Very Best of Charles de Lint, The (20 page)

“Why?” she asked. “Why do you want to help me?”

“I take pleasure in helping others,” he replied.

He smiled. His eyes smiled. There was such a kindly air about him that

Tetchie almost forgot what he’d said about the wild dogs, about sending them down into Burndale to hunt down her tormentors. But she did remember and the memory made her uneasy.

The tattooed man seemed too much the chameleon for her to trust. He could teach her how to be anything she wanted to be. Was that why he could appear to be anything she wanted
him
to be?

“You hesitate,” he said. “Why?”

Tetchie could only shrug.

“It’s your chance to right the wrong played on you at your birth.”

Tetchie’s attention focused on the howling of the wild dogs as he spoke. To right the wrong…

Their teeth and claws will wreak the vengeance you crave
.

But it didn’t have to be that way. She meant no one ill. She just wanted to fit in, not hurt anyone. So, if the choice was hers, she could simply choose not to hurt people, couldn’t she? The tattooed man couldn’t
make
her hurt people.

“What…what do I have to do?” she asked.

The tattooed man pulled a long silver needle from where it had been stuck in the front of his trousers.

“Give me your thumb,” he said.

* * *

Gaedrian scented trow as soon as he left Burndale behind him. It wasn’t a strong scent, more a promise than an actuality at first, but the farther he got from the town, the more pronounced it grew. He stopped and tested the wind, but it kept shifting, making it difficult for him to pinpoint its source. Finally he stripped his shirt, letting it fall to the ground.

He touched one of the tattoos on his chest and a pale blue light glimmered in his palm when he took his hand away. He freed the glow into the air where it turned slowly, end on shimmering end. When it had given him the source of the scent, he snapped his fingers and the light winked out.

More assured now, he set off again, destination firmly in mind. The townsfolk, he realized, had been accurate for a change. A monster did walk the hills outside Burndale tonight.

* * *

Nervously, Tetchie stepped forward. As she got closer to him, the blue markings on his chest seemed to shift and move, rearranging themselves into a new pattern that was as indecipherable to her as the old one had been. Tetchie swallowed thickly and lifted her hand, hoping it wouldn’t hurt. She closed her eyes as he brought the tip of the needle to her thumb.

“There,” the tattooed man said a moment later. “It’s all done.”

Tetchie blinked in surprise. She hadn’t felt a thing. But now that the tattooed man had let go of her hand, her thumb started to ache. She looked at the three drops of blood that lay in the tattooed man’s palm like tiny crimson jewels. Her knees went weak again and this time she did fall to the ground. She felt hot and flushed, as though she were up and abroad at high noon, the sun broiling down on her, stealing her ability to move.

Slowly, slowly, she lifted her head. She wanted to see what happened when the tattooed man put her blood on the stone, but all he did was smile down at her and lick three drops with a tongue that seemed as long as a snake’s, with the same kind of a twin fork at its tip.

“Yuh…nuh…”

Tetchie tried to speak—what have you done to me? she wanted to say—but the words turned into a muddle before they left her mouth. It was getting harder to think.

“When your mother was so kindly passing along all her advice to you,” he said, “she should have warned you about not trusting strangers. Most folk have little use for your kind, it’s true.”

Tetchie thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, then realized that the tattooed man must be shifting his shape once more. His hair grew darker as she watched, his complexion deepened. No longer pale and wan, he seemed to bristle with sorcerous energy now.

“But then,” the tattooed man went on, “they don’t have the knowledge I do. I thank you for your vitality, halfling. There’s nothing so potent as mortal blood stirred in a stew of faerie. A pity you won’t live long enough to put the knowledge to use.”

He gave her a mocking salute, fingers tipped against his brow, then away, before turning his back on her. The night swallowed him.

Tetchie fought to get to her own feet, but she just wore herself out until she could no longer even lift her head from the ground. Tears of frustration welled in her eyes. What had he done to her? She’d seen it for herself, he’d taken no more than three drops of her blood. But then why did she feel as though he’d taken it all?

She stared up at the night sky, the stars blurring in her gaze, spinning, spinning, until finally she just let them take her away.

* * *

She wasn’t sure what had brought her back, but when she opened her eyes, it was to find that the tattooed man had returned. He crouched over her, concern for her swimming in his dark eyes. His skin had regained its almost colourless complexion, his hair was bone white once more. She mustered what little strength she had to work up a gob of saliva and spat in his face.

The tattooed man didn’t move. She watched the saliva dribble down his cheek until it fell from the tip of his chin to the ground beside her.

“Poor child,” he said. “What has he done to you?”

The voice was wrong, Tetchie realized. He’d changed his voice now. The low grumble of stones grinding against each other deep underhill had been replaced by a soft melodious tonality that was comforting on the ear.

He touched the fingers of one hand to a tattoo high on his shoulder, waking a blue glow that flickered on his fingertips. She flinched when he touched her brow with the hand, but the contact of blue fingers against her skin brought an immediate easing to the weight of her pain. When he sat back on his haunches, she found she had the strength to lift herself up from the ground. Her gaze spun for a moment, then settled down. The new perspective helped stem the helplessness she’d been feeling.

“I wish I could do more for you,” the tattooed man said.

Tetchie merely glared at him, thinking, haven’t you done enough?

The tattooed man gave her a mild look, head cocked slightly as though listen

ing to her thoughts.

“He calls himself Nallorn on this side of the Gates,” he said finally, “but you would call him Nightmare, did you meet him in the land of his origin, beyond the Gates of Sleep. He thrives on pain and torment. We have been enemies for a very long time.”

Tetchie blinked in confusion. “But…you…”

The tattooed man nodded. “I know. We look the same. We are brothers, child. I am the elder. My name is Dream; on this side of the Gates I answer to the name Gaedrian.”

“He…your brother…he took something from me.”

“He stole your mortal ability to dream,” Gaedrian told her. “Tricked you into giving it freely so that it would retain its potency.”

Tetchie shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why would he come to me? I’m no one. I don’t have any powers or magics that anyone could want.”

“Not that you can use yourself, perhaps, but the mix of trow and mortal blood creates a potent brew. Each drop of such blood is a talisman in the hands of one who understands its properties.”

“Is he stronger than you?” Tetchie asked.

“Not in the land beyond the Gates of Sleep. There I am the elder. The Realms of Dream are mine and all who sleep are under my rule when they come through the Gates.” He paused, dark eyes thoughtful, before adding, “In this world, we are more evenly matched.”

“Nightmares come from him?” Tetchie asked.

Gaedrian nodded. “It isn’t possible for a ruler to see all the parts of his kingdom at once. Nallorn is the father of lies. He creeps into sleeping minds when my attention is distracted elsewhere and makes a horror of healing dreams.”

He stood up then, towering over her.

“I must go,” he said. “I must stop him before he grows too strong.”

Tetchie could see the doubt in his eyes and understood then that though he knew his brother to be stronger than him, he would not admit to it, would not turn from what he saw as his duty. She tried to stand, but her strength still hadn’t returned.

“Take me with you,” she said. “Let me help you.”

“You don’t know what you ask.”

“But I want to help.”

Gaedrian smiled. “Bravely spoken, but this is war and no place for a child.”

Tetchie searched for the perfect argument to convince him, but couldn’t find it. He said nothing, but she knew as surely as if he’d spoken why he didn’t want her to come. She would merely slow him down. She had no skills, only her night sight and the slowness of her limbs. Neither would be of help.

During the lull in their conversation when that understanding came to her, she heard the howling once more.

“The dogs,” she said.

“There are no wild dogs,” Gaedrian told her. “That is only the sound of the wind as it crosses the empty reaches of his soul.” He laid a hand on her head, tousled her hair. “I’m sorry for the hurt that’s come to you with this night’s work. If the fates are kind to me, I will try to make amends.”

Before Tetchie could respond, he strode off, westward. She tried to follow, but could barely crawl after him. By the time she reached the crest of the hill, the longstone rearing above her, she saw Gaedrian’s long legs carrying him up the side of the next hill. In the distance, blue lightning played, close to the ground.

Nallorn, she thought.

He was waiting for Gaedrian. Nallorn meant to kill the dreamlord and then he would rule the land beyond the Gates of Sleep. There would be no more dreams, only nightmares. People would fear sleep, for it would no longer be a haven. Nallorn would twist its healing peace into pain and despair.

And it was all her fault. She’d been thinking only of herself. She’d wanted to talk to her father, to be normal. She hadn’t known who Nallorn was at the time, but ignorance was no excuse.

“It doesn’t matter what others think of you,” her mother had told her once, “but what you think of yourself. Be a good person and no matter how other people will talk of you, what they say can only be a lie.”

They called her a monster and feared her. She saw now that it wasn’t a lie.

She turned to the longstone that had been her father before the sun had snared him and turned him to stone. Why couldn’t that have happened to her before all of this began, why couldn’t she have been turned to stone the first time the sun touched her? Then Nallorn could never have played on her vanity and her need, would never have tricked her. If she’d been stone…

Her gaze narrowed. She ran a hand along the rough surface of the standing stone and Nallorn’s voice spoke in her memory.

I speak of blood
.

It needs but a pinprick—one drop, perhaps three, and not for me. For the stone. To call him back.

To call him back.

Nallorn had proved there was magic in her blood. If he hadn’t lied, if…

Could she call her father back? And if he did return, would he listen to her?

It was night, the time when a trow was strongest. Surely when she explained, her father would use that strength to help Gaedrian?

A babble of townsfolk’s voices clamored up through her memory.

A trow’ll drink your blood as sure as look at you.

Saw one I did, sitting up by the boneyard, and wasn’t he chewing on a thighbone he’d dug up?

The creatures have no heart.

No soul.

They’ll feed on their own, if there’s no other meat to be found.

No, Tetchie told herself. Those were the lies her mother had warned her against. If her mother had loved the trow, then he couldn’t have been evil.

Her thumb still ached where Nallorn had pierced it with his long silver pin, but the tiny wound had closed. Tetchie bit at it until the salty taste of blood touched her tongue. Then she squeezed her thumb, smearing the few drops of blood that welled up against the rough surface of the stone.

She had no expectations, only hope. She felt immediately weak, just as she had when Nallorn had taken the three small drops of blood from her. The world began to spin for the second time that night, and she started to fall once more, only this time she fell into the stone. The hard surface seemed to have turned to the consistency of mud and it swallowed her whole.

* * *

When consciousness finally returned, Tetchie found herself lying with her face pressed against hard packed dirt. She lifted her head, squinting in the poor light. The longstone was gone, along with the world she knew. For as far as she could see, there was only a desolate wasteland, illuminated by a sickly twilight for which she could discover no source. It was still the landscape she knew, the hills and valleys had the same contours as those that lay west of Burndale, but it was all changed. Nothing seemed to grow here anymore; nothing lived at all in this place, except for her, and she had her doubts about that as well.

If this was a dead land, a lifeless reflection of the world she knew, then might she not have died to reach it?

Oddly enough, the idea didn’t upset her. It was as though, having seen so much that was strange already tonight, nothing more could surprise her.

When she turned to where the old gnarlwood had been in her world, a dead tree stump stood. It was no more than three times her height, the area about it littered with dead branches. The main body of the tree had fallen away from where Tetchie knelt, lying down the slope.

She rose carefully to her feet, but the dizziness and weakness she’d felt earlier had both fled. In the dirt at her feet, where the longstone would have stood in her world, there was a black pictograph etched deeply into the soil. It reminded her of the tattoos that she’d seen on the chests of the dreamlord and his brother, as though it had been plucked from the skin of one of them, enlarged and cast down on the ground. Goosebumps traveled up her arms.

She remembered what Gaedrian had told her about the land he ruled, how the men and women of her world could enter it only after passing through the Gates of Sleep. She’d been so weak when she offered her blood to the longstone, her eyelids growing so heavy….