Widdershins (10 page)

The most successful refurbishing had taken place along the stretch of Main Street where it ran closest to the Kickaha River. Although there were a few holdouts—scruffy country cousins like the old general store and a few residential properties that were yet to become commercial—most of the buildings sported a new tourist-friendly look: folksy wood fronts on the stores, old-fashioned hand-painted signs, shop windows full of souvenirs and crafts.

The Custom House was somewhere in between. Its stucco walls boasted a new paint job, and Cindy’s Cafe had an outdoor patio for use in the summer, but inside the hotel, the guest rooms were as they’d been for thirty years and the bar room was still more of a roadhouse. Its regular patrons didn’t care, neither the locals who came by for a drink after work nor the hipper crowd that showed up in the evenings for entertainment. The bar room of the Custom House provided an eclectic mix of live music that rivaled any big city venue.

The building stood on Main Street with a view of the Kickaha River, and only the railroad tracks and a thin strip of lawn separated the street from the water. Stairs led down to a wooden dock with a couple of benches on it. From the dock, one could sit and look out on the river and the foothills of the mountains that began their northward climb from the far shore.

When they got back to the hotel, Lizzie and Siobhan took the stairs down and sat on one of the benches, neither of them ready quite yet to go inside the hotel and have to interact with other people. Siobhan was still quiet and Lizzie couldn’t really blame her.
She’d
actually experienced the whole weird business last night, and she could hardly get her head around it herself. And now there was this new mystery of Tommy being so deferential to Grey.

“What am I going to
do?”
she said when they’d been sitting there for awhile.

Siobhan shook her head. “I don’t know, Lizzie. Maybe you should just get your car this afternoon and hope it all goes away.”

Lizzie gave a slow nod. She sure didn’t want to run into those bogans again. And Grey hadn’t exactly been friendly. But Walker had. And then there was the whole mystery, the adventure of it all. The idea that this whole other world existed, side by side to this one, only hidden from it unless you happened to stray or were drawn into it.

“I don’t think I can forget about it,” she said.

“I’m still trying to understand it myself,” Siobhan told her. “It’s so unbelievable.”

“But you heard what Tommy said about the alternator and Grey.”

“I’m not saying I don’t believe it happened,” Siobhan said. “Not anymore, because obviously
something
did. But I’m still having trouble getting my head around it. I mean, from what you were telling me, there could be little fairy people all around us right now, and we’d never know.”

Lizzie shivered. “Don’t say that.”

“But there could, couldn’t there?”

Lizzie turned on the bench and studied the steep slope of the river bank on either side of them. The rushes and weeds were tall and brown, but thinned enough by the winter snows that a person couldn’t easily hide in them. But when she thought of how the bogans, not to mention Grey and Walker, were able to just appear and disappear, stepping to and from this between place Grey had mentioned . . .

“I guess,” she said.

“You said the deer man—”

“Walker.”

Siobhan nodded. “You said he told you if you called his name, he’d come, didn’t you?”

Lizzie saw where she was going.

“I couldn’t do that,” she said.

“But then we’d know for sure. And maybe he could explain what you’re supposed to do.”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to do anything. Grey told me the same thing you did a few moments ago: I should just forget about it and get on with my life.”

“But Walker said the bogans might come looking for you.”

Lizzie hated being reminded of that, but she nodded.

“And I have to admit,” Siobhan went on, “I’d
really
like to actually . . . you know . . . meet this guy.” She gave Lizzie a thin smile. “If ‘guy’ is even the proper term.”

“Except I got the feeling,” Lizzie said, “that his offer to come to me when I called him seemed to imply that I should only do it if I was in danger.”

“From the bogans.”

“I guess. You’d have to have seen him, but Walker didn’t strike me as the sort of person you’d bother with anything frivolous. It was like . . . I don’t know.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Like meeting a saint.”

Siobhan smiled. “Oh, if your mother could hear that, you’d lose all the points you gained when we named the band the Knotted Cord.”

Lizzie’s mother, a devout Catholic, had been somewhat mollified by the band’s name, because she certainly wasn’t happy about her daughter becoming a professional musician. Lizzie and Siobhan had originally chosen the name because “The Knotted Cord,” also known as “Junior Crehan’s” after its composer, was a favourite tune of theirs. It was Lizzie’s mother who’d pointed out that the knotted cord represented rosary beads, dating back to a time in Ireland when people too poor to afford them would make a set of their own out of string or rope.

“But you know what I mean,” Lizzie said. “When you meet someone . . . not exactly holy, but very spiritual.”

“Like the Dalai Lama.”

“I suppose. But I’ve never met him.”

“Neither have I,” Siobhan said. “But I can imagine what it’d be like meeting him.”

Before Lizzie could respond, they were hailed from the top of the stairs.

“There you are!”

They turned to see Andy waving down at them. A moment later he was joined by Con.

“The boys are awake,” Siobhan said. “Let the revels begin.”

Lizzie laughed and they got up.

“This fairy business . . . ,” Lizzie began as they mounted the stairs.

“Is just between us,” Siobhan assured her.

“We’ve been looking all over for you,” Andy said when they got to the top.

“When did you get back?” Con asked Lizzie.

She shrugged. “Last night. I changed my mind and turned around about halfway home.”

“You missed some grand music,” Andy said. “Your man Liam McNamara—oh, he knows some brilliant tunes.”

“I heard a bit before I left last night,” Lizzie said.

Con fell in step with her as they crossed back to the hotel.

“So, what made you change your mind?” he asked.

“I decided I’d miss my cousin too much,” she told him, smiling at the hopeful look in his eyes.

Oh, he was a handsome bugger, no question. Maybe she should kick him out of the band so that they could start seeing each other.

Geordie

Whenever I didn’t stay at the mall
after a revel—especially when Galfreya had specifically asked me to—I ended up carrying this pang of regret throughout the day. A kind of yearning that I could feel, but couldn’t quite define. Today was no different. She was in the back of my mind when I fell asleep, just behind my concern about the conversation I’d had with Hazel. Those thoughts absorbed me until I recalled that mysterious snatch of fiddle music I’d heard in the mall’s parking lot.

I slept deeply for a few hours, then woke suddenly to a feeling I couldn’t name.

Loss, I realized after a few moments.

I felt as though I’d lost something, but I didn’t know what.

It wasn’t until hours later, after I’d fallen asleep again and finally gotten up in the midafternoon to start my day, that I realized what it was: I felt no specific yearning to go back to the mall. To play music with the fairies. To be with Galfreya.

The need was noticeable only by its absence.

I grabbed a shower and shaved, then went through the pile of clothes lying on the foot of the Murphy bed, looking for something clean to wear. I had to do a laundry soon, no question, but it could wait until tomorrow or Monday. Right now I needed coffee and something to eat, and there was nothing in the apartment.

I got myself a take-out coffee and a muffin from the neighbourhood coffee shop to see me through, then caught the subway to my brother Christy’s place. I didn’t have to hope he’d have coffee on. Christy was addicted to the stuff, the same as me. He
always
had coffee on.

Coming in the door to his building, I met his girlfriend Saskia on her way out. She smiled and gave me a hug. It’s funny, I’m not much of a one for physical displays of affection, but it was different with Saskia—and not because she’s so attractive. If whoever it was that started the whole dumb blonde thing had met her, they’d have picked on brunettes or redheads instead. She was pretty and smart, a published poet with a social conscience and a huge heart. And somehow, when she hugged you, she didn’t seem to invade your personal space. She just confirmed your connections to the world around you. Or at least she did for me.

“Be warned,” she said when she stepped back. “He’s in a bit of a mood.” I raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, it’s just that limited edition retrospective collection that Alan wants to do.”

“But that’s a good thing, right?”

She smiled. “You’d think. But all he can focus on is having to sign a few thousand signature sheets.”

“Maybe we should buy him one of those automated signature machines.”

“Except then he’d just find something else to get wound up over,” she said.

She gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Coffee’s on the stove, and I’ll be back in an hour,” she added. “Will you stay for dinner?”

“Love to, thanks.”

Then she went out onto the street, and I took the stairs up to their apartment.

I guess the biggest thing Saskia did for Christy and me was to teach us that family didn’t have to be a dirty word. It wasn’t something she actually talked about, or worked to convince either of us to accept. It just kind of happened. Before she came into Christy’s life, Christy and I really didn’t have much time or patience for each other. But once he and Saskia were a couple, she made a point of having me over for dinner, or getting Christy to take her out to one of my shows—just bringing us together with her present so that we were on better behaviour than we might have been if it was just the two of us.

It was a slow process, with lots of bristling and affronts taken on both our parts, but Saskia knew how to smooth over the rough patches without ever really letting on that she was doing so. She’d just show us how much we had in common, gentle the start of angry words, and generally refused to let us drift apart. She was such a success with us that she could probably have reconciled us with our parents if we’d let her try, but we stood shoulder-to-shoulder on that one and would have nothing of it.

I guess the reason she was so good at it was because she never had even the pretense of a family herself and was determined to make one for all of us.

“Saskia says you’re grumpy today,” I said after I gave a perfunctory knock on their apartment door and then went on inside without waiting for a response.

Christy looked up from where he was reading a stack of manuscript pages on the sofa.

“She’s probably right,” he said.

“You should be happy that your readers will pay the big bucks for a signed limited edition of your stories.”

He smiled. “Oh, I am. But you know me. . . .”

“You have to pretend to at least make a credible fuss about it.”

“Or something. There’s coffee on the stove.”

“Thanks. You want some?”

“No, I’m good.”

I liked this apartment. Before Saskia came into his life, Christy used to move about once a year, and half his books were still in boxes when the time came for us to move him again. That was about as often as he and I would deliberately got together. Everywhere he lived felt temporary—the way my living arrangements still are.

But it was different now. They’d been here a few years, and the place had a warm, lived-in feel that wasn’t just Saskia’s touch. She’d inspired Christy to actually put down some roots—get all his books out and shelved, put up photos and art, set out handfuls of small artful objects that, to date, had spent most of their lives in boxes.

I had to admit that I envied Christy. For finding someone like Saskia. For making a real home with her.

“Were you playing at a revel last night?” Christy asked.

And there was a big reason I didn’t have what he had. We’d both chosen—or had chosen for us by our respective muses—careers that didn’t exactly lend themselves to stability. But Christy had put the effort into making his writing an actual career, while I just let the music take me where it would.

This past couple of years, the music took me to the mall. To the fairies and Galfreya, and neither was particularly conducive to putting down roots—either with a home or a career.

But I didn’t get into any of that. I just nodded and said, “It was a good one. There was this visiting—hell, I don’t know what she was. Part tree, part something like an otter. But could she play this strange little set of pipes that she had. And she knew at least a half-dozen tunes I’d never heard before.”

“A whole half-dozen?” Christy asked, smiling.

I shrugged. “So I know a lot of tunes. But I don’t pretend to know them all.”