Very Best of Charles de Lint, The (6 page)

Meran followed at a run—the quick distance-eating gait that only kowrie folk can maintain, all night if need be. But quick though she was, the kelpie was quicker, burdened down and all. Across the downs he galloped, the gorse and heather disappearing underhoof with a blur. Meran could only follow as best she could, trying to keep them in sight. When they reached the stone formation known as the Five Auld Maids, she was still a hill and a half away.

She could see Furey encircle the stones. Once. Oh, there’s a spell brewing, she thought, and put on more speed. Furey circled the stones a second time, hooves drumming hollowly on the sod. An amber glow sprang up around the hill. Meran’s heart was fit to burst and a pain stitched her side. Furey completed the third circuit, then leapt into the center of the standing stones with a high belling cry. Meran covered the remaining distance at a desperate gait and threw herself in amongst them as well, just as the kelpie’s spell took hold, and then they were all spirited away.

A moment later, the hilltop stood empty, except for five old stones.

* * *

Cerin stirred restlessly in his sleep. He threw out an arm across the bed, but there was no oakmaid there to snuggle close to. His hand hung over the edge of the bed. He woke when Old Badger gave it a lick with his rough tongue.

Sitting up, Cerin stared around the darkened cottage. “Meran?” he called.

When there was no answer, he looked up to the rafters. There was no one there either.

“Why don’t I listen to her?” he asked Old Badger as he hurriedly threw on his clothes. Slinging his roseharp across his shoulder, he set off for Hather’s cot at a quick walk.

* * *

The room was smoky, especially up in the rafters where Meran found herself precariously balanced and about to fall until she clutched a support beam. She wrapped both arms around it, took a few quick breaths to steady herself, then looked around.

Farther along the rafter, she spied the kowrie folk with Liane’s bright red-haired head lifting above the other four. They didn’t seem to be aware of Meran’s presence. Below them was the commonroom of an inn. Music was playing—two fiddlers and a piper, with an old man sitting off to one side rattling a pair of bones in time to the tune. Meran recognized it as a reel that Cerin played sometimes called “The Pinch of Snuff.” There were a half a dozen other mortals in the crowd—a pair dancing, three by the hearth, and the landlord on a chair by the kitchen door, tapping a foot to the music.

It was one of those rambling houses, Meran realized. A place where the local folk gathered for music and stories and songs, with the tunes and the drink and the dance going on until late in the night. No one ever knew how a certain place came to be known as the local rambling house. It was never planned. It might be a cobbler’s kitchen or a farmer’s barn, as soon as an inn. The best of such places simply happened. Meran had been in any number of them, for Cerin and his tinker cousins seemed to sniff them out no matter where they happened to be.

It was not a place for a girl of fourteen, Meran thought. She wondered why on earth the kowrie folk needed Liane here. She turned her attention back to them.

“Now do you remember the words we taught you?” Yocky John was asking Liane in a low voice that Meran could only just make out.

The shepherd girl nodded. Her face was flushed and there was a sparkle of excitement in her eyes. She cleared her throat and leaned over the rafter.

“Liane, don’t!” Meran called to her, pitching her voice as low as Yocky John’s. Five heads turned as one towards her.

“Oh-oh,” Wee Jack said nervously.

“Have you lost your senses?” Meran demanded. “What are you doing to the poor girl?”

“No harm, that’s for sure,” Yocky John retorted. “Broom and heather, Mistress, what do you take us for?”

“Incorrigible mischief-makers. Kidnappers. Troublemakers. That child you’ve stolen—she’s just fourteen.”

“We needed her young,” Yocky John said. “We needed a human to speak the charm that will let us join the spree below without the folk knowing we’ve come, and we needed her young because it’s the young humans that still believe enough to make a kowrie spell work from their lips.”

Meran left her perch and edged carefully along the rafter towards them. “Well, she’s coming straight home with me and you can speak your own spells.”

“Oh, please,” Wee Jack said. He stood up and came towards her. “Don’t spoil the fun. I’ve never been to a spree.”

“You move aside, or I’ll—”

Meran never finished her threat. Wee Jack, swaying on the rafter, lost his balance and fell.

Yocky John grabbed for his collar and missed.

Meran grabbed as well, but her fingers closed only on air.

Horrified, they watched Wee Jack fall, wailing and cartwheeling his limbs. But when he hit the floor, it was a flute that struck the hardwood boards and broke in two with a snap.

Utter silence fell like a leaden weight across the commonroom. Ten humans looked from the broken instrument lying on the floor, up to the rafters where they all clung, staring down.

“Oh, no.” Meran was sure her heart had stopped. Tears welled in her eyes.

“You’ve killed him,” Yocky John said flatly.

“Hey!” the inn’s landlord called up in an angry voice. “What are you doing up there?”

“Take us away,” Peadin said to Furey.

“Can’t,” the kelpie replied. “Wee Jack was a part of the coming spell, so he’s got to be a part of the going back one as well.”

The landlord got a big axe from behind his kitchen door and waved it in their direction. A couple of the other men ranked themselves beside him, stout canes in hand.

“Get down here!” the landlord cried. “I’ll have your skins for sneaking about in my rafters.”

“It’s looking ugly,” Furey said softly to Yocky John. “Best we get down there and I’ll give them a taste of a kelpie’s hooves. We’ll see how well they can shout while they’re choking on their own teeth.”

Meran barely heard what any of them were saying. She stared down at the broken flute through a blur of tears. She couldn’t believe that the little bodach was dead. And that was not all…. The flute was one of the three charms that Cerin had made from her lifetree to call her back from the realm of the dead. A comb and a pendant were the other two. She had them still, but it needed all three for the harper’s spell to work. Already she could feel the dead lands calling to her.

“Mistress?” Yocky John called softly to her. She looked so pale and wan.

“I did kill him,” she said hoarsely. “And now I’m dying, too.”

Below them, the bones player and one of the fiddlers had fetched a ladder and leaned it up against the rafters.

“If you don’t come down, then,” the landlord cried, “I’ll come up and throw you all down.”

“That man has too many unpleasant words stored away in him,” Furey said. “He needs to be thrashed.”

“Don’t make it worse than it is,” Peadin said. “We’ll have to pay for our trespass.”

Yocky John nodded glumly. “Though we’ve already paid too dear a price,” he said, looking down at what was left of his friend. And Meran… She appeared to be losing her substance now as the grip of the dead lands grew stronger on her.

“Take ahold of your anger!” Peadin called to the men below. “We’re coming down.”

One by one they descended the ladder. Last to come was Meran who ignored the men and went to the broken flute. Sitting on the floor, she took the broken pieces onto her lap and held them tightly.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she whispered. “I’ve cheated death once, so every day I’ve had since then has been a gift. But you—I made you. You were meant to live a long and merry life….”

“They’re kowries,” the landlord said, staring at them. Here and there, some of the men made the Sign of Horns to ward themselves against evil. “Look at the green in that one’s hair and the strange faces of the others.”

“She’s no kowrie,” the piper said, pointing to Liane.

The landlord nodded. “Come here, girl. We’ll rescue you.”

“I don’t want to be rescued,” Liane told them.

“They’ll have gold hidden somewhere,” one of the landlord’s customers said greedily. “Make them give us their gold, or we’ll take it out of their skins.”

The landlord didn’t seem so certain anymore. Now that the little bedraggled company was standing in front of him, his anger ran from him. It was wonder he felt at this moment, that he should see such magical folk.

“I have an old flute some traveller left behind,” he said to Meran. “Would you like that to replace the one that broke?”

“You don’t give kowries gifts,” the other man protested. “You take their gold, Oarn.” He hefted his cane. “Or you lather their backs with a few sharp blows—just to keep them in line.”

He took a step forward with upraised cane, but at that moment the front door of the inn was flung open and a tall figure stood outlined in the doorway.

He had long braided hair, and a long beard, and there was a fey light glimmering in his eyes. A harp was slung over his shoulder.

“Whose back do you mean to lather?” he asked in a grim voice.

“Mind your own business,” the man said.

“This is my business,” the harper replied. “That’s my wife you mean to beat. My neighbour’s child. My friends.”

“Then perhaps you should pay their coin,” the man said, taking a step towards the harper with his upraised cane.

“No!” the landlord cried. “No fighting!”

But he need not have spoken. Cerin brought his harp around in front of him and drew a sharp angry chord from its strings. The harp was named Telynros, a gift from the Tuathan, the Bright Gods, and it played spells as well as music. That first chord shattered the man’s cane. The second loosed all the stitches in his clothing so that shirt, tunic and trousers fell away from him and he stood bare-assed naked in front of them all. The third woke a wind and propelled the man out the door. Cerin stood aside as he went by and gave him a kick on his backside to help him on his way.

“Good Master,” the landlord began as Cerin turned back to face him. “We never meant—”

“They trespassed,” Cerin said, “so you had reason to be angry.”

“Yes, but—”

“Please,” the harper said. “I have a more pressing concern.”

He crossed the room to where not much more than a ghost of his wife sat, holding the two broken halves of her flute on her lap.

“Oh, Cerin,” she said, looking up at him. “I’ve made such a botch of things.” Her voice was like a whisper now, as though she spoke from a great distance away.

“You meant well.”

“But I did wrong all the same, and now I have to pay the price.”

Cerin shook his head. “What was broken can be mended,” he said.

He sat on the floor beside her and took Telynros upon his lap. Music spilled from the roseharp’s strings, a soft, healing music. Meran grew more solid and colour returned to her cheeks. The two halves of the flute joined and the wood knitted until, by the time the tune was finished, there was no sign that there had ever been a break. As Cerin took his hands from the roseharp’s strings, the flute shimmered and Wee Jack lay there in Meran’s lap.

“I…I think I fell,” he said.

“You did,” Meran told him with a smile that was warm with relief.

“I was in such a cold place. Did you catch me?”

Meran shook her head. “Cerin did.”

Wee Jack looked around at the circle of faces peering down at them. Yocky John had a broad grin that almost split his face in two.

“Did I miss the spree?” Wee Jack asked.

“Is that why you came?” the landlord asked. “Because you wanted a bit of craic? Well, you’re welcome to stay the night—you and all your friends.”

So Cerin joined the other musicians and Meran joined him, playing the flute that the landlord had offered her earlier so that Wee Jack could caper and dance with the others. The jigs and reels sprang from their instruments until the rafters were ringing. Liane drank cider and giggled a great deal. The bodachs and Peadin stamped about the wooden floors with human partners. Furey sat in a corner with the landlord, drinking ale, swapping tales and playing endless games of sticks-a-penny. When they finally left, dawn was cracking in the eastern skies.

“You’re welcome back, whenever you’re by,” the landlord told them, and he spoke the words from the pleasure he’d had with their company, rather than out of fear because they were kowrie folk.

“Watch what you promise bodachs,” Cerin said before he spelled the roseharp and took them all home the way he’d come—on the strains of his music.

Meran held a sleepy Wee Jack in her arms. “Oh, they mean well,” she said.

Behind her, Yocky John and the others laughed to hear her change her tune.

Merlin Dreams in the Mondream Wood

mondream — an Anglo-Saxon word

which means the dream of life

among men

I am Merlin

Who follow the Gleam

—Tennyson, from “Merlin and the Gleam”

In the heart of the house lay a garden.

In the heart of the garden stood a tree.

In the heart of the tree lived an old man who wore the shape of a red-haired boy with crackernut eyes that seemed as bright as salmon tails glinting up the water.

His was a riddling wisdom, older by far than the ancient oak that housed his body. The green sap was his blood and leaves grew in his hair. In the winter, he slept. In the spring, the moon harped a windsong against his antler tines as the oak’s boughs stretched its green buds awake. In the summer, the air was thick with the droning of bees and the scent of the wildflowers that grew in stormy profusion where the fat brown bole became root.

And in the autumn, when the tree loosed its bounty to the ground below, there were hazelnuts lying in among the acorns.

The secrets of a Green Man.

* * *

“When I was a kid, I thought it was a forest,” Sara said.

She was sitting on the end of her bed, looking out the window over the garden, her guitar on her lap, the quilt bunched up under her knees. Up by the headboard, Julie Simms leaned forward from its carved wood to look over Sara’s shoulder at what could be seen of the garden from their vantage point.