The Wild Ways (51 page)
Folding her arms, Charlie propped a hip against the porch railing.
What is it you do?
would slide the conversation into another key entirely, and so she waited. And waited. Two cars and a camper drove by. Gulls continued crying. The wind pushed a cloud over the sun, adjusting the glare but not affecting the temperature. The aunties didn’t wait for what they wanted. Auntie Catherine was out of practice.
What is it you do?
would slide the conversation into another key entirely, and so she waited. And waited. Two cars and a camper drove by. Gulls continued crying. The wind pushed a cloud over the sun, adjusting the glare but not affecting the temperature. The aunties didn’t wait for what they wanted. Auntie Catherine was out of practice.
“Do not assume you are my equal,” she snapped at last.
“If you could stop me, you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
Auntie Catherine sighed, the sort of sigh that said,
you are young and foolish and I don’t know why I bother.
Which pretty much proved Charlie’s point as far as Charlie was concerned. “If you stop this well from going in, something old and more dangerous than you can imagine will rise from beneath the sea. I have Seen it.”
you are young and foolish and I don’t know why I bother.
Which pretty much proved Charlie’s point as far as Charlie was concerned. “If you stop this well from going in, something old and more dangerous than you can imagine will rise from beneath the sea. I have Seen it.”
“You didn’t See the Troll.”
“That’s an apples-and-oranges distinction, Charlotte.”
Charlie shrugged. “They’re both fruit.”
“Oh, that’s right, make a joke.” Auntie Catherine pushed a strand of silver hair back off her face and snarled, “Fine, you want enlightenment? If you stop the well from going in, you’ll be responsible for the end of the world. There’s an enormous difference between one of the ancients rising and an oil spill or two!”
“Not if you’re in the path of the oil spill. Besides, ancient gods rising from beneath the sea is so last millennium.” She slid off the railing and planted her feet, peeling paint making the planks of the porch rough under her soles. “So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to stop the well, then I’m going to stop the end of the world.”
Auntie Catherine’s lip curled. “What, with a Song?”
“Why not?”
“Because it won’t work!” She took a deep breath, hands clutching the tangerine muslin of her skirt. “Let the pilings go in, then stop the well before there’s any drilling.”
“Why me?You stop the well.”
“That’s not what I’ve Seen.”
“You’ve Seen me stop the drilling?”
“No, I’ve Seen the need for the pilings. The rest is incidental!”
“Okay.” Charlie folded her arms. “How do I stop the drilling?”
“How else? With a Song!”
“Now you’re mocking me.” Not the words, but the clearly audible exclamation mark. “Nice talking to you, Auntie Catherine.”
“Charlotte . . .”
Charlie made another of those minute-by-minute decisions. “You should leave now.”
The aunties were used to getting their own way, leaving Auntie Catherine just as out of practice when it came to dealing with defiance. The audacity of a younger Gale standing so definitively against her had visibly thrown her. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly open, and her hands couldn’t find a place to settle as she responded to Charlie’s voice. Charlie suspected this was entirely a one-shot deal as far as the aunties were concerned, but here and now this was the only time she needed it to work.
“You will be sorry for what you have done this day, Charlotte Marie Gale!” Unable to stop her march down the drive, Auntie Catherine turned at the sidewalk to deliver the last word, then strode around the corner, skirt swirling around her calves, phone in her hand.
Back on the porch, Charlie waited for
her
phone to ring.
her
phone to ring.
Except . . . she was out of her time. As far as the aunties were concerned, the ones back home in both Calgary and Darsden East, Charlie was still in a healing trance. Which was actually irrelevant because Auntie Catherine was certainly not going to call home to complain that Charlie was disrespecting her and some other auntie needed to bring her in line. The world would end first.
It came down to just the two of them.
And Charlie had proof that Auntie Catherine didn’t See everything.
The fiddler in her head played “Mrs. McCarty, Have You a Daughter.”
That was a little thematically obscure. “Say what?”
“I didn’t say anything. Yet.”
She could just make out Mark’s expression through the screen door, and Tim’s bulk behind him. Not good. “How long have you been there?”
“Tim saw your Auntie Catherine come out of the big mirror in the hall. He came and got me.”
“Out of the mirror? Really?” She sent a silent apology to Tim. “And you believed him?”
Mark’s expression didn’t change. “Tim’s never lied to me.”
Charlie bristled at the implication. “I’ve never lied to you. Okay, maybe a few small lies and, at that, mostly lies of omission, but . . .”
“We want in.”
“What?”
Mark opened the door and the two of them came out onto the porch. “We want in.”
“Into what?” Charlie asked in her best
Pie?What pie? v
oice
Pie?What pie? v
oice
“You’re going to stop one of the ancient gods from rising.”
“That’s not . . .”
“Do you even read the paper? Have you seen what they’re catching off Scatarie? Look, we know you’re different, Chuck.” Mark shook his head, his hair spilling out of the grimy Barbie bandana that secured his ponytail. “For fucksake, that first day you came east? You didn’t even have a copy of the set list when you went out on stage and you never missed a note. Okay, you missed a couple, but I suspect that was a variation not a mistake. And,” he continued before Charlie could argue, “your cousin’s eyes glow gold.”
If her experience with Auntie Catherine was any indication, she could make him, make both of them, believe whatever she wanted them to. “You noticed that?”
“In all fairness, I thought I was stoned, but Tim noticed, too. So, we want in.”
“I could tell you that you don’t and you’d believe me.” No wonder Allie had let Jack come east. Charlie’d asked her to. With any luck, Allie’d never figure that out. “I could make you forget this conversation ever happened.”
Tim shook his head. “You won’t,” he said.
“You’re right. I won’t.” Because she’d made a decision not to fuck people around. Another minute-by-minute decision safely made. “Okay, you’re in. But,” she added cutting off Mark’s triumphant smile, “there’s one inarguable condition.”
He spread his hands. “Anything.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“The barge is coming out from Glace Bay, heading east around the headland then southeast around Scatarie Island. The closest point we can reach on shore to deep water is going to be out on South Head. Go up 255 to South Head Road, turn right. Cross the bridge and follow the road until it becomes Sailor Dan’s Lane—there’s tracks past the end of the lane, but they may require four wheel drive.”
“I grew up in the country. Odds are they were made by a twenty-year-old rear wheel drive pickup full of teenagers.” Phone tucked against her shoulder, Charlie scribbled directions. “Tracks are no problem.”
“If you say so.”
She bit off a laugh.
“If you’re still in Louisbourg,” Paul continued, “it’s about fifty minutes.”
“Leaving now. Have Eineen tell the fiddlers to meet us there.”
For all it had been one of the first parts of Canada settled, empty places remained along the Nova Scotia coast where the rock was too close to the surface or the sea winds too harsh or the sea itself too unforgiving. Barely four hundred meters wide and about five kilometers long, South Head challenged the might of the Atlantic and, so far, seemed to be winning. The nearest cottage was back at South Port Morien and, although the day was hot and still, and the ocean was as calm as the Atlantic ever managed, they had the headland to themselves.
Charlie parked by Paul’s car at the end of the track. “Second last chance to back out.”
“Second last?” Mark asked from the backseat.
Her hands left damp smudges on the steering wheel. “We haven’t started playing yet.”
“We’re in. All the way.”
“Okay, then.” Another time, the wind across the headland would have ripped the car door from her hand. Today, a gentle breeze pushed her hair back off her face. Mark and Tim fell into step behind her as she walked out to join Paul and Eineen on the edge of the cliff. She looked down into deep water. Then she looked west at a dot on the waves. “Is that it? Is that the barge?”
“That’s the barge. It’s due past here at precisely . . .” Paul checked his phone and frowned at the lack of signal.
Charlie pushed his hand down by his side. “We’re not working with
precisely
.”
precisely
.”
“What are they doing here?” Eineen asked, nodded toward Mark and Tim.
“Percussion.” Lifting his drum, Mark answered for himself. Tim held Mark’s second best bodhran.
“Wait, you play the bodhran, too?”
“He’s a fucking show off, is what he is,” Mark muttered, stuffing an extra tipper into his sporran. “I haven’t found anything he can’t play. Fortunately, he loves me enough to allow me the delusion of being the better drummer.”
“What if they don’t come?” Eineen stared out at the distant barge. Back at Charlie. Out at the barge. “What if the fiddlers don’t come?”
Charlie listened to “Over the Cabot Trail” and smiled. “They’ll come.”
“My cousins reminded me yet again that the Gales don’t get involved in the business of the Fey.”
“This is my business, so this is Gale business,” Charlie said. “Sounds like Bo borrowed his brother’s truck.”
The five of them turned to watch Bo park, Tanis hanging out of the window and waving. Neela and Gavin pulled in beside him.
Three more cars were coming down the track with four more following a little further back, nearly obscured by the clouds of dust.
Charlie drew in a deep breath of sea air and let it out slowly. “Nine’s good.”
The women, young and old, all had long black hair and skin like coffee and cream, and moved bodies inhumanly proportioned with an unnatural grace. They weren’t working hard to hide what they were.
By the time the short explanation had ended and the nine fiddlers stood in a line along the cliffs, the dot was very definitely a barge. Close enough to shore they could see the cranes rising out of the pieces of platform like triangular masts, but too far to see details or people.
“How many on board?”
Paul looked down at his phone, sighed, and shoved it in his pocket. “Twenty-eight.”
“Okay, that’s a small army, but we only have ten . . .”
“We’ll have enough,” Eineen told her, pointing down at the water.
Charlie glanced over the cliff and saw another dozen . . . no, another two dozen . . . no . . . it was impossible to count the seals floating vertically in the water, noses and eyes all that were showing. “They know that the people on the barge aren’t their enemies?”
Eineen’s eyes flashed black from lid to lid.
“No one drowns,” Charlie reminded her. “Not today.” She stepped to her place in the middle of the line, Mark and Tim behind her. “Wild Road Beyond,” she said to Bo at her right.
Bo shook his head. “They don’t know it. I mean, Gavin might’ve played it through with me once or twice but . . .”
“Play it through once. The others will pick it up.”
He glanced back at Tanis standing behind his left shoulder staring out at the distant waves and not crying for once, over at Mark scowling at Gavin, and then back at Charlie. “That’s not . . .”
“Trust me. They’ll pick it up.” The fiddler in her head played “Rolling off a Log.”
“Either put out or shut up,”
she told it, and then aloud, “Mark.”
“Either put out or shut up,”
she told it, and then aloud, “Mark.”
Mark and Tim laid the heartbeat down together.
Bo sighed, opened his mouth to protest again, but Tanis laid a hand on his arm. He raised it, kissed it, and put his bow to the strings.
Gavin came in two bars later.
By the end of the first chorus, they were all playing—all but the oldest fiddler standing at the end of the line. He frowned, tapped gnarled fingers against his thigh, then slowly raised his bow. A note. Another, extended. A soft run. Then he nodded slowly, changed his stance, and began to play an eerie harmony that lifted the hair on the back of Charlie’s neck.
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