The Little Country by Charles de Lint
Jodi stared horrified, unable to turn away. She watched until the flames died away and all that remained of the Widow and her fetch was an untidy heap of her empty clothes. All else was gone—flesh, skin, and bones.
With the Widow gone, the shadows turned their full attention on Jodi, but she barely heard them. She stumbled forward, and fumbled about the Widow’s mantle until she came upon the buttons that were sewn there. Unerringly, steered by the rhythm of the first music that still rang inside her, she reached for the button that was her own.
When she touched it, a fiery pain flared through her body. She dropped to her knees, blinded by its raw fury. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. All she knew was that unending hurt that seemed to go on and on forever.
It was a very long time before she could finally lift her head again. She found herself crouched upon the Widow’s empty clothes. The first music was gone, though she could still hear its echoes. The shadows were fled, back into their dark corners, though she could still hear them, too, as a faint annoying bee-buzz in the back of her head.
She sat up slowly.
“Do you need some help there, girl?” a voice asked.
She looked up to find a burly fisherman offering her his hand. He was so matter-of-fact, so plainly here and now, of this world, that Jodi could only look at him with confusion. Others stood nearby and she heard snatches of their conversation.
“Strange wind, no doubt o’t.”
“Come like a tempest, gone as quick.”
“Well, now, autumn’s the time for odd weather.”
“My old granddad had a tale about a night like this. . . .”
They didn’t remember anything about the Widow or her creatures, Jodi realized. Nor the strange shifting between the worlds. Nor the ghosts of times past and people long dead who had flickered to life all around them.
“Up you come then,” the fisherman said as he gave her a hand up. “Were you hurt at all by the wind?”
Jodi shook her head.
“Well, you’ve dropped your laundry,” the fisherman said. “Basket’s long blown away, but you could wrap it up in this mantle.”
Jodi let him bundle up the Widow’s clothes and hand them to her.
“Do you need some help finding your way home?” he asked.
“No. I . . . thank you.”
“You look like you’ve taken a chill,” the fisherman said. “Best get yourself home for a cup of something hot.”
Jodi nodded. “I . . . will.”
She found a faint smile to give him and walked unsteadily off, not really sure where she was going until she was up at the top of Mabe Hill, above the town, standing near the ruins of the Creak-a-vose. She let the bundle she was carrying drop to the ground and sat on a nearby stone.
She lifted her hands up to her eyes and studied them carefully, comparing their size to the dried blackberries on a bush beside the stone.
She was her own size again.
Unless . . .
Oh raw we. Had she ever been a Small in the first place? Perhaps she’d gotten herself a thump on the head in the middle of this odd storm and only dreamed the whole affair?
No, she thought. It had all seemed far more real than a dream. And if she listened hard, she could hear the faint rhythm of the first music, still twinning her heartbeat, but it was a far and distant sound now.
It had all happened. She was sure of that. Only something was making her forget—just as the fishermen on the waterfront had already forgotten.
Well, she wouldn’t forget. That was the promise she’d made to Edern, wasn’t it? To wake the first music in her own world, to bring the two worlds closer together again. But how was she supposed to do that when people could stare something magical straight in the face—as the fishermen had done—and then simply turn away from it as though it had never happened?
The thought of it just made her feel depressed.
But at least she was her own size again. And the Widow wasn’t a threat anymore.
That didn’t make her feel any better. It was a relief to feel like herself again and know that she was safe from the Widow, but she got no pleasure from having defeated the old woman. It seemed to her that the only winners were those whispering shadows. If they fed on pain and despair, then they had fed well on the Widow tonight.
Jodi sighed.
She looked down at the bundle of clothes. Reaching down, she unwrapped the bundle until she could shake the mantle free from the rest of the clothes. Sewn there, on the inside of it where that piece of her had been sewn, were a double handful of buttons. She touched one and the image of one of the Tatters children rose in her mind. Another, and she saw Henkie Whale.
She thought of the new set of longstones out by the Men-an-Tol.
Magic was real, she reassured herself yet again.
The good with the bad. Which meant one really did have to beware of the whispering in the shadows. But there was the first music—
Dhumm-dum.
Just thinking of it made it seem closer. Where she’d felt a bit of a chill thinking of what watched from the shadows, now a comfortable glow started up in the center of her chest and spread out to enclose her in a soft cocoon of warmth.
The one helped to balance the other, she supposed.
Standing up, she slung the Widow’s mantle over her shoulder and set off across the moorland to where her friends stood like so many stones in the gorse, waiting to be rescued.
The Eagle’s Whistle
The thing to remember, is that artists are magical beings. They’re the only people other than the gods who can grant immortality.
—MATT RUFF, from Fool on the Hill
Felix smiled as Janey pulled her whistle from her purse and put its two pieces together. The sheer beauty of the music that seemed to rise up from all around them had his fingers itching for an instrument as well.
Capture the magic, he thought, watching Janey bring the whistle to her lips. For it was magic.
He looked at his hands, then at the hole in the stone where the satchel had disappeared in a flare of light. If he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes . . .
His heart was singing. There was a foolish grin on his face and he didn’t care who saw it. The world had changed, in one moment, into a place of infinite possibilities. Every wonder was possible. Every mystery could be revealed.
On the back of that music . . .
And then it all came crashing down with John Madden’s appearance.
Music fled: and with it, the wonder. The magic.
For a long moment Felix could only stare at Madden and curse his intrusion. He was only barely aware of the glow in the man’s eyes, of the way the border collie fled their eerie gaze. He rose to his feet, anger tightening the muscles of his shoulders until his own gaze locked with Madden’s.
He thought he was falling.
Madden’s gaze swallowed him whole and then the ground opened up underfoot and he was plummeting some unguessed distance, stomach lurching at the speed of his descent, head dizzy, muscles all gone weak.
It’s just a trick, he told himself. The man’s just putting the evil eye on you—like he did the dog.
But then all logic fled. He was caught in the sudden flare of a spotlight and he was no longer falling. He was seated on a stool, on a stage. His box was on his knee; before him an ocean of faces.
Im-impossible. . . .
But he could feel the hard wood of the stool under his buttocks, the familiar weight of his accordion, the sweat that broke out over his face under the onslaught of that piercing spotlight. The audience was vast. He couldn’t make out individual faces—just a presence in the darkness beyond the stage. An animal crouching, waiting for him—
To play.
His hands shook. Gone was all memory of how he’d come to be here, or any question of where here was. There was only the feral presence of the audience and his own panic—a gibbering, howling panic that settled on him like a too fa
His chest was tight now, heart speeding up, its beat ragged. Simply breathing was a labour. The restless sound of the audience pressed in on him, beating at his ears in a shrill cacophony of overly loud coughs, fabric rustlings, foot tappings.
Snickering.
They know, he thought. They know I can’t. . . .
A stifled chuckle to the left—a stagehand, with his hand up against his mouth, the taunting laughter still bubbling in his eyes.
Felix shook his head numbly. His voice was trapped in his throat. He spoke with his eyes.
Please. I . . .
A great big bloke like you, a mocking voice whispered in the back of his mind. Where’s your courage?
I . . .
Play or die, that voice whispered.
No. I . . .
His legs trembled uncontrollably. His box would have tumbled from his knee were it not for the death’s grip his hands had on its straps.
Play.
The laughter was spreading through the audience and he could feel his soul curling up inside himself into a fetal position, thumb in its mouth. . . .
Play—
I c-can’t. . . .
—or die.
He was bent over his box, sweaty brow pressed against the cool surface of its plastic casing. He wrapped his arms around it, hugging it to his chest.
The laughter grew into a wave of ridicule, wailing inside his head, shrieking behind his eyes. His heart was hammering an explosive tattoo. Sharp, whining pains pierced his chest. His bowels grew loose.
Play—
The laughter was like thunder. He moaned, trying to shape words, if only in his mind.
I . . .
—or die.
Thousands of heads tilted back, roaring at his discomfort, their laughter thick with derision as they pointed their fingers at him. Individuals all melded together into a lumbering beast, galvanized by his panic, drinking in his terror like greedy vampires.
I . . . can’t. . . .
It’s show time, kid, that awful voice inside him mocked. Time to play or—
He’d just have to—
—die.
2.
Charlie Boyd took the note from his son’s hands when he arrived at the Gaffer’s house. He’d come alone, leaving Sean and his brother at home with Molly and Bridget. He took out a pair of glasses and settled them on the bridge of his nose, his face growing grimmer with each terse line he read:
Dear survivor,
Here’s the game plan. You got something I want and I got something you want. We do a straight exchange. No muss, no fuss. And no cops. Screw up, and what I got comes back in pieces. And then I’m coming after you. Hang loose now. You’ll be hearing from me real soon.
When he had read it through a second time, Charlie laid the note down on the table by the door. He put away his glasses.
“Where did you find it?” he asked.
“On the mantel.”
“And the Gaffer?”
“There was no sign of him, Dad. Just the back door—broken in.”
“And someone rang up?”
Dinny nodded. “A wrong number. The accent was American—or close enough to it to make no difference.”
“It was an American that rang us up earlier,” Charlie said thoughtfully.
“It must be the same man.”
“So it would seem.”
“What do we do now, Dad?”
Charlie sighed. “We’ve no choice,” he said. “We have to ring up the police.”
“But the note said—” Dinny began.
“I know what the note said, son. But what can we do? I’m not bloody John Steed.”
“It’s just that . . . if something happens to the Gaffer because of what we’ve done . . .” Dinny turned pained eyes to his father. “How could we face Janey?”
“Where is Janey?”
“Gone off somewhere with Felix and Clare.”
Charlie glanced at his wristwatch.
“We can’t wait for them to come back,” he said. “We have to turn this over to the professionals, son. We’ll tell them what Janey told you—about this Madden man and all—and let them deal with it.”
Dinny nodded glumly. His father crossed the room to where the phone stood. He had no sooner put his hand on the receiver than the phone rang, its sudden jangle startling them both.
3.
Clare leaned on her cane and almost didn’t feel the need of its support. The music that washed around the Men-an-Tol made her want to throw it away and dance—really dance, with complete freedom, with utter abandon. With the liquid movement of a ballerina, or the animated spontaneity of a modern jazz artist, not the laggard shuffle of a slow dance that was the best she could manage.
As it was, she swayed where she stood, marveling at the magic. Of the music. Of the flare of light that had swallowed Dunthorn’s book. Of the sheer wonder of it all.
She grinned when Janey took her whistle from her purse and wished she’d thought to bring along one of her own. But then she’d never be able to come close to capturing this magic. Not like Janey could.
So she just closed her eyes, her body moving in an easy swinging rhythm, back and forth in one spot, letting the wonder wash through her—
Until a sudden coldness bit into her with the force of a knife thrust and everything changed.
She turned to see John Madden standing at the end of the path, his eyes glowing. Kempy fled his gaze, whimpering. Janey’s music faltered before it even had a chance to really begin. Felix rose from the other side of the stone. He took two steps towards Madden, then crumpled to the ground, moaning and curling up into a fetal position.
Clare took a half step towards him. “Felix, what . . . ?”
But then she made the mistake of looking into Madden’s glowing eyes herself. His gaze locked on to hers and then she was falling too, just like Felix had. She sprawled onto the ground, but she couldn’t move. Though it had been years since she’d known this feeling—that emptiness in her legs where there should be feeling—she could never forget it.
That lack of feeling was there now. Her nerves were dead, muscles unresponsive. Corpse limbs attached to her body.
Madden had paralyzed her, but not just her legs.
“Nuh . . . no . . .” she moaned, her voice no more than a whimper.
Oh, no. Not just her legs, but her whole body. Paralyzed from the neck down. With that one fiery glare from his eyes, he’d turned her . . . not back into a paraplegic.
No. That was too simple a horror.
Instead he gave her her worst fear: He’d made her a quadriplegic.
And that she couldn’t bear. That was all possible control stolen from her. Better to take her life. Better to just die now than to try to live with this horror.
Because she couldn’t.
She’d been strong. All her life she’d had to be strong. But she wasn’t this strong. Nobody could be this strong. Nobody could go through all she’d had to go through, recover as much as she had, and then have it taken away like this.
“Puh-please. . . .”
All she could do was turn her head towards him, begging him. Her body was some monstrous mound of dead flesh, attached to her only by flesh and bone. There was no connection with meaning. No nerve. No muscle. There was nothing there.
She couldn’t live with it.
“Nuh-not . . . this. . . .”
But he was already turning his attention away and looking towards Janey.
4.
Bett grinned at his captive. They were hidden from sight and from hearing both at the bottom of one of the silos of the bay side of the quarry that lay almost midway between Mousehole and Newlyn. Apparently they still used these old silos to ship the stone
And all he needed it for was the one night.
He’d tied the old man to a chair that he’d brought along for that purpose and now it was just the two of them, here on the edge. Walking the thin line.
“It’s you and me, old man,” he said.
He’d tried to impose his will on his captive, without success. He had to give the old man credit. Tom Little proved to have far more resistance to Bett’s mesmerizing than Bett had ever imagined he would. But it didn’t matter. It would just take a little longer, that was all.
And they had all night.
“Be a shame if I got hold of that cute little granddaughter of yours,” Bett said. “She already likes me—I can tell. Thinks I’m her step up to the big time.”
“You . . . you’re the reporter?”
Bett laughed. “In the flesh. To tell you the truth, I was hoping to grab her instead of you. I figure she’d squeal quicker and I do like to hear them squeal.”
The Gaffer spat at him, but that only made Bett laugh louder.
“Now here’s the game,” Bett said. “We’re going to make one more call to your sweet little granddaughter. She comes across with the goods, we’re all going to leave this place as friends. But if she doesn’t. . .”
He patted one of the three jerricans of gasoline that he had sitting beside him on the loose stones.
“If she doesn’t, you and I are going to have ourselves a weenie roast, old man.”
“You—”
“And then I’ll still go after her.”
“If I—”
“Yeah, yeah. If you were free. If I faced you like a man. Grow up, you old jerk. That’s not the way the game goes. Uh-uh,” he added as the Gaffer opened his mouth again. “Time to make our little phone call.”