Unbound (63 page)

"I shall be all right," she said.

And indeed she was, at least on the outside. She turned distant as if her thoughts were thousands of miles away, and every day, despite poor weather, she ventured up to the cemetery to gaze at Mr. Island's grave, just as he had once watched the sea. So long she had waited for love, and when it found her, it was taken away.

Work commenced on the platform above Heddybemps Rock. Mr. Grindle had grown interested in Mr. Island's ship and did not wish to halt progress. Lydia now looked seaward from the cemetery to view the work.

* * * * *

The first time I saw Mr. Island's ship hauled up on shore, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Isaiah Fernald had been right. It was a strange vessel, and not one bit of it made from wood or steel. It was smooth and white like a giant egg, unmarred as if it hadn't sat submerged on the ocean floor all winter. It possessed wings, giving it the avian appearance I had seen in the logbook. Only the minutest hairline seams could be found where we supposed the hatch was, but none could gain entrance.

Word of Mr. Island's vessel reached the cities, and summer folk flocked to Schooner Harbor instead of Camden or Mount Desert. Rusticators by the score took lodging in the homes and barns of our neighbors, ate of their food, and purchased goods from Bayard Bascomb's store. They spent their afternoons on picnics and buckboard frolics. It was agreed by all that our small village had never experienced such a season of prosperity.

Lydia found no peace at the cemetery. Like pilgrims, the rusticators trampled the path to the gravesite. What revelations they expected, I do not know. There was a brief scare that someone might excavate the grave and make off with Mr. Island's remains. The local men set up a vigil to deter such an attempt.

Lydia's story was learned and soon she was beleaguered by those wishing to record it. She sought refuge in my home. None too few followed her and gazed wistfully into my dooryard, but when she failed to reappear, they tired of waiting and went off to puzzle over the ship.

I drew Lydia into the kitchen and sat her by the cold stove. She put her face into her hands. "Oh, Mrs. Grindle, won't they ever leave?"

"When the days grow crisp," I said, "they will return to the city. Poor dear, this is hard on you."

Lydia then looked up, her eyes searching. "You have been a good friend to me. No, more than that. More a good aunt, or even a mother."

I warmed at her words, glad she thought so well of me. I was very fond of her too.

"I believe," Lydia said, "that for all Joseph protested my going to his land, it was what he truly wanted. His book has shown me that, if not in words, then in pictures. I intend to make a go of it."

That evening, I stacked the Willoware on the sideboard and reflected on her words, realizing that making "a go of it" had been her objective since the moment she decided not to leap to her death from Schooner Head.

I gazed out the window. In the fading light, a figure hurried by, skirts flaring behind her. Lydia!

I took my shawl from its hook and hastened out the door to the shore, where Mr. Island's ship sat luminous and sleek in the moonshine. Lydia leaned into it as if embracing a lover.

She pressed her hand down on its smooth surface, traced the seam of the hatch with her fingertips. "Open, please open." She spared me a brief a brief glance, then turned her attention back to the ship. "
Avar
," she said.

The hatch slid open and white light bathed Lydia, bleaching her dress. "He taught me some of his words," she explained. She gazed inward and a startled expression crossed her face. I approached slowly as if my feet were anchored to the ground.

Lydia stepped into the vessel. She stood framed in the hatch, the intensity of the light knifing past her and into my eyes, obscuring what lay beyond. Lydia turned round and round, enraptured by her surroundings.

"Lydia," I said, feet still dragging.

"I am sorry, Mrs. Grindle. This time you cannot stop me."

"I know, dear. I know." I knew also, at that instant, how it is to be bereft of a daughter.

The light embracing her, she smiled and stepped inward. "It is amazing in here," she said. "Farewell, Mrs. Grindle. Thank you. Thank you for everything." And she was lost in the light.

The hatch
shooshed
closed.

I lifted my skirts and strode back down the Shore Road. The land vibrated and a hum filled the air like thousands of bees. I walked on and did not look back. I did not look back till the vessel hovered above the ground, lights blinking on the tips of the wings. A beam of gold from the lighthouse stroked the vessel. And then, in the beating of a heart, the ship was gone.

It is not my way to visit the cemetery after dark, but this night I did. I stood by Mr. Island's headstone and gazed at the sky, where bright points of light dazzled the eyes. I wondered if one of them might be Lydia. I wondered how she would fare in Evanonway, if the folk there were polite and would receive her with warmth. If they were at all like Mr. Island, I did not fear for her. How brave she was to leave behind all she knew!

I watched the stars for some time, feeling the push and tug of the breezes, first the cold from the ocean, then the warm from the land. Did Mr. Island's homeland have the tang of salt in the sea air? Would Lydia grow homesick for all she had known? Would she return?

At our very first gathering at Dr. Hutchinson's home, Mr. Island had said of Evanonway, "Yez. Island. It is not so different."

by Jim Butcher

“I don’t believe it. They found me,” I muttered grimly. I looked left and right, checking around me for lurking threats. “I don’t know how, but they did it. I’ve been back in the world for less than a month, and they found me.”

Will Borden, engineer and werewolf, set down a heavy box of books on the kitchen table and looked at me with concern. Then he came over and looked down at the letter in my hands before snorting. “Such a drama queen.”

“I’m serious!” I said and shook the letter. “I’m being hunted! By my own government!”

“It’s a summons to jury duty, Harry,” Will said. He opened the fridge and helped himself to a bottle of Mac’s ale. He had to navigate around a few boxes to do it. I didn’t think I’d had much out on the island, but it’s amazing how many boxes it takes to hold not much. It had taken most of a day to ferry it all from the island into Molly’s apartment in town. She rarely used the place these days and had given it to me to live in until I found my own digs.

“I don’t like it,” I said.

“Too bad,” Will said. “You got it. Look, you probably won’t be selected anyway.”

“Summons,” I said, glowering. “It’s a freaking command. They want to see what a real summoning is, I could show them.”

Will laughed at me. He was younger than me, shorter than average, and built like a linebacker. “How dare they intrude upon the solitude of the mighty wizard Dresden.”

“Nngh,” I said, and tossed the paper onto the top of a box of unopened envelopes—my mail, which had accumulated for more than a year, most of it junk. Some of it had been at the post office. More had been set aside by the new owner of my old address, formerly Mrs. Spunkelcrief’s boarding house, and now the Better Future Society. I hadn’t been able to stomach asking the new owner for my mail, but Butters had gotten it for me.

“Maybe I won’t show up,” I said. I paused. “What happens if I don’t show up?”

“You can be held in contempt of court or fined or jailed or something,” Will said. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Now that I think about it, they actually leave it kind of vague, what’s going to happen.”

“Good threats are like that. More scary when you can use your imagination.”

“They aren’t the mob, Harry.”

“Aren’t they?” I asked. “Pay them money every year to protect you, and God help you if you don’t.”

Will rolled his eyes and got another bottle from the fridge. He opened it for me and passed it over. “Mac would kill you for drinking this cold, et cetera and so on.”

“It’s hot out,” I said, and took a long pull. “Especially for this early in the year. And he would just give me that disappointed grunting sound. Damned government. Not like I don’t have things to do.”

“Is justice worth having?” Will asked.

I eyed him.

“Is it?”

“Mostly,” I said. Warily.

“Well, that’s why there’s a legal system.”

“What does justice have to do with the legal system?”

“Do you really want to tear it all apart and start over from 1776?” Will asked.

“Not particularly. I have books to read.”

He spread his hands. “The courts aren’t perfect,” Will said, “but they can do okay a lot of the time.” He reached into the box and picked up the summons. “And if you really think the courts aren’t working, maybe you should do something about it. If only there was some way you could directly participate . . .”

I snatched the letter back from him with a scowl. “Think you’re smart, huh.”

“You’re kind of a solitary hunter by nature, Harry,” Will said. “I’m more of a pack creature. We’re smart about different things, that’s all.”

I read a little more. “There’s a dress code too?” I demanded.

Will covered up his mouth with his hand and coughed, but I could see that he was laughing at me.

“Well,” I said firmly, “I am
not
wearing a tie.”

Will lowered his hand, his expression carefully locked into sober agreement. “Viva la revolution.”

* * * * *

So I went to court.

It meant a trek downtown to the Richard J. Daley Center Courthouse, whose name did little to inspire confidence in me that justice might indeed be done. Ah well. I wasn’t here to create disorder. I was here to preserve disorder.

I went up to the seventeenth floor, turned in my card along with about a gazillion other people, none of whom seemed at all enthusiastic about being there. I got a cup of bad coffee and grimaced at it while waiting around for a while. Then a guy in a black muumuu showed up and recounted the plot of
My Cousin Vinny
.

Okay, it was a robe, and the guy was a judge, and he gave us a brief outline of the format of the trial system, but it’s not nearly as entertaining to say it that way.

Then they started calling names. They said they only needed about half of us, and when they had been going for a while, I thought I was about to get lucky and get sent home, but then some clerk called my name, and I had to shuffle forward to join a file of other jurors.

There were lines and questions and a lot of waiting around. Long story short: I wound up sitting in the box seats in a Cook County courtroom as the wheels of justice started to grind for a guy named Hamilton Luther.

* * * * *

The case was being handled by one of the new ADAs. I used to keep track of those people pretty closely, but then I was mostly dead for a while, and then living in exile and my priorities shifted. When you live in a city with a reputation for political corruption as pervasive as Chicago’s, and work in a business that sometimes treads close to the limit of the law (or twenty miles past it), it’s wise to keep an eye on the public servants. Most of them were decent enough, I guess, by which I mean they’re your basic politician—they had just enough integrity to keep up appearances and appease political sponsors and at the end of the day they had an agenda to pursue.

Once in a while, though, you got one who was thoroughly in someone’s pocket. The outfit owned some of those types. The unions owned some others. The corporations had the rest.

The new kid was in his late twenties, clean-cut, thoroughly shaven, and looked a little distracted as he assembled notes and folders around him with the help of an attractive female assistant. His gray suit was tailored to him, maybe a little too well tailored for someone just out of law school, and his maroon tie was made of expensive silk that matched the kerchief tucked into his breast pocket. He had big ears and a large Adam’s apple, and his expression was painfully earnest.

On the other side of the aisle, at the defendant’s table, sat a study in contrast. He was a man in his fifties, and if he’d ever been in college it had been on a wrestling scholarship. He had shoulders like a bull moose, hunched with muscle, and his arms ended in fists the size of sledgehammer heads. The dark skin on his knuckles was white and lumpy with old scars, the kind you get in back-alley fistfights, not in a boxing ring. He had shaven his head. There was stubble around the edges but the top was shiny. He had a heavy brow, a nose that had been broken on a biannual basis, and his suit was cheap and ill-fitting. He had a couple of folders on the table with him, along with a pair of thick books. The man looked bleakly uneasy and kept flicking nervous glances across the aisle.

If that guy was a lawyer, I was an Ewok. But he sat alone.

So where was his public defender?

“All rise!” a large man in a uniform said in a voice pitched to carry. “Court is now in session, the Honorable Mavis Jefferson presiding.”

Everyone stood up. After a second, so did I.

I guess you could say I’m not really a joiner.