Very Best of Charles de Lint, The (21 page)

Was this all just a dream, then? And if so, what was its source? Did it come from

Gaedrian, or from his brother Nallorn at whose bidding nightmares were born?

She went down on one knee to look more closely at the pictograph. It looked a bit like a man with a tangle of rope around his feet and lines standing out from his head as though his hair stood on end. She reached out with one cautious finger and touched the tangle of lines at the foot of the rough figure. The dirt was damp there.

She rubbed her finger against her thumb. The dampness was oily to the touch. Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she reached down again and traced the symbol, the slick oiliness letting her finger slide easily along the edged grooves in the dirt. When she came to the end, the pictograph began to glow. She stood quickly, backing away.

What had she
done?

The blue glow rose into the air, holding to the shape that lay in the dirt. A faint rhythmic thrumming rose from all around her, as though the ground was shifting, but she felt no vibration underfoot. There was just the sound, low and ominous.

A branch cracked behind her and she turned to the ruin of the gnarlwood. A tall shape stood outlined against the sky. She started to call out to it, but her throat closed up on her. And then she was aware of the circle of eyes that watched her from all sides of the hilltop, pale eyes that flickered with the reflection of the glowing pictograph that hung in the air where the longstone stood in her world. They were set low to the ground; feral eyes.

She remembered the howling of the wild dogs in her own world.

There are no wild dogs,
Gaedrian had told her.
That is only the sound of the wind as it crosses the empty reaches of his soul.

As the eyes began to draw closer, she could make out the triangular-shaped heads of the creatures they belonged to, the high-backed bodies with which they slunk forward.

Oh, why had she believed Gaedrian? She knew him no better than Nallorn.

Who was to say that
either
of them was to be trusted?

One of the dogs rose up to its full height and stalked forward on stiff legs. The low growl that arose in his chest echoed the rumble of sound that her foolishness with the glowing pictograph had called up. She started to back away from the dog, but now another, and a third stepped forward and there was no place to which she could retreat. She turned her gaze to the silent figure that stood in among the fallen branches of the gnarlwood.

“Puh—please,” she managed. “I…I meant no harm.”

The figure made no response, but the dogs growled at the sound of her voice. The nearest pulled its lips back in a snarl.

This was it, Tetchie thought. If she wasn’t dead already in this land of the dead, then she soon would be.

But then the figure by the tree moved forward. It had a slow shuffling step. Branches broke underfoot as it closed the distance between them. The dogs backed away from Tetchie and began to whine uneasily.

“Be gone,” the figure said.

Its voice was low and craggy, stone against stone, like that of the first tattooed man, Nallorn, the dreamlord’s brother who turned dreams into nightmares. It was a counterpoint to the deep thrumming that seemed to come from the hill under Tetchie’s feet.

The dogs fled at the sound of the man’s voice. Tetchie’s knees knocked against each other as he moved closer still. She could see the rough chiseled shape of his features now, the shock of tangled hair, stiff as dried gorse, the wide bulk of his shoulders and torso, the corded muscle upon muscle that made up his arms and legs. His eyes were sunk deep under protruding brows. He was like the first rough shaping that a sculptor might create when beginning a new work, face and musculature merely outlined rather than clearly defined as it would be when the sculpture was complete.

Except this sculpture wasn’t stone, nor clay, nor marble. It was flesh and blood. And though he was no taller than a normal man, he seemed like a giant to Tetchie, towering over her as though the side of a mountain had pulled loose to walk the hills.

“Why did you call me?” he asked.

“C-call?” Tetchie replied. “But I…I didn’t…”

Her voice trailed off. She gazed on him with sudden hope and understanding.

“Father?” she asked in a small voice.

The giant regarded her in a long silence. Then slowly he bent down to one knee so that his head was on level with hers.

“You,” he said in a voice grown with wonder. “You are Henna’s daughter?”

Tetchie nodded, nervously.

“
My
daughter?”

Tetchie’s nervousness fled. She no longer saw a fearsome trow out of legend, but her mother’s lover. The gentleness and warmth that had called her mother from Burndale to where he waited for her on the moors, washed over her. He opened his arms and she went to him, sighing as he embraced her.

“My name’s Tetchie,” she said into his shoulder.

“Tetchie,” he repeated, making a low rumbling song of her name. “I never knew I had a daughter.”

“I came every night to your stone,” she said, “hoping you’d return.”

Her father pulled back a little and gave her a serious look.

“I can’t ever go back,” he said.

“But—”

He shook his head. “Dead is dead, Tetchie. I can’t return.”

“But this is a horrible place to have to live.”

He smiled, craggy features shifting like a mountainside suddenly rearranging its terrain.

“I don’t live here,” he said. “I live…I can’t explain how it is. There are no words to describe the difference.”

“Is mama there?”

“Hanna…died?”

Tetchie nodded. “Years ago, but I still miss her.”

“I will…look for her,” the trow said. “I will give her your love.” He rose then, looming over her again. “But I must go now, Tetchie. This is unhallowed land, the perilous border that lies between life and death. Bide here too long—living or dead—and you remain here forever.”

Tetchie had wanted to ask him to take her with him to look for her mother, to tell him that living meant only pain and sorrow for her, but then she realized she was only thinking of herself again. She still wasn’t sure that she trusted Gaedrian, but if he had been telling her the truth, then she had to try to help him. Her own life was a nightmare; she wouldn’t wish for all people to share such a life.

“I need your help,” she said and told him then of Gaedrian and Nallorn, the war that was being fought between Dream and Nightmare that Nallorn could not be allowed to win.

Her father shook his head sadly. “I can’t help you, Tetchie. It’s not physically possible for me to return.”

“But if Gaedrian loses…”

“That would be an evil thing,” her father agreed.

“There must be something we can do.”

He was silent for long moments then.

“What is it?” Tetchie asked. “What don’t you want to tell me?”

“I can do nothing,” her father said, “but you…”

Again he hesitated.

“What?” Tetchie asked. “What is it that I can do?”

“I can give you of my strength,” her father said. “You’ll be able to help your dreamlord then. But it will cost you. You will be more trow than ever, and remain so.”

More
trow? Tetchie thought. She looked at her father, felt the calm that seemed to wash in peaceful waves from his very presence. The townsfolk might think that a curse, but she no longer did.

“I’d be proud to be more like you,” she said.

“You will have to give up all pretense of humanity,” her father warned her. “When the sun rises, you must be barrowed underhill or she’ll make you stone.”

“I already only come out at night,” she said.

Her father’s gaze searched hers and then he sighed.

“Yours has not been an easy life,” he said.

Tetchie didn’t want to talk about herself anymore.

“Tell me what to do,” she said.

“You must take some of my blood,” her father told her.

Blood again. Tetchie had seen and heard enough about it to last her a lifetime tonight.

“But how can you do that?” she asked. “You’re just a spirit….”

Her father touched her arm. “Given flesh in this half-world by your call. Have you a knife?”

When Tetchie shook her head, he lifted his thumb to his mouth and bit down on it. Dark liquid welled up at the cut as he held his hand out to her.

“It will burn,” he said.

Tetchie nodded nervously. Closing her eyes, she opened her mouth. Her father brought his thumb down across her tongue. His blood tasted like fire, burning its way down her throat. She shuddered with the searing pain of it, eyes tearing so that even when she opened them, she was still blind.

She felt her father’s hand on her head. He smoothed the tangle of her hair and then kissed her.

“Be well, my child,” he said. “We will look for you, your mother and I, when your time to join us has come and you finally cross over.”

There were a hundred things Tetchie realized that she wanted to say, but vertigo overtook her and she knew that not only was he gone, but the empty world as well. She could feel grass under her, a soft breeze on her cheek. When she opened her eyes, the longstone reared up on one side of her, the gnarlwood on the other. She turned to look where she’d last seen the blue lightning flare before she’d gone into the stone.

There was no light there now.

She got to her feet, feeling invigorated rather than weak. Her night sight seemed to have sharpened, every sense was more alert. She could almost read the night simply through the pores of her skin.

The townsfolk were blind, she realized.
She
had been blind. They had all missed so much of what the world had to offer. But the townsfolk craved a narrower world, rather than a wider one, and she…she had a task yet to perform.

She set off to where the lightning had been flickering.

* * *

The grass was all burned away, the ground itself scorched on the hilltop that was her destination. She saw a figure lying in the dirt and hesitated, unsure as to who it was. Gaedrian or his brother? She moved cautiously forward until finally she knelt by the still figure. His eyes opened and looked upon her with a weak gaze.

“I was not strong enough,” Gaedrian said, his voice still sweet and ringing, but much subdued.

“Where did he go?” Tetchie asked.

“To claim his own: the land of Dream.”

Tetchie regarded him for a long moment, then lifted her thumb to her mouth. It was time for blood again—but this would be the last time. Gaedrian tried to protest, but she pushed aside his hands and let the drops fall into his mouth: one, two, three. Gaedrian swallowed. His eyes went wide with an almost comical astonishment.

“Where…how…?”

“I found my father,” Tetchie said. “This is the heritage he left me.”

Senses all more finally attuned, to be sure, but when she lifted an arm to show Gaedrian, the skin was darker, greyer than before and tough as bark. And she would never see the day again.

“You should not have—” Gaedrian began, but Tetchie cut him off.

“Is it enough?” she asked. “Can you stop him now?”

Gaedrian sat up. He rolled his shoulders, flexed his hand and arms, his legs.

“More than enough,” he said. “I feel a hundred years younger.”

Knowing him for what he was, Tetchie didn’t think he was exaggerating. Who knew how old the dreamlord was? He would have been born with the first dream.

He cupped her face with his hands and kissed her on the brow.

“I will try to make amends for what my brother has done to you this night,” he said. “The whole world owes you for the rescue of its dreams.”

“I don’t want any reward,” Tetchie said.

“We’ll talk of that when I return for you,” Gaedrian said.

If you can find me, Tetchie thought, but she merely nodded in reply.

Gaedrian stood. One hand plucked at a tattoo just to one side of his breastbone and tossed the ensuing blue light into the air. It grew into a shimmering portal. Giving her one more grateful look, he stepped through. The portal closed behind him, winking out in a flare of blue sparks, like those cast by a fire when

a log’s tossed on.

Tetchie looked about the scorched hilltop, then set off back to Burndale. She walked its cobblestoned streets, one lone figure, dwarfed by the buildings, more kin to their walls and foundations than to those sleeping within. She thought of her mother when she reached The Cotts Inn and stood looking at the shed around back by the stables where they had lived for all of those years.

Finally, just as the dawn was pinking the horizon, she made her way back to the hill where she’d first met the tattooed men. She ran her fingers along the bark of the gnarlwood, then stepped closer to the longstone, standing on the east side of it.

It wasn’t entirely true that she could never see the day again. She
could
see it, if only once.

Tetchie was still standing there when the sun rose and snared her and then there were two standing stones on the hilltop keeping company to the old gnarlwood tree, one tall and one much smaller. But Tetchie herself was gone to follow her parents, a lithe spirit of a child finally, her gracelessness left behind in stone.

Winter Was Hard

I pretty much try to stay in a constant

state of confusion just because of the

expression it leaves on my face.

—Johnny Depp

It was the coldest December since they’d first started keeping records at the turn of the century, though warmer, Jilly thought, than it must have been in the ice ages of the Pleistocene. The veracity of that extraneous bit of trivia gave her small comfort, for it did nothing to lessen the impact of the night’s bitter weather. The wind shrieked through the tunnel-like streets created by the abandoned buildings of the Tombs, carrying with it a deep, arctic chill. It spun the granular snow into dervishing whirligigs that made it almost impossible to see at times and packed drifts up against the sides of the buildings and derelict cars.

Jilly felt like a little kid, bundled up in her boots and parka, with longjohns under her jeans, a woolen cap pushing down her unruly curls and a long scarf wrapped about fifty times around her neck and face, cocooning her so completely that only her eyes peered out through a narrow slit. Turtle-like, she hunched her shoulders, trying to make her neck disappear into her parka, and stuffed her mittened hands deep in its pockets.