Very Best of Charles de Lint, The (33 page)

He looks out the window with me, his hip against mine, the press of his arm on my shoulder a comfortable weight, his body radiating heat.

It used to be, he says, that she would walk every night until she grew so weak that her light was almost failing. Then she would leave the world to go to another, into Faerie, it’s said, or at least to a place where the darkness doesn’t hide quicks and bogles, and there she would rejuvenate herself for her return. We would have three nights of darkness, when evil owned the night, but then we’d see the glow of her lantern approaching and the haunts would flee her light and we could visit with one another again when the day’s work was done.

He leans his head against mine, his voice going dreamy.

I remember my mam saying once, how the Moon lived another life in those three days. How time moves differently in Faerie so that what was a day for us, might be a month for her in that place.

He pauses, then adds, I wonder if they miss her in that other world.

I don’t know what to say. But then I realize it’s not the kind of conversation in which I have to say anything.

He turns to me, head lowering until we’re looking straight into each other’s eyes. I get lost in the violet and suddenly I’m in his arms and we’re kissing. He guides me, step by sweet step, backward towards that heap of straw. We’ve got the blanket under us and this time I’m glad I’m wearing the long skirt and peasant blouse again, because they come off so easily.

His hands and his mouth are so gentle and they’re all over me like moth wings brushing my skin. I don’t know how to describe what he’s doing to me. It isn’t anything that other lovers haven’t done to me before, but the way Jeck does it has me glowing, my skin all warm and tingling with this deep slow burn starting up deep between my legs and just firing up along every one of my nerve ends.

I can hear myself making moaning sounds and then he’s inside me, his breathing heavy in my ear. All I can feel and smell is him. My hips are grinding against his and we’re synched into this perfect rhythm and then I wake up in my own bed and I’m all tangled up in the sheets with my hand between my legs, fingertip right on the spot, moving back and forth and back and forth…

7

Sophie fell silent.

“Steamy,” Jilly said after a moment.

Sophie gave a little bit of an embarrassed laugh. “You’re telling me. I get a little squirmy just thinking about it. And that night—I was still so fired up when I woke that I couldn’t think straight. I just went ahead and finished and then lay there afterwards, completely spent. I couldn’t even move.”

“You know a guy named Jack Crow, don’t you?” Jilly asked.

“Yeah, he’s the one who’s got that tattoo parlor down on Palm Street. I went out with him a couple of times, but—” Sophie shrugged, “—you know. Things just didn’t work out.”

“That’s right. You told me that all he ever wanted to do was to give you tattoos.”

Sophie shook her head, remembering. “In private places so only he and I would know they were there. Boy.”

The cat had fallen asleep, body sprawled out on her lap, head pressed tight up against her stomach. A deep resonant purr rose up from him. Sophie just hoped he didn’t have fleas.

“But the guy in my dream was nothing like Jack,” she said. “And besides, his name was Jeck.”

“What kind of a name
is
that?”

“A dream name.”

“So did you see him again—the next night?”

Sophie shook her head. “Though not from lack of interest on my part.”

8

The third night I find myself in this one-room cottage out of a fairy tale. You know, there’s dried herbs hanging everywhere, a big hearth, considering the size of the place, with black iron pots and a kettle sitting on the hearth stones, thick hand-woven rugs underfoot, a small tidy little bed in one corner, a cloak hanging by the door, a rough set of a table and two chairs by a shuttered window.

The old lady is sitting on one of the chairs.

There you are, she says. I looked for you to come last night, but I couldn’t find you.

I’m getting so used to this dreaming business by now that I’m not at all weirded out, just kind of accepting it all, but I am a little disappointed to find myself here, instead of in the barn.

I was with Jeck, I say and then she frowns, but she doesn’t say anything.

Do you know him? I ask.

Too well.

Is there something wrong with him?

I’m feeling a little flushed, just talking about him. So far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong with him at all.

He’s not trustworthy, the old lady finally says.

I shake my head. He seems to be just as upset about the drowned lady as you are. He told me all about her—how she used to go into Faerie and that kind of thing.

She never went into Faerie.

Well then, where did she go?

The old lady shakes her head. Crows talk too much, she says and I can’t tell if she means the birds, or a whole bunch of Jecks. Thinking about the latter gives me goosebumps. I can barely stay clear-headed around Jeck; a whole crowd of him would probably overload all my circuits and leave me lying on the floor like a little pool of jelly.

I don’t tell the old lady any of this. Jeck inspired confidences, as much as sensuality; she does neither.

Will you help us? she says instead.

I sit down at the table with her and ask, Help with what?

The Moon, she says.

I shake my head. I don’t understand. You mean the drowned lady in the pool?

Drowned, the old lady says, but not dead. Not yet.

I start to argue the point, but then realize where I am. It’s a dream and anything can happen, right?

It needs you to break the bogles’ spell, the old lady goes on.

Me? But—

Tomorrow night, go to sleep with a stone in your mouth and a hazel twig in your hands. Now mayhap, you’ll find yourself back here, mayhap with your crow, but guard you don’t say a word, not one word. Go out into the fen until you find a coffin, and on that coffin a candle, and then look sideways and you’ll see that you’re in the place I showed you yesternight.

She falls silent.

And then what am I supposed to do? I ask.

What needs to be done.

But—

I’m tired, she says.

She waves her hand at me and I’m back in my own bed again.

9

“And so?” Jilly asked. “Did you do it?”

“Would you have?”

“In a moment,” Jilly said. She sidled closer along the wall until she was right beside Sophie and peered into her friend’s face. “Oh don’t tell me you didn’t do it. Don’t tell me that’s the whole story.”

“The whole thing just seemed silly,” Sophie said.

“Oh, please!”

“Well, it did. It was all too oblique and riddlish. I know it was just a dream, so that it didn’t have to make sense, but there was so much of a coherence to a lot of it that when it did get incomprehensible, it just didn’t seem…oh, I don’t know. Didn’t seem fair, I suppose.”

“But you
did
do it?”

Sophie finally relented.

“Yes,” she said.

10

I go to sleep with a small smooth stone in my mouth and have the hardest time getting to sleep because I’m sure I’m going to swallow it during the night and choke. And I have the hazel twig as well, though I don’t know what help either of them is going to be.

Hazel twig to ward you from quicks and bogles, I hear Jeck say. And the stone to remind you of your own world, of the difference between waking and dream, else you might find yourself sharing the Moon’s fate.

We’re standing on a sort of grassy knoll, an island of semi-solid ground, but the footing’s still spongy. I start to say hello, but he puts his finger to his lips.

She’s old, is Granny Weather, he says, and cranky, too, but there’s more magic in one of her toenails than most of us will find in a lifetime.

I never really thought about his voice before. It’s like velvet, soft and smooth, but not effeminate. It’s too resonant for that.

He puts his hands on my shoulders and I feel like melting. I close my eyes, lift my face to his, but he turns me around so that I have my back to him. He cups his hands around my breasts and kisses me on the nape of my neck. I lean back against him, but he lifts his mouth to my ear.

You must go, he says softly, his breath tickling the inside of my ear. Into the fens.

I pull free from his embrace and face him. I start to say, Why me? Why do I have to go alone? But before I can get a word out he has his hand across my mouth.

Trust Granny Weather, he says. And trust me. This is something only you can do. Whether you do it or not, is your choice. But if you mean to try tonight, you mustn’t speak. You must go out into the fens and find her. They will tempt you and torment you, but you must ignore them, else they’ll have you drowning too, under the Black Snag.

I look at him and I know he can see the need I have for him because in his eyes I can see the same need for me reflected in their violet depths.

I will wait for you, he says. If I can.

I don’t like the sound of that. I don’t like the sound of any of it, but I tell myself again, it’s just a dream, so I finally nod. I start to turn away, but he catches hold of me for a last moment and kisses me. There’s a hot rush of tongues touching, arms tight around each other, before he finally steps back.

I love the strength of you, he says.

I don’t want to go, I want to change the rules of the dream, but I get this feeling that if I do, if I change one thing, everything’ll change, and maybe he won’t even exist in whatever comes along to replace it. So I lift my hand and run it along the side of his face, I take a long last drink of those deep violet eyes that just want to swallow me, then I get brave and turn away again.

And this time I go into the fens.

I’m nervous, but I guess that goes without saying. I look back, but I can’t see Jeck anymore. I can just feel I’m being watched, and it’s not by him. I clutch my little hazel twig tighter, roll the stone around from one side of my mouth to the other, and keep going.

It’s not easy. I have to test each step to make sure I’m not just going to sink away forever into the muck. I start thinking of what you hear about dreams, how if you die in a dream, you die for real, that’s why you always wake up just in time. Except for those people who die in their sleep, I guess.

I don’t know how long I’m slogging through the muck. My arms and legs have dozens of little nicks and cuts—you never think of how sharp the edge of a reed can be until your skin slides across one. It’s like a paper cut, sharp and quick, and it stings like hell. I don’t suppose all the muck’s doing the cuts much good either. The only thing I can be happy about is that there aren’t any bugs.

Actually, there doesn’t seem to be the sense of anything living at all in the fens, just me, on my own. But I know I’m not alone. It’s like a word sitting on the tip of your tongue. I can’t see or hear or sense anything, but I’m being watched.

I think of Jeck and Granny Weather, of what they say the darkness hides. Quicks and bogles and haunts.

After a while I almost forget what I’m doing out here. I’m just stumbling along with a feeling of dread hanging over me that just won’t go away. Bogbean and water mint leaves feel like cold wet fingers sliding along my legs. I hear the occasional flutter of wings, and sometimes a deep kind of sighing moan, but I never see anything.

I’m just about played out when suddenly I come upon this tall rock under the biggest crack willow I’ve seen so far. The tree’s dead, drooping leafless branches into the still water around the stone. The stone rises out of the water at a slant, the mud’s all really black underfoot, the marsh is, if anything, even quieter here, expectant, almost, and I get the feeling like something—some
things
are closing in all around me.

I start to walk across the dark mud to the other side of the rock until I hit a certain vantage point. I stop when I can see that it’s shaped like a big strange coffin and I remember what Granny Weather told me. I look for the candle and I see a tiny light flickering at the very top of the black stone, right where it’s pushed up and snagged among the dangling branches of the dead willow. It’s no brighter than a firefly’s glow, but it burns steady.

I do what Granny Weather told me and look around myself using my peripheral vision. I don’t see anything at first, but as I slowly turn towards the water, I catch just a hint of a glow in the water. I stop and then I wonder what to do. Is it still going to be there if I turn to face it?

Eventually, I move sideways towards it, always keeping it in the corner of my eye. The closer I get, the brighter it starts to glow, until I’m standing hip deep in the cold water, the mud sucking at my feet, and it’s all around me, this dim eerie glowing. I look down into the water and I see my own face reflected back at me, but then I realize that it’s not me I’m seeing, it’s the drowned woman, the moon, trapped under the stone.

I stick my hazel twig down the bodice of my blouse and reach into the water. I have to bend down, the dark water licking at my shoulders and chin and smelling something awful, but I finally touch the woman’s shoulder. Her skin’s warm against my fingers and for some reason that makes me feel braver. I get a grip with one hand on her shoulder, then the other, and give a pull.

Nothing budges.

I try some more, moving a little deeper into the water. Finally I plunge my head under and get a really good hold, but she simply won’t move. The rock’s got her pressed down tight, and the willow’s got the rock snagged, and dream or no dream, I’m not some kind of superwoman. I’m only so strong and I have to breathe.

I come up spluttering and choking on the foul water.

And then I hear the laughter.

I look up and there’s these things all around the edge of the pool. Quicks and bogles and small monsters. All eyes and teeth and spindly black limbs and crooked hands with too many joints to the fingers. The tree is full of crows and their cawing adds to the mocking hubbub of sound.