Long Black Curl (39 page)

She snorted. “Coward.” And then she pushed him off the cliff.

 

31

Jeff had time to think,
I should've seen
that
coming;
then he hit the first treetop.

Luck was with him, though—he slid off the side of the topmost spire, then bounced down through the branches. He finally stopped about halfway down the big pine tree, splayed across two limbs and gasping from the blow across his back that had knocked the wind from him. Cold, powdery snow drifted down onto his face, dislodged by his passage.

Above, through the branches, he saw the gray sky and the side of the cliff. He couldn't see Bo-Kate.

She tried to kill me,
was the first thought that solidified in his head.
She pushed me off the fucking cliff and tried to kill me.
Then he remembered pondering the exact same move, but being unable to do it. All he wanted to do, really, was pull her into his embrace, kiss her, and tell her everything would be okay if they just turned around and left Cloud County for good.

And when the wind tousled one long black curl into her eyes, he almost wanted to cry.

What had she called him as she pushed him off? A coward? He realized she was right. He'd been afraid to take her in his arms, to tell her the things in his heart, because to do so meant he might once again become the Jefferson Powell who had done those horrible things.

He could breathe more easily now, and he managed to roll over enough to look down. The tree, due to its position at the bottom of the ravine, had branches only near the top, where they could reach the sun. The last twenty feet were bare trunk all the way to the rocky, still-sloping ground.

“Great,” he wheezed.

He rested a bit longer, then started the treacherous descent. Without gloves, his hands quickly grew cold and numb. His grip failed him, and he slid more than he climbed. At last he sat on the lowest branch and contemplated the drop to the slanted, rocky ground below.

A real Tufa, a
true
Tufa, would be able to drift down as lightly as a falling leaf. And while Bronwyn had sworn he was wholly reinstated, he hadn't tried to fly on Tufa wings in longer than most people could remember.

Still, the choice was try, or take bets on which leg he'd break. And a broken leg out here, even for a Tufa, was the same as death.

He closed his eyes. He tried to remember his boyhood, when taking to the night winds had been second nature. But he needed a song to ride, a tune to bolster his wings.
Think, you moron. Surely you must know one song that will work.…

And then he smiled. The first song that came to his mind was actually a song he hated for its inane rhymes and self-important seriousness. But it was still a song, and he knew it by heart.

He began singing the chorus to Steve Miller's “Fly Like an Eagle.”

He didn't. Fly like an eagle, that is. He flew like a badly made paper airplane, but he still flew, and although he hit the ground, it wasn't hard enough to break anything. He again knocked the wind from his lungs and lay atop a pair of protruding rocks until it returned.

When he sat up, a large black bear watched him from less than five feet away.

Neither he nor the bear moved.

“Shouldn't you be hibernating?” he croaked at last.

The bear made a noise between a snuffle and a grunt.

Then Jeff noticed the change. All around him grew weeds, bushes, and vines. Grass sprouted in the cracks between the rocks. He looked up, and saw blue sky tinged with purple dusk along one edge. The air he pulled into his battered lungs no longer had the chill bite of winter.

“Oh, fuck,” he said as he realized what had happened. Bo-Kate didn't just push him off the cliff—she pushed him into slow time. Faery time. The exile from which he might emerge, but there was no telling where, or when.

He got to his feet. The bear backed up and growled. He looked it right in the eye and said loudly, “Shoo!” The bear turned and waddled away downslope.

His heavy winter coat was now too warm for the humid air. He took it off and tied the sleeves around his waist. He looked back up at the sky, which was already fading to night. Still, there was enough glow for him to determine which direction was west, and therefore he knew he should travel east—toward the night, the darkness and the uncertainty ahead, as well as toward Needsville.

But with each slip over treacherous rocks, each unseen tree limb that slapped his face, each mosquito that buzzed in his ear, he grew angrier and angrier: at himself, certainly, but also at Bo-Kate, for not being what he'd needed her to be. Next time—and there would be a next time—he would not hesitate.

*   *   *

It was an hour later before he realized what he'd thought was the oncoming night was actually the dawn. So he'd been traveling the wrong way.

He sat down with a heavy sigh of annoyance and defeat.
Okay,
he thought,
I've been fucked with yet again. Now what?

The forest looked the same in every direction. He could turn around and head toward the sunrise, but there was no guarantee that was right, either. Without some guide, some indication of the right direction, he simply couldn't know what he was supposed to do. Was this really how people felt when caught in fae time?

Then he heard a voice.

At first he wondered if it might be another trick, a siren call to keep him wandering. But what choice did he have? He got wearily to his feet, listened hard, then walked toward the sound.

As he got closer and it grew plainer, there was no doubt it came from a real person. The only surprise was, he realized the voice was a child's.

A child calmly singing meant a family nearby, and that meant relief, if not truly rescue. He had no idea where, or when, he was. It could be ten minutes or ten years later, and the world that waited for him outside these woods might be so different, he couldn't conceive of it.

He crept forward until the shape of a big house loomed up through the trees. There was something familiar about it, but then again, all the old houses in Cloud County resembled each other. His own family dwelling looked a lot like this before it fell to pieces.

He reached the edge of the yard and stayed out of sight. There was indeed a little girl, no more than five or six, singing as she ran around in circles. She wore a faded little dress and no shoes, and a small puppy played at her heels. She sang:

There was a man lived in the moon,

Lived in the moon, lived in the moon,

There was a man lived in the moon,

And his name was Aiken Drum.

Jeff stepped out into the yard. “Hi,” he said, trying to sound as friendly as he could. “Could you tell me where I am? I'm kinda lost.” He gave her the smile that usually made musicians fall all over themselves to sign on the dotted line.

The girl stopped singing and stared up at him.

Jeff's whole sense of the world collapsed.

The little girl was—without a doubt, without even the
possibility
of a doubt—Bo-Kate Wisby.

 

32

Until the little sparks appeared around the edges of his vision, Jeff didn't even realize he'd forgotten to breathe.

The girl's eyes were unmistakable. The little chin had the first hints of the strong, powerful jawline she would possess as an adult. The lips, though tiny, held the promise of the ones he would one day know so well. And the curly hair, held back by a handful of tiny ribbons, would one day entangle his fingers.

They looked at each other for a long moment. The only noise was the high-pitched barking of the tiny dog.

At last the little girl said, “Are you a fwend of my daddy?”

“I know him,” Jeff managed to croak out.

“He's not here. He went to help someone round up some pigs that got out. In fact, ain't nobody here but me.”

“Where's your brothers?”

“Snad's out chasing girls, Canton's out chasing Snad.”

Jeff forced himself to sound casual as he asked, “What's your name?”

“Beauregard Katherine, but everyone calls me Bo-Kate. What's yours?”

“Jeff.”

“This is Stinkerbelle,” she said with a nod at the puppy.

Jeff knelt and patted the dog, who puppy-nipped at his fingers. He looked around at the house, which was almost exactly the way he remembered it. Even the old outhouse was still there.

“You can wait if you want,” the girl said. “Do you want to sing with me?”

Jeff nodded. What the hell else was he going to do?

He sat on the grass as she resumed running around, and joined her as she started the song over.

There was a man lived in the moon,

Lived in the moon, lived in the moon

There was a man lived in the moon,

And his name was Aiken Drum.

And he played upon a ladle,

A ladle, a ladle

And he played upon a ladle,

And his name was Aiken Drum.

His brain danced, too, but far more frantically than the little girl before him, the girl he now knew was Bo-Kate Wisby. He had gone back in time.
Back
in fucking
time,
to the era of his own childhood. Somewhere nearby, at this very moment, he also existed as a totally separate, unaware entity.

Time was essentially linear, and the Tufa could dance in and out of it as they liked, but going back—returning to events already passed, already experienced—was reserved for only the purest of the purebloods. Certainly not someone like him. But if anyone, anything could manage it, it was whatever drove the night winds, whatever directed the Tufa's destiny, whatever had picked him up as he fell and deposited him here.

For a reason.

And then he knew.

And his hat was made of good cream cheese,

Of good cream cheese, of good cream cheese,

And his hat was made of good cream cheese,

And his name was Aiken Drum.

He looked around. A long, sharp scythe stood against the outhouse wall between a post-hole digger and a shovel. The flat of the blade was rusty, but its edge gleamed in the sunlight. Jeff got to his feet and walked over to it.

And his coat was made of good roast beef,

Of good roast beef, of good roast beef,

And his coat was made of good roast beef,

And his name was Aiken Drum.

This was it. He was here to stop Bo-Kate before she did any of the horrible things she'd done, and was planning to do. Penny Hadlow would not be scarred. Adele Anker and her family would not be burned to death. Jesse Spicer's brains would not decorate the floor of the girl's dressing room. Rockhouse Hicks and Marshall Goins would still be alive.

All if Jeff could find it in himself to kill a child.

He picked up the scythe, disturbing a pair of yellow jackets that had begun a nest on the underside of the outhouse eave. The distinctive smell, particularly ripe in the heat, made him try to mouth-breathe. A black racer snake skittered along the edge of the building and shot through the grass into the safety of the nearest patch of weeds.

This blade would do the job, all right; that little head would separate from the diminutive neck with one good, strong swing. He'd used one of these countless times in his youth, and the muscle memory was still there. He turned back to the girl.

And his britches were made of haggis bags,

Of haggis bags, of haggis bags,

And his britches were of haggis bags,

And his name was—

She stopped dancing when he took the first step toward her with the scythe.

The dog yapped twice, then turned and ran off toward the shelter of the back porch.

Jeff stopped in front of the girl. She stared up at him, her face blank. With her chin raised that way, her neck was a perfect target. One quick blow, and a whole universe of death and violence would never exist.

This
was what he was here for.

He drew back, turning at the hip. The weight of the scythe swung easily.

And then he froze.

One long black curl came loose from a clip and fell into the little girl's face.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't blink. The long black curl mesmerized him, as it always had. As, he realized, it always would.

Her lower lip trembled a little. “Mister?” she said in the tiniest voice imaginable.

He tossed the scythe aside and fled back into the woods.

*   *   *

Jeff ran as hard as he could, his eyes blinded with tears, his chest thundering with emotions he couldn't contain or even identify. He slammed into trees and felt branches slash along his arms and legs. He kept going until, exhausted, he could go no farther and fell to the ground. He sobbed harder than he'd ever done in his life.

A female voice said, “What happened?”

He jumped, turned, and looked around. The first thing he noticed was that there was once again snow on the ground. Then he saw Mandalay Harris leaning against a tree, her hands stuffed in her pockets.

He sniffed and wiped his nose. “I c-couldn't do it.”

She cocked her head slightly. “Do what?”

“What you sent me to do!”

“I didn't send you anywhere. The night winds did it, and they've stopped talking to me.”

“Then how did you know I'd be here?”

“I didn't. I just went for a walk.”

Jeff sighed. “They sent me to Bo-Kate when she was a little girl. They wanted me to kill her.”

“And you didn't?”

“I couldn't. I
couldn't.
”

Mandalay nodded, then looked off into the distance. “She'll never be that vulnerable again.”