Spirits in the Wires (38 page)

“Look, I'm sorry,” he said. “There was this little fairy man who looked like he was pretty much made of twigs and leaves. He had his foot caught in a tree root and I just stepped off the path to help him out. I really didn't mean to cause a problem.”

“Did he have a red cap?” Bojo asked.

Aaran nodded. “Yeah, he did. Does that mean something?”

“Just that you were lucky. It must have been a brownie under the cap instead of a goblin. Goblins get their caps that colour by dipping them in blood, and they get their blood from people like you that they coax off a safe path.”

“Jesus.”

“But a goblin also wouldn't get itself into that kind of predicament in the first place.”

Goblins and brownies, Aaran thought. Next thing you know, they'd see a dragon.

“But it worked out okay, I guess,” he said.

Beside Bojo, Raul smiled. “Sure. You got to be like the hero in some fairy tale.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, stopping to help a spoon or an old woman, and later on in the story it turns out they're the only one that can help you?”

Aaran shook his head. “It wasn't like that at all. And I think that the point of those stories isn't that you should help someone now for a payoff later down the road. It's that everyone's important, no matter how insignificant they might seem.” He let go of Suzi so that he could look her in the face. “It's like our guardian angel thing,” he said. “You do it because you can. Not because you have to, or because you think you should, but because you want to.”

Suzi beamed at him, but no one said anything for a long moment. Then Christy stepped up and gave him a light punch in the shoulder.

“Maybe there's hope for you yet,” he said.

Bojo nodded. “Only next time, don't do it on your own. We were lucky we found you as quickly as we did.”

“I tried calling after you guys, but you were already too far ahead.”

“We were probably too distracted to hear you.” Before Aaran could ask for an explanation, the tinker added, “We found the Word wood, but … well, you'll have to see it for yourself.”

He started off down the road again and the others fell in behind him. Suzi held Aaran's hand.

“You're really doing well,” she said.

“High praise,” he told her, “coming as it does from my guardian angel.”

“Don't wear that into the ground,” she told him, but she was grinning.

“So what's Bojo not saying about the Wordwood?” Aaran asked.

“There doesn't seem to be a way in,” she said and pointed ahead.

For a moment, Aaran wasn't sure what he was supposed to be looking at. All he saw was the others ahead of them on the path, the path itself leading off into the greying distance. But as they drew closer, he realized that the greyness he saw wasn't in the distance. It was a thin wall of mist with pale, blue-gold lights playing deep inside it. Stepping right up to it, Aaran could plainly see a deep forest on the other side, the path continuing into it.

“You're sure that's the Wordwood?” he asked.

Bojo nodded. “It's giving me the same feeling that I got from the residue the spirit left behind in Holly's store.”

“So what are we waiting for?” Aaran asked.

Bojo bent down and worked a small stone free from the border of the path. When he tossed it into the mist, they never saw it land on the other side.

“Where does it go?” Aaran asked.

“Damned if I know,” the tinker said. “I guess into some between.”

Aaran gave him a puzzled look. “Some between?”

“A space in between where we are and that forest we can see. It could be a few yards wide, it could be the width of a continent. It could drop us into the middle of an ocean or a volcano. Or it could just be an extension of this path we're following—a little detour of some kind.”

“But we're sure that's the Wordwood?” Aaran asked.

“As sure as I can be without having a native of the place confirm it for us.”

Aaran looked from him back into the mist.

“So I guess one of us should step through and find out for sure,” he said.

“That's what we've been arguing about while we were looking for you,” Christy said. “It's either step through into the unknown, or leave the path and try to find a way around.”

“Which is also a big-time unknown,” Raul put in.

Aaran turned to Bojo. “I guess you're the expert. What's your take on it?”

“I can't decide which way is the least dangerous.”

“And while we're all standing here wondering about it,” Aaran said, “who knows what's happening to the disappeared people, lost somewhere in there.”

“Don't think that's not on our minds,” Christy said.

“I wasn't saying it for that reason,” Aaran told him. “I was just reminding myself.” He glanced at Suzi, then shrugged. “I think one of us should follow the path, see where it goes, and I think it should be me.”

The hellhounds were traveling too fast
to hide their trail, but it wouldn't have mattered if they'd had the time. Robert had developed such an awareness of them from all his years of avoiding their attention that he could have tracked them with his eyes closed and his fingers in his ears.

Their speed didn't help them either.

For every twist and turn they took, Robert knew a shortcut. When he finally caught up with them at another crossroads, he was there ahead of them, sitting on a low wall under the skeletal branches of a bare-limbed hanging oak, guitar on his lap, bones of those unfortunate enough to have been hung from the boughs above scattered among the clumps of dried grass by his feet. He waited until they burst through the rags of mist that surrounded the crossroads, let them get a look at him sitting there, calm and waiting, then he played some music for them.

The first chord dropped them to their knees.

The second chord snaked right into their heads and went rummaging around in their souls.

The third chord left them lying in the dirt as though they were dead.

Robert let that last chord echo and ring. When even the memory of it had faded, he finally laid his hand across the strings. He was about to stand up when a solitary clapping started up behind him.

Robert turned. There was a man leaning against the hanging oak,black-skinned and white-grinned, a gold cap sparkling on one of his front teeth. Like the hellhounds, he was dressed in a white shirt and black broadcloth suit, except he held a cane with an ivory head and had a tall top hat on his head. There was so little warning of his appearance, it was as though he'd stepped right out of the hanging tree. Knowing who this was, Robert wouldn't have been surprised if that had been the case.

“I didn't think you had it in you,” the
loa
said.

“Didn't have what?”

“The balls to kill them.”

“I haven't gone back on our bargain,” Robert said. “They made the mistake of going after some friends of mine.”

“I know that.”

“And they aren't dead.”

“I know that, too.”

“I just took all the meanness out of them,” Robert said.

“Which is pretty much the same difference as killing them,” the
loa
said.

He pushed himself away from the tree and walked over to where Robert was sitting. His movements were stiff, as though there were only bones under that broadcloth suit—no muscle or flesh. He took his time lowering himself down to the wall beside Robert, using his cane to take the weight until he was settled.

“Not that I care,” he added. “They were only under my protection if you killed them for yourself.”

“Except I didn't kill them,” Robert said. “All I did was take away the waste of their lives and give them a fresh start on things. Did them a favor, really.”

The
loa
lifted a questioning eyebrow.

“Taking away their meanness,” Robert said, “leaves them with less to work through in their next lives.”

“Always thinking of others,” the
loa
said.

“Well, I try.”

The
loa
gave Robert another flash of that toothy grin of his. “And you're doing a fine job of keeping your soul out of my hands, too.”

Robert shrugged. “Keeps me busy.”

“But I'll have it in the end.”

“I've never had an argument with that.”

“You just haven't been in a hurry, either.”

“Can you blame me?” Robert asked.

“I don't know,” the
loa
said, answering what Robert had only meant as a rhetorical question. “I've never lived the way you do, so I've got no way of knowing if it's the kind of thing I'd want to hang onto or not.”

Robert gave another shrug. “You hear people talk about immortality like it's a curse, but the way I see it, that only holds if you stop learning. I don't know that there's an end to what there is to find out in that world I'm living in.”

“You're not immortal,” the
loa
said.

“I'm working on it.”

“I can make it happen.”

Robert shook his head. “I've only got the one soul, and it's already sitting in that ledger book of yours, so there's nothing left to bargain with.”

“Maybe I want you to do something for me.”

“Isn't likely I'd be interested.”

“You'd be surprised,” the
loa
said. “You might find it of benefit to yourself, and I don't just mean me forgetting this engagement we've got concerning your soul.”

Robert wasn't about to start working for him and they both knew it, just like they both knew he'd hear the
loa
out. He stifled the impulse to touch the strings of his guitar except to hold them still.

“So what is that you're proposing?” he asked.

“Interesting place, this Internet,” the
loa
said.

“I wouldn't know.”

“Then take my word for it. Interesting and busy.”

“People have time,” Robert said, “they do any damn thing with it except look out for each other.”

“I suppose you're right. I don't know them as well as you do and it's not something I need to learn. But I'm learning about the Internet. I see a lot of spirits making a home for themselves in that place. It's getting to the point where if you need to contact one of
les invisibles,
all you've got to do is go on-line.”

“You're right,” Robert said, when the
loa
paused, and he felt he needed to at least indicate he was listening. “That is interesting.”

“By which you mean, get to the point.”

Robert shook his head. “I don't get a lot of time to sit around and yarn with someone like you. I'm enjoying this.”

The
loa
gave him a considering look, them smiled. “Damn, if you're not telling the truth.”

“So what's the Internet got to do with you?”

“Think about it,” the
loa
said. “When people have a direct line to the spirits through a thing like that, there's not much need for an intermediary like me anymore.”

“You really think it'll come to that?”

The
loa
shrugged. “Yes, no, maybe. It's hard to predict something that changes and grows as fast as technology. Ten years ago, mention the Internet and most people wouldn't know what you were talking about. Now everybody's getting on-line.”

“Not me.”

“Maybe you don't think so.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

The
loa
smiled. “See, the funny thing is, with all these spirits in the wires, the spiritworld's starting to bleed into the Internet. I can see a time— and I'm talking months, not even years here—when it's all going to be one big place.”

Robert shook his head. “That's not going to happen.”

“Turn a blind eye if you want, but it's already started.”

Robert looked away, past the bodies of the hellhounds still lying in the dirt, to where he could catch glimpses of the world beyond the mists that pressed up against the edges of the crossroads. He'd see a shantytown, then the mists would shift, open to show him a hillside grey with rain, shift again and there was a graveyard.

He turned back to the
loa.
“What is it you're planning to ask me to do?”

“I just want to send a message,” the
loa
said. “Take down one or two of the bigger spirits setting up house. Let everybody know that contacts between the worlds should be going through me.”

“You've never had a monopoly on that sort of thing.”

“Maybe not. Maybe that's what's wrong with the world. Maybe we need a little bit of order put back into it.”

But Robert was shaking his head. “I'm not killing anybody—not for you, and especially not for my own gain.”

“You don't even know the target.”

“I'm not interested.”

“Even when it was someone you were fixing to deal with anyway?”

Robert gave the
loa
a hard look. “What are you talking about?”

“The Wordwood spirit.”

“What makes you think I'm interested in him?”

The
loa
laughed. “What makes you think I don't keep tabs on where you are and who you see? Oh, don't get that look. I play fair. I've never set anybody on your trail. And I'm patient—I can wait till you die. But surely you didn't think I wouldn't pay any attention to the doings of my investment?”

“I'm still not killing anybody for you.”

The
loa
shrugged. “Did I use the word ‘kill'? Maybe I just want you to play the meanness out of him, like you did with the hellhounds. Send that spirit back to wherever he came from. All I need is to send a message. The Wordwood spirit doesn't need to die for it to be understood.”

“Why's he so important?”

“It's not so much that he's important,” the
loa
said. “He's just so damn big.”

Robert shook his head.

“I don't even need an answer,” the
loa
told him before he could speak. “You just think on what we've been talking about when you're standing face to face with that spirit. Could be your need and mine will be the same. All I'm asking you to do is to consider it when the time comes.”

“I don't know …”

The
loa
stood up, leaning on his cane.

“I'm not the bad guy,” he said. “People come to me and I've got no say in what they do with the help I give them.”

“I never said you were.”

The
loa
nodded. “Just so we're clear on that. Remember, I didn't come looking for you, back when.”

“I remember.”

The
loa
gave another nod. He tipped a bony finger to the brim of his hat and turned away. Faster than should have been possible with his slow gait, he disappeared into the mists.

Robert sat there for a long time before he finally got up himself. It was time he looked into what kind of trouble the others had gotten themselves into while he was gone, see if he could help out.

He paused by the hellhounds. The one who'd been calling himself Maman was starting to stir. Robert knelt beside him as the big man's eyes fluttered open. He helped the hellhound sit up.

“Take it easy,” he said.

“Where … where am I?” Maman asked.

“At the crossroads,” Robert told him.

“But… how did I get here?”

Robert shrugged. “Don't really know. I just came upon you and your friends, lying here in the dirt. Are you going to be okay?”

The big man lifted a hand to his head. “I can't remember anything …”

Robert nodded. “How's that feel?”

“It's funny … it feels kind of good.”

One of the other men made a groaning sound.

“Maybe you should see to your friend,” Robert said.

When Maman turned to the other man, Robert stood up. He had stepped into the mists and disappeared by the time the big man looked back.