To some it was enough to excuse any deed. They were honest folk, after all. Not tinkers. Not witches.

She touched Jessa’s arm. “Thank you.”

“We’re both women,” the barmaid said with a smile. “We have to stick together, now don’t we?” Her features, half-hidden in the gloom, grew more serious as she added, “Stay off the road if you can. Depending on how things go… Well, there’s some’s as have horses.”

Angharad thought of a misshapen man and a place of standing stones, of moonlight and dancing kowries.

“I will,” she said.

Jessa gave her another quick smile, then slipped once more around the corner of the inn. Angharad listened to her quiet footfalls as she ran back to the kitchen. Giving the inn a considering look, she stuffed the barmaid’s gift of food into her journeypack and set off down the road, staff in hand.

* * *

There were many tales told of the menhir and stone circles that dotted the Kingdoms of the Green Isles. Wizardfolk named them holy places, sacred to the Summerlord; reservoirs where the old powers of hill and moon could be gathered by the rites of dhruides and the like. The priests of Dath named them evil and warned all to shun their influence. The commonfolk were merely wary of them—viewing them as neither good nor evil, but rather places where mysteries lay too deep for ordinary folk.

And there
was
mystery in them, Angharad thought.

From where she stood, she could see their tall fingers silhouetted against the sky. Mists lay thick about their hill—drawn up from the sea that murmured a stone’s throw or two beyond. The moon was higher now; the night as still as an inheld breath. Expectant. Angharad left the road to approach the stone circle where Pog claimed the kowrie danced on nights of the full moon. Nights when her harp played older musics than she knew, drawing the airs more from the wind, it seemed, than the flesh and bone that held the instrument and plucked its strings.

The gorse was damp underfoot. In no time at all, her bare legs were wet. She circled around two stone outcrops, her route eventually bringing her up the hill from the side facing the sea. The murmur of its waves was very clear now. The sharp tang of its salt was in the mist. Angharad couldn’t see below her waist for that mist, but the hilltop was clear. And the Stones.