Picking the Ballad's Bones (15 page)

"So what DID he really
think?" asked Spotted Owl Sokorski, a girl unfashionably tanned and
unfashionably brown-haired and pretty as any ballad's nut-brown
maid.

"It was kind of like what
he told Sir Walter about Gussie. That when folks die, the material
part goes to the grave and the essential inner part of them—what
the Egyptians might have called the 'Ka' might go to heaven or hell
or wherever—but there are lots of other parts to a person—I suppose
intellect might be the best way to put it, or personality. That
energy, like the energy created by the decomposing body, gets
recycled into new folks."

"Like family members—maybe
like genetic material

"Yeah, I think that's part
of what he meant. Between you and me, I think he thought the Ka
sometimes got redistributed too but was too chicken to say that.
And Torchy Burns intimidated him."

"Why? Did he know she was
a devil?"

"Nope, neither he nor Sir
Walter knew her as a devil. But they knew her as something that
mattered to them more, since they were of a people who were often
Christian mostly on the surface. Sir Walter, church-going man that
he was, would rather, like True Thomas, have seen Torchy Burns than
Mary, the Queen of Heaven herself"

"Why?" asked Sequoia
Thomas, whose parents owned the camp and had hired the counselor
specifically to tell this story, which they had heard her tell at a
convention.

"Because he knew what she
used to be."

* * *

"So that's it—kind of like getting
beamed back instead of up, like on Star Trek?" Brose asked when the
Wizard had explained his theory. "You sort of split us up into
component parts and reassemble us when we get where we need to be,
that right?

"What the hell," Brose said. "I always
wanted to do something like that. Can we call you Scottie,
Wiz?"

Michael Scott's root-defined mouth
curved in a hoary smile and he nodded once and said with the
dignity of a lofty oak, "Gin thar be no furthair objections, I'll
tell ye what ye maun do tae reclaim the ballads." He looked
meaningfully at Torchy Burns but she merely smiled a sweet,
encouraging cheerleader's smile.

"Hand me the instrument, please," the
Wizard Michael instructed. "Tis in the nature of its spell that ah
cannae magick it awa' frae ye."

Willie, feeling a little like Dorothy
trying to take off her ruby slippers to save Toto, reluctantly
handed it over, then took a long sip of his tea, not because he
wanted it but to steady himself. He wished if something was going
to happen to him, it would just go ahead and happen. The Wizard
moved almost as slowly as a plant grows. Actually, Willie could
already hear himself telling the others, "I had the weirdest dream
last night and you were all in it. There was this Leaf Man. Who
would have thought I could out-hokey Hollywood?"

Gussie meant to drink some of her tea
but she didn't like that smoky smell. Since she'd been in the fire,
the smell irritated her throat, and before she could bring the cup
to her lips she broke into a coughing fit.

Julianne, Anna Mae, and Brose all took
the opportunity to wet their whistles too. Willie offered some to
Torchy who gazed up at him real sweetlike and said, "Oh, no, I've
had more than my share, luv. Drink it down. There's a
dear."

She was looking more and more like she
was so tickled with herself she could bust. Gussie could not
imagine what the woman was so chuffed about.

The Wizard Michael Scott said, "Ah
shell instruct the instrument to play a ballad as it was played in
mah ane day. Ah weel spare ye m'singin', but ah wot and ye will wot
which ballad is bein' played. Ye folk are each of ye a different
sort, very like the folk in the ballads. When ah play a tune of a
distressed lady of noble blood, ah expect yon lassie"—he nodded to
Julianne—"weel respond and when ah play of a roguish laddie, ye—"
he nodded to Willie "—maun respond. A doughty warrior perhaps
yersel', Moorish man, and ye, dearie, are the woodswoman, the dark
sister, the brown gel who is the remnant of the auld folk amang the
mortals. Ye, auld woman, are the mothers, the hags, the midwife,
the nourice, the woman of counsel."

"And me?" asked Sir Walter.

"Ah'm that sorry, laddie, but bein'
dead disqualifies ye. Ah wot not but that ye'll return tae yer
grave as the spells tak' hold."

Torchy cleared her throat. "Wait a mo,
mates. This is gettin' a bit oversimplified-like. It isn't going to
be all as easy as Mick makes it sound or quite the lark you seem to
think it'll be. You see, you've only got seven years to recapture
these songs of yours—"

"Seven years?” Willie asked. "Who said
anything about seven years! Hell, darlin', I don't think they're
gonna let us stay that long."

"You disappoint me, Willie luv. You
haven't let a little thing like mortal law stand in your way so
far. And it doesn't matter, you know. Truly it doesn't. Natural law
always has dominion over the laws of mere mortals
and—ahem—supernatural law, of course, takes sovereignty over
natural law."

"Do you always have to be the center
of attention?" Anna Mae asked her angrily. "Can we get on with it
now?"

"Oh, I really don't believe I'd do
that without hearing a bit more, dearie."

"But the Wizard said we only had until
cockcrow," Julianne said, "and it's getting lighter already. We
have to get the songs back. Not that we haven't appreciated all
you've done for us, Torchy hon, but you don't understand all of
this. It's really a very cosmic situation."

Torchy laughed a loud, long, derisive
laugh and her cockney accent broadened and slowed to a West Texas
drawl as she said, "No, hon, it's y'all who don't understand. I
understand more than any of you, even more than Mick
here."

Willie's eyes widened as her accent
altered. "Lulubelle—" he said. "Lulubelle Baker! Why in the hell
didn't I recognize you before?"

"Easy, sugar. I didn't want you to.
Besides, if you'll pipe down and pay attention, you'll learn that
Lulubelle Baker and Torchy Burns are only a couple of the names I'm
known by. Mick and Wattie both know me as someone else entirely,
don't you, boys?"

Both ghosts—the Wizard in his rustling
state and Sir Walter using Gussie's body—bowed in
response.

"Now then, shall we get on with this,
since you're all so eager?" Torchy asked.

"I hope to tell you we sure as hell
better. You're one of those critters been killin' off our friends,
siccin' the cops on us, all that stuff. I don't think we have much
to say to each other. Wiz, buddy, you can pull your rabbit out of
your hat or the brier patch that you're wearin' there or whatever,
but lay it on us. I don't want to hear another word out of this
lyin', cheatin', low-down excuse for a female."

"Why, Willie, how sweet of you to say
so!" Torchy taunted.

"Wait a minute, here," Brose said. "I
want to hear a little more about this seven-year
business."

"It's a good idea to know the rules
ahead of time," Anna Mae agreed.

"I'm very relieved to hear the voice
of reason enter into all this paranoid hysteria," Torchy said.
"Mick, luv, I'll tell you what. You're in a rush and we have loads
of time. Why don't you play the tune on that—uh—play the tune that
will send our friends where they want to go, but then after I've
had a chance to have a wee chat with them over a nice cup of tea
and let them know what they're getting into—you naughty wizards
always keep the catches to yourself, trying to be so mysterious—why
then each of them can make his or her own decision and play the
tune for himself or herself when he or she is ready to go bye-bye.
Isn't that fair?"

"Yeah, sure, if it'll work," Brose
said.

"Oh, it'll work. Won't it,
Mick?"

"If ye so will it, lady, wark it
will," the Wizard replied.

"I so will," Torchy said in a formal
tone that was neither her working-class British accent nor her
southern Lulubelle Baker one.

The Wizard's root-veined hands stroked
from the banjo no strange and eldritch tune but one they'd all
heard a million times, or so it seemed. Each of them recalled its
strains coming from fiddles, banjos, guitars, mandolins, dulcimers,
concertinas, every sort of instrument at every folk festival, jam
session, workshop, and around every campfire they'd ever been to.
And each of them recalled a different set of words to it, while
realizing that any lyrics they could recall to any of the ballads
would have fit the tune.

The Wizard played it one
time through and Julianne, Brose, Willie, and Anna
Ma
e nodded that yes, they could
play that and Torchy snapped her fingers. "Enough
then. Cock's about to crow, Mick luv. Back to the clay with you
before someone thinks you're a vegetarian vampire and runs a tomato
stake through your heart."

The Wizard finished silently and the
banjo reappeared in Willie's hands. Immediately afterward,
somewhere on the farms to the west, a cock crowed and the leaves
and roots that formed the Wizard began to wither back into the lid
of the tomb.

Torchy laughed. "Only ghosties have to
go to bed when the boy chicken sings. The Trust people don't get
here till ten. We've plenty of time. So, you lot, come along with
me. Bring your cups. We'll want several strong cups of tea and a
nice long chat before you go making any rash decisions."

CHAPTER 15

She led them to the caretaker's
cottage where the door was open, an electric space heater was
humming, and the kettle was already on. She set their silver cups
in front of them, one by one, on the pretty primrose-covered
tablecloth. She looked very homey and North Country matron in
gray-green cord pants, green wool socks, gray running shoes with
green stripes, a dark green turtleneck jersey with a heavy heathery
gray-green cable-knit sweater that was complimentary to her red
hair, demurely tied back in a jade-green Duchess of Windsor
bow.

"Now then, my dears," she
said in a completely
new
accent—a touch of Yorkshire, perhaps, northern
but wavering between upper-class Scottish and country English, "I
always find a spot of tea so warming and conducive to sensible
discussion, don't you?"

"Who
are
you?" Anna Mae asked. "The
Wizard just did what you said as if you made out his paycheck. Is
this another setup or what?" She glared at Gussie—or, probably, at
Sir Walter, within Gussie.

"Well, dearie, I know
you'll find this a bit hard to take—though no harder, perhaps, than
Willie found what my Lulubelle Baker persona had to tell him—but
you see, oh, my, this is a little awkward to say without sounding
arrogant or undemocratic or anything but—it just so happens that
another of the little hats that
I wear is,
um—no gay jokes now—I'm the Queen of the Fairies."

"No shit?" Brose asked.

"None at all," she said seriously.
"I'm very well known in these parts—better than anywhere save
Ireland, perhaps. Sir Walter knew me at once, didn't you,
Wat?"

Gussie's ghost guest nodded, thrilled
to its nonexistent marrow.

"And since most of his magical powers
come from me, I suppose your assessment, Anna Mae, that I pay
Michael Scott's paycheck is not too far off the mark."

"Well, if you're so damned powerful
why didn't you just help us already? Why make us go through all
this rigamarole?" Willie asked.

"Because, my sweet, as
you've already mentioned, I
am,
nominally, mostly, formally, on the record,
anyway, officially working for the opposition. You might recall
that song about a protégé of mine, a boy named Tam Lin? Very
promising lad, he was, but as roguish as you, Willie. Got some bird
in a family way and ran off on me just when I needed him
most."

Julianne said, "The ballad says you
were about to pay your tithe to hell by using him as a
sacrifice."

Torchy/Lulubelle/the Queen of the
Fairies nodded agreement. "Oh, yes, handpicked him and groomed him
for the position myself. But unfortunately, at tithing time, he was
playing hide the sausage with that Janet bird."

"So you couldn't pay the rent!" Gussie
said.

And Sir Walter said, "Aye, that's how
it was, even as you feared, lady, in the ballad variation that
went, as I recall:

"Up bespak the Queen of
Fairies

And she spak wi a loud yell

"Aye at every seven years'
end

We pay the kane to hell

And the koors they hae gone round
about

And I fear it will be
mysel'."

The
woman in green reached over and patted Gussie/ Walter fondly
on the cheek. "There, then. You
do
see how it is, don't you? A girl has her position
in this world to maintain and so I embarked on a new career." She
sighed
a
deep,
put-upon sigh. "Still, I do try in my own little way to reward
those who have pleased me in the past. I'm sure you'll never know
how often I've been on the very precipice of a descent into the
truly
tacky
parts
of hell because I managed to finagle some little advantage here and
there that would give you people an 'out,' despite your stubborn
refusal to be realistic—I'm not awfully
fond
of realistic, actually, so I
can sympathize with you. So from time to time I've been able to
stir things up a bit when you get in a jam. If I can't actually
help you, I can at least create opportunities, you see?"