Widdershins (59 page)

Timony

After he had called up a half-dozen knives
out of the sand, Timony knew it was well past time to stop. He looked at the weapons lined up in front of him, six razor-sharp blades that gleamed brightly, even in this dull light. Six of them were enough. More than enough, considering that he only had two hands. But cajoling and teasing the sand to take these new shapes had at least kept him busy while he waited. Now there was nothing to occupy him except the enveloping fog, his own worried thoughts, and just out of his view, the morose sound of the waves falling upon the shore.

None of them was particularly appealing, so after awhile he let himself doze. There was no cozy hedgerow at hand, nor a warm tree to wrap him in its deep roots, but he was still able to forget this cool, foggy beach on which he’d set up camp to wait for either Lizzie or Geordie to return—at least he could forget it enough to drift off. He didn’t fall into a deep sleep like the one in which the fish man had caught him unaware, back in the Aisling’s Wood. It was more a light dreaming, a half-awake wander through a dreamscape where the sun shone cheerfully bright, gleaming on the white caps, and the rhythm of the waves on the shore was comforting rather than sullen. Gulls wheeled and dipped above, and there was only one cloud in that otherwise clear blue sky.

He studied it, vaguely considering its shape. Was it like a turtle—if you ignored that big bit on the left—or more like syrup pooling on a stack of pancakes in some goodwife’s kitchen?

Hunger woke a faint rumble in his stomach, and he considered convincing some of the seaweed draped upon the sand into becoming something more to his liking. Scones, perhaps. Or a fat slice of ham. Perhaps both, with plenty of syrup and a side dish of—

His eyes snapped open and he jumped to his feet, a knife held ready in each hand, before he realized what had brought him out of his half-sleep to stand here, awake and alert upon the sand.

Lizzie.

She’d escaped that locked world. In fact . . .

Yes, the world was open now, but that didn’t matter because Lizzie was free of it.

He let his mind range wide, focusing on where she was, but before he could step away to join her, he realized he was no longer alone on this shore.

He turned slowly around, trying to pierce the fog. Though he didn’t sense danger, he held the knives by their blades, locked between thumbs and fingers, ready to be thrown.

“Who’s there?” he asked after a moment.

He got no response, but he sensed confusion in whoever was hiding from him.

“I know where you are,” he lied. “If you don’t step out where I can see you, you’ll be trying to tug one of these blades out of your throat, see if you won’t.”

Though there was still no response, he didn’t throw the knives. There was no point. Because now he realized that floating out there in the fog was a spirit. Bodiless. Voiceless. The spirit of what, he had no idea. All he could sense from it was the confusion and a sadness. No malevolence.

And it was beginning to drift away from him, losing itself in the fog.

“Wait!” he called after it. “Don’t go. I can help you find a voice, and then you can tell me what you need.”

Because when they were left behind like this, spirits always needed something.

Usually, if the will was strong enough to keep them from going on to wherever the dead went when they were done with their bodies, they were also strong enough to give themselves a shape and make their needs understood. But some were helpless. They existed more in the next world than in this, but were unable to move on.

“Come to me,” he said.

He let the knives drop onto the sand and began to gather driftwood and seaweed, shells and whatever other flotsam he could find upon the sand. When he had as much as he needed, he pushed it all together in the rough shape of a man.

“You see?” he said. “You can wear this and tell me who you are, what you need.”

Then he began to use that gift of his, convincing the spirit to enter his makeshift man, the changeling shape to hold that spirit and allow it to take on a semblance of life.

This was an old knowledge he worked with. Normally, one wouldn’t make room for a spirit in the changeling. It was only meant to last long enough to replace the child or human that had been taken away. The poor twig and leaf creature was expected to die quickly, leaving the survivors something to bury.

This was different, but not so different that he couldn’t see the way to bind the two together. Not permanently—nothing could be permanent with a body such as this—but certainly long enough for him to speak with it.

“Yes, yes,” he said softly. “That’s it. There’s nothing to hurt you in this body I’ve made for you. It’s all found debris, washed up on the shore. Natural. No spells on it. Nothing to bind you to it, just here for you to use while you will.”

Spirits like this were such funny things. They wanted to be bound back into the world, but at the same time they couldn’t abide the binding.

“There, there,” he said, as first an arm twitched, then a foot. “See how comfortable it is. Made just for you, and you can cast it off any time you like. You don’t need my promise to know I speak true. You can feel it in the changeling, can’t you?”

It was a thing of his making, but Timony still took a step back when the creature sat up.

Oh, it was a marvel, this calling up magic. Wasn’t it just?

I . . . feel really weird . . .

Timony blinked. He knew that voice echoing in his head.

“Geordie?” he said.

Its two seashell eyes looked down at its body, then lifted to the doonie’s face.

What . . . what did you do to me?
Geordie asked.

“Gave you a body and a voice,” Timony told him. “That’s all. I . . . oh, lad, who did this to you? Who killed you?”

I’m . . . dead?

Timony nodded.

But . . .

Geordie held his arms in front of his face, seaweed wrapped around pieces of driftwood. He tried to touch his fingers to each other, but the doonie hadn’t made them particularly flexible. He hadn’t been trying for an exact anything, since he’d had no idea what the body that once housed the spirit had originally been. Mostly, he’d concentrated on the changeling’s head, giving it sight and hearing and a voice.

“I’m sorry, lad,” he said. “This is the best I could do with what I had at hand.”

Geordie didn’t reply. He let his hands drop. It was impossible to read an expression in that grotesque face of his, but the doonie could feel the continuing waves of confusion and despair coming from him.

“What happened to you?” Timony asked.

Geordie told him. It wasn’t a long story. He’d arrived in the bedroom of some old farmhouse where he’d had a few moments to be with Jilly before her brother had changed him into a creature much like the one Timony had just built to hold his spirit. And then Del had kicked
that
changeling apart.

But do you know what she said?
he added.
She said I was the only thing she ever really cared about.

When he spoke of Jilly, he gained a strength and an inner glow.

This was the thing that was keeping his spirit here, Timony thought. Except . . .

“Tell me again what he did,” the doonie said. “When he made that changeling of his.”

There wasn’t much to it, it happened so fast. He just appeared in the doorway . . .

Timony listened carefully as Geordie repeated that part of his story, interrupting him a couple of times to make sure had the details right.

“Maybe you’re not dead,” he said. “That world you found her in is still open. We can go back and put together the changeling Del kicked apart. If he could convince your body to turn into the creature, I can make it go back to what you were.”

It’s not there anymore
, Geordie said.
Jilly scraped it all together into a pail and took it with her.

“And she’s with Lizzie?”

Geordie nodded.
With Lizzie and the dog. Her name’s Honey.

“That’s still good,” Timony told him. “We’ll go to them.”

And you can do this?

The doonie nodded confidently.

“So long as she gathered up all the parts of the changeling her brother made,” he said.

Geordie stood up and teetered for a moment on legs made of driftwood, held together with seaweed.

Then what are we waiting for?
he asked.

Walker

In the beginning, there was only Walker
standing alone on the plain, a solitary bulwark to protect the courts of fairy from the buffalo army that Minisino had raised against them. The worst of it was that Walker didn’t even want to be here. His sympathies, if they were to be counted, lay with the buffalo, to the clans with whom his own people were kin. Not to fairy.

It was his daughter that was dead.

It was he who should be seeking vengeance.

But not like this. Not through war. That was never the way of his own clan. For them, all life was sacred and the taking of it—even from an enemy—left a scar on the soul that never went away, even after the prescribed cleansing and healing ceremonies had been undertaken.

There were no exceptions. Not even in the defense of one’s own territories and life. The scars remained forever—in this world, and in the next.

Walker wouldn’t allow it—not in his daughter’s name.

The stomp dance, the drumming, the chanting, the thunder of the buffalo didn’t stop, didn’t even pause, when he took up his defensive position. But he knew they were aware of him. He knew they saw the tall tines of his antlers scraping at the sky, the determination in the set of his shoulders, the stillness in him when everything that defined them at this moment was sound and movement. They didn’t call for him to join them, but they made no threatening move toward him, either. He wasn’t sure if it was out of respect for his recent loss, or because they knew that one antlered forest lord standing against so many buffalo soldiers would make no difference when they finally marched on the fairy courts.

After a time, Minisino stepped out of the crowd to face him. Walker wore the shape of a man, tall and broad-shouldered with the wide spread of his antlers rising high, but the buffalo war chief still loomed over him, taller, broader of shoulder, shaggy as only these plains cousins could be.

They faced each other in a long silence until Minisino finally raised a hand and silenced the war dance. The ensuing quiet seemed as loud as the thundering drums and stomping hooves had earlier and left a ringing in Walker’s ears. He could still hear the drumming, but soon realized it was the sound of his own pulse, still keeping time to the rhythm of the now silent stomp dance.

As the quiet lengthened, deepened, the two cerva studied each other, neither speaking.

There was something wrong here, Walker thought. No, not exactly wrong, but not exactly right, either. He knew the politics behind this move of Minisino’s, how it was time for all the injustices against the cerva clans and tribes to be set right, beginning with Anwatan’s death and stretching back to the great herds of buffalo that had been slaughtered with the coming of the Europeans and the aganesha who stowed away on their great ships as they crossed the ocean. Trolls and bogans, hidden deep in the holds. Fairies riding invisible on the rigging.

A reckoning was not only required, it was long past due.

It was an old, unhappy argument.

At one time, when he was a young buck, Walker might have been swayed to join Minisino’s army. But while he’d seen too much of the hurt and trouble of the world, he’d also seen the good in it. And he knew the spiritual leaders of the cerva spoke the truth when they named all life sacred, even that of one’s enemy.

So, while yes, Walker agreed, it
had
been better before the Europeans had come, that was many, many moons and seasons ago. The world changed, whether you wanted it to or not. It had changed from when Raven first called it up out of the long ago, and it would continue to change. The great tribes of buffalo could not be brought back. Anwatan, and those who had died these past few months as she had . . . they could not be brought back, either. Attacking all humans, or all fairy, would change nothing except to leave a dark stain on the soul of any cousin who took part in this war.

Minisino obviously disagreed. With the count of recent deaths mounting, more and more of his clan came to side with him until finally Pijaki-tibik, the old war chief, was ousted and Minisino claimed the title.

There had always been coals of anger smoldering deep in Minisino’s eyes, but today Walker sensed that anger was older than the injustice of Anwatan’s death and had little to do with vengeance for the thousands slain by the Europeans with their rifles and knives, who left their bodies to rot on the plains, taking only their skins.

But Walker couldn’t work his way through to the source of that anger, and now was not the time to try. With the army listening, he could only use the argument to which he had an undeniable right.