Authors: Sharon Lee
Carousel Sun (11 page)
“You’ll want to know the people who are going to be at this party. The owner of Wishes Gallery is Joan Anderson. She doesn’t strike me as a woman who does anything by halves, which means she’ll have invited the entire town.”
“Except me, who she doesn’t know from—”
“You see that part,
bring a friend
? You’re coming with me.”
She mugged. “So we’re
friends
?”
I laughed. “
You
better check up on
me
,” I told her. “But I promise to be on my best behavior.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” She pouted, then grinned. “It’s a date.” She yanked her cell out of the pocket of her jeans. “Gimme your number.”
We did the exchange, and I left her to the rapidly assembling midway, tucking the card back into the pocket of my jacket as I went.
Vassily worked ’til 4:00. I took several long walks during his shift, and stopped by Tony Lee’s for my supper.
“Is Vassily working out?” Anna asked.
“Nothing’s blown up, yet,” I answered, around a forkful of steamed chicken and veggies. I looked up at her. “He’ll be ’round a little later to collect his supper. If there’s an extra egg roll, throw it in, hey? Put it on my tab.”
Anna swung a dishcloth more or less at my head.
“Tony has already said that we should feed him up. Owner’s expense.”
“I know better’n to argue with Tony,” I said. “Are all the greenies hungry?”
Anna frowned. “No . . . well. At first, they’re shy. Then, yes—they’re hungry. After that, they’re family.” She paused, her frown getting deeper.
“And then . . . they leave.” The frown eased somewhat. “Often, though, they come back. Katrina has been back five years in a row. And this is Sergei’s third summer.”
“Five years? That’s starting to be a career.”
Anna nodded. “She says she would like to stay, and work at the Beach all year ’round.”
I laughed. “So would a lot of us.”
I finished up my meal and sat back with a sigh.
“That was almost too good.” I sipped coffee, Katrina’s wish niggling at the edge of my mind.
“There’s a committee forming up, so Jess Robald tells me,” I said. “Its aim is to work out a strategy to stretch the Season. First meeting’s Monday morning at some ungodly hour, at the Garden Cafe, up the hill.”
Anna nodded vigorously.
“Jelly will be there, for the Lees,” she said. “There must be something that we can do. Other beach towns have longer Seasons. Some even have winter Seasons!”
“Unless we hire us a trail master and start cutting snowmobile trails, maybe we’re not ready for a winter Season,” I said.
“Well, no, Kate, but there’s not one reason in the world why we couldn’t be open through the end of October, even into the first week of November, for the Peepers.”
Peepers
is short for
Leaf Peepers
, which is to say, the folks from Away who come up to Maine in order to greet Autumn personally, and conduct her downcoast.
There’s not a lot of greeting of Autumn, in terms of the Changing of the Leaves, to be done at Archers Beach, though the wood at Heath Hill puts on some fancy dress. Still, we could easily be a place to stop overnight on the way up to the mountains, or the way back down to Away.
If there were anything open to serve them breakfast and give them a place to put their heads.
Maybe play a game or two of skeeball in the arcade, or take a spin on the merry-go-round, get a beer at Neptune’s . . .
“Kate?”
“Hmm?” I sat up, shaking my head. “Sorry. Daydreaming.”
“It would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Anna said wistfully. “If the town got back on its feet again?”
“Yeah. Yeah. It would.” I got up and disposed of my plate, utensils and coffee cup.
“My turn to watch the painted ponies go up and down and ’round and ’round,” I said. “Thank you for supper—oh! Anna?”
She turned to look at me, her head tipped to one side.
“Can I leave an extra key to the storm gate here? I’m a little nervous about just handing it over . . .”
Anna nodded her head. “He can pick it up from us for opening, and bring it back when he comes to get his supper.”
“A plan—and a good one. Thanks, Anna.”
“That’s no problem at all, Kate.”
“If you say so. I’m gone. Expect Vassily in moments.”
“I’ll get out one of the big plates,” Anna said calmly. “See you later, Kate.”
It was a relatively good night, by the standards of an Early Season Saturday. There hadn’t been the astounding number of riders that we’d seen in the Super Early Season, but those who had come by had an . . . energy. A brightness of intent that was both new and fascinating. The land wriggled around on its back, metaphorically speaking, and offered its belly to be rubbed by this bright new energy. I wondered if it was just anticipation of the end of the school year—most of the evening riders had been middle and high schoolers—or something else entirely; something having to do with the
change
that was moving along the streets of Archers Beach.
Change that I’d woken, just by coming home.
I did, I thought, snapping the padlock through the loops, have a lot to atone for. If I hadn’t left Archers Beach; if I’d somehow gotten past my guilt over Tarva’s death and my self-loathing . . .
If I’d
talked
to anybody, instead of just passing judgment on myself, knowing that
I
was evil, because I was heir to every evil thing that had been visited upon me.
Well. As somebody had said, once or twice down the road of history: Life is kind of complicated.
I turned away from the storm gates, and took a deep breath, tasting salt, and sand, hot grease. The night was clear, and I could see stars in the sky beyond Fun Country’s night lights.
A good night to walk home by the beach.
Light rippled and flared as I hit the sand—purple, yellow, red. I spun, seeking, feeling
heat
from the direction of Heath Hill. Heart in mouth, I flung the question into the land—
And got an answer from the Wood itself.
Calm, quiet, serene.
All right, I thought, so somebody set off some fireworks.
I scanned the sky, waiting for a second burst, but nothing came.
Heat lightning then, I thought, though it was early in the year. Maybe an aurora.
I scanned the sky again, but saw no edge of aurora. The land reported no threat or unusual circumstances.
The view from Sideways backed up the assessment of the trees—calm; quiet; serene. My power remained coiled at the base of my spine.
Heat lightning, I told myself again; that was all.
I headed down the sand, toward home.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sunday, June 11
High Tide 11:40
A.M.
Sunrise 5:00
A.M.
EDT
The phone rang as I was pouring my first cup of coffee. Not too bad, as timing went.
“Good morning, Kyle.”
“Good morning, Ms. Archer. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Just starting to get serious about my caffeine. I take it you got my message.”
“I did, and—that’s great, about the wood, and about Mike, too. I really owe him—a beer and a catch-up. Take care of that this winter, when I’m back downcoast. In the meanwhile, that wood. I got a workshop up Smithwheel Road; George—the guy I’m renting from—he said to tell you where Dorr’s Woodworking used to be.”
I sipped my coffee, thinking. In my day, Dorr’s had been one of the town’s bigger employers. Twenty-five carpenters turning out fine, handmade Maine furniture. It must’ve closed during my years away—another victim of my abandonment, or the general economy, or both.
“I know where it is,” I told Kyle. “Got a bay number to deliver to?”
“George just says, ‘They can drop it at the main dock,’ but if whoever’s bringing it gives me call and about a half-hour’s warning, I can be there waiting for them. That way, no mistakes.”
That way, no mistakes.
I nodded at the phone.
“I’ll pass that along. Just to help with planning, I’d say you’re looking for delivery today—tomorrow latest.”
“Sooner I can get the wood, sooner I can start work,” Kyle said cheerfully.
“How’s it going at Wishes?”
“Ms. Anderson’s hanging art,” he said. “You got your invitation?”
“I did. See you at the party?”
“I’ll be there,” he promised.
“Excellent. Let me get caffeinated and make a call.”
“Sure thing. Thanks!”
He was gone.
I poured the second cup, walked out to the summer parlor and made my call. Kyle could, I was told, expect his wood this afternoon. Splendid.
I flipped the phone closed and tucked it in the back pocket of my jeans. Leaned both elbows on the rail and looked out over the ocean.
The water was peridot and cream this morning, the breakers starting to muscle up with the turn of the tide.
The Gulf of Maine’s a pretty, mostly peaceable piece of water; the Atlantic Ocean minds its manners there. Most of that, I guessed, was due to Borgan’s influence—Borgan being one of those large, peaceable, competent men who can and will knock you into next week if you aren’t behaving up to his standards.
I sipped my coffee, looking out over the distant water.
I’d known him a matter of weeks; he was
trenvay
—well, no. He was the Guardian of the Gulf of Maine. And if you stipulated that
I
, the Guardian of Archers Beach, was something other than
trenvay
, then the same followed for Borgan. It was a theory, anyway. What, exactly, he—and I—were: that remained something of a puzzle, at least on my side. Granted,
I
was complicated—part of me direct from the Land of the Flowers, part of me with roots deep in the soil of Archers Beach, and another part that had given generations of human lives to the care of this land . . .
I was, as far as I knew, a supernatural being; mundane folk had no truck with
jikinap
, and would politely excuse themselves from any conversation predicated on a cosmology that included Six Worlds created, and linked, by the intent of a supranatural being, now possibly dead, or at least diminished past godhood.
What
else
I was, and what I was going to do with it . . . I could talk to Gran, and to Mr. Ignat’, and, hell, to Mother. But none of them, as far as I could make out from the stories and the histories, had ever been human.
And I—despite the complications and the aftermarket bling—I felt that I was, somehow, at core, human.
Borgan . . . I wanted to talk to Borgan so bad it was an ache; a pain in my belly and a fever on my brow. Not guilt; just . . . he’d been gone long enough.
The very first thing Gran had taught me regarding the duties of the Guardian was that the Guardian of the land that was dignified on maps and such as the seaside town of Archers Beach—that Guardian owed respect to the sea. It’d been quite a while—eight weeks, in fact—since I’d
properly
paid my respects, but here I was now, having hiked across the dune, down the dry sand to the wet, until I stood with my naked toes lapped by froth-trimmed wavelets. I stood there, looking out to sea, at the humps of Blunt and Stafford Islands, straight out, Cape Elizabeth and the notch that was Portland Harbor ’way round to my left; Biddeford Pool and Wood Island to my left.
There was a sailboat hugging the rough edges of Strand Island, playing with the wind and probably aggravating the seals, and a motorboat coming out of the blur of Camp Ellis, skipping across the waves like a stone across a river.
I closed my eyes. At the edge of my attention, the land was quietly quivering with anticipation. The land
liked
Borgan. A lot. How much that influenced my own feelings, I had no idea. But . . . I did
have
feelings—confused feelings, granted, like most of my feelings—and I very much wanted to sit down over a cup of coffee: that same cup of coffee I’d never let him buy me . . .
The breeze gusted from landside, blowing my hair over my shoulders and around my face. The low-tide waves continued to plash gently against the shore.
Nothing else happened.
At all.
The midway was hopping.
I stopped outside The Last Mango and just stared. People were trying their luck at the ring toss in the center of the walk, while directly across, a lanky teenager was testing his marksmanship. Straight down the road, I could see an Italian ice concession, a duck-pick, and a ring toss, all with customers waiting. Perky popular girl hits were playing on the PA, fortunately almost completely drowned out by the yells of barkers, shots from the firing range, laughter, voices, and—
“Hey, Kate!”
Peggy the Fixer came out of the manager’s cave, Vente in one hand. She was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt showing Jack Skellington holding hands with Sally.
“It’s looking good,” I told her. “You’re a miracle worker.”
“Couldn’t’ve done it without you,” she said, shaking her pink head. “I keep pinching myself, but going by the bruises, I’m awake. So, anyhow, since you’re such a big gun in the miracle business, I’m gonna ask for another one.”
I eyed her.
“Shoot.”
“You know anybody renting an apartment in town? I’m in a motel up on Route One, which I thought’d be close enough, y’know? Three-mile commute—people die for that where I’m from. Except I’m thinking, High Season, traffic, little country road, closing up at midnight three nights and close enough to midnight, the rest of ’em . . . the strip isn’t going to be close enough.” She gave me an eager, bright-purple glance. “Is it?”
“Probably not.” I frowned at her. “I might know a place,” I said, slowly. “Don’t know what kind of shape it’s in . . . Let me check and I’ll give you a call, ’kay?”
“You are my go-to woman for everything in this town! I will await your call, Ms. Archer.”
“Should be this afternoon. And—no promises, right? I’ve gotta check. If what I have in mind won’t do, what do you need, baseline?”
“Baseline? A place to sleep, shower; a place to keep some food and a six-pack cold. A microwave would be swell. Washer and dryer nearby, because—schedule.” She paused, added, “No wildlife,” and nodded once, firmly.
Well, as baselines went, it was basic enough. I chewed my lip, debating with myself . . .
“Okay,” I said, slowly. “Lemme see what I’ve got. Right now what I’ve got, though . . .”
“Is to get the merry-go-round open for business. ’Way ahead of you. I don’t know why they haven’t rolled back the gates over there already. The paying customers were climbing the fence when I got here, at ten.”
“Marilyn has a certain fondness for order,” I told her. “But, yeah, she’s gonna snap soon. All that money flowing into other pockets . . .” I gave her a nod and started down the avenue. “I’ll call you.”
“I’ll be waiting,” she promised.
I was sipping coffee and chatting with Anna as she got the counter set up for the day when Vassily arrived, admirably punctual at eleven o’clock.
The hood was down, letting the breeze run wanton fingers through his reddish brown hair.
Boy really ought to have a hat
, I thought. Skin that pale will crisp fast, even under the relatively mild Maine summer sun.
“Good morning, Kate Archer,” he said, formally. “Good morning, Anna.”
“Good morning, Vassily.” Anna smiled at him.
Did I say that mundane folk don’t wield magic? All you have to do is see Anna Lee smile and know that I’m leading you a dance.
Vassily, like hundreds before him, had obviously fallen irrevocably under her spell. Those stern, thin lips softened, just a little.
“Would you like a cup of coffee? Tea? Pepsi?”
“Thank you, I do not think any—”
“It’s part of your meal program,” she interrupted him, softly. “Like Kate’s coffee.”
Vassily took a breath, looked at me. I nodded, and raised the cup slightly.
“If that is the case, then . . . coffee? With . . . if there should be . . . sugar?”
“Coffee coming right up. Sugar’s on your left. Show him where, Kate.”
“Sure.”
I used my chin to point at the condiment rack in the left corner of the counter: packs of soy and duck sauce, sugar, salt and pepper, paper napkins, and plastic utensils.
Vassily picked up four packets of sugar and came downcounter to take the Styrofoam coffee cup from Anna’s hand with a tiny bow.
“Thanking you.”
“You’re very welcome,” she told him, and vanished into the back again.
He tore open the packets, and white granules snowed into the blackness of his coffee. Enough sugar to make my teeth ache, and I’d seen this before, I realized. Gaby, who was usually on the outer edge of hungry, sugared her coffee to the saturation point, too. Kept the stomach grumbles down.
I cleared my throat, and he looked at me, face shut down again, eyes wary.
“Since you’ll be opening up every day for me,” I said conversationally, “I’m going to leave the key here with Anna and Tony. You come in, get your coffee, pick up the key. Bring it back to Anna when you go off-shift. That work for you?”
He sipped his coffee, and breathed in the steam.
“This works for me, yes. It works for Anna and Tony?”
“I asked them, and they’re fine with it. Gives ’em a chance to see more of you.”
His eyes widened slightly at that, and color kissed his sharp, pale cheeks.
“I will be . . . happy . . . to see more of Anna and Tony.”
“Sounds like a win for everybody, then.” I straightened up out of my lean and reached into my pocket.
The key was attached to a ring with a brass carousel horse charm.
Vassily hesitated, his eye on the charm.
“That is . . . ?”
“Just a charm, so Anna can tell which key belongs to the carousel.”
“Ah.”
He slipped the ring from my fingers, careful, so it seemed, not to touch me.
“Thanking you. I will open, and work. I will work until you come at . . . four o’clock. If you are late, I will work until you come. If you are
very
late, I will call Manager Michaud, who is in my phone.”
“I’m gonna do my level best not to be late. Otherwise, you’re with the program. End of shift, you come over here, get your supper and give the key to Anna. If you need a break, or if you get in a bind, you just give me a call on the cell phone, all right? I’ll be at home, and can be here in a couple minutes. What’s the first thing to do if something goes wrong with the carousel itself?”
“I say to the riders, please to dismount and exit. I will arrange a return of the fee. Then I will close the storm door, lock it, and call you on the cell phone.”
“Ace.” I gave him a grin. “You’re gonna do fine.”
His lips bent, too quick and too hard to really be a smile, but the boy was trying.
“So,” I told him, “you better get opened up. If I know Marilyn, she’s going to hit that horn in under five minutes.”
“Yes!” He spared the key and the brass charm another hard stare, and hurried across Baxter Avenue.
I slumped back in my corner and finished up what was left in my cup, watching him open the gate, turn on the lights, and start the music playing.
Good
, I thought.
Kid’s doing good
.
Still, it was . . . remarkably difficult to straighten out of my lean when my coffee was gone, and turn toward home.
