Widdershins (26 page)

The whole time she spoke, she couldn’t get rid of the weird, dislocating sensation of talking to someone who’d just come back from the dead. The fact that he was a little fairy man—the size of a child, but with the brown wrinkled face of an old man—didn’t feel close to unusual, not compared to that one fact.

“They shouldn’t be able to come here,” the little man said. “Not them, nor the blind man. This is a private place,
my
private place that I made here for myself in the Aisling’s Wood.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a doonie,” he told her, as though that explained everything. “Timony Twotot is what folk call me, at your service. I was freed from mine, and this is where I chose to . . .” He thought for a moment, then settled on, “This is the place I made to live out my days.”

“All alone?”

He shrugged. “I spent a lifetime with people, working for them, being around their noise and bustle. I like my solitude. And I can always go visiting if I want.”

“But there’s a barrier of thorns . . .”

He grinned. “And spells, too, to keep my stane secret and safe.” But his humour fled. “Except it’s not so safe anymore, is it?”

“What’s a stane?”

“How could you miss it? It guards the glade for me. Without it, the forest would reclaim the land I cleared. The Aisling’s Wood is riddled with hidey-holes like my own, each protected and kept hidden by its own charms and spells like the ones in my stane.”

He meant the tall standing stone where she’d killed the bogan, Lizzie realized.

“Is it broken?” she asked.

Timony cocked his head and was quiet for a long moment, then gave a slow shake of his head. “No. The blind man is just stronger, it seems. The bogans must be in his service, for bogans alone don’t have the power to outwit the safeguards of a doonie’s stane.”

Lizzie gave a look in the direction of where she thought the stone was. The stone with the dead bogan lying near its base.

“We should find a place to hide,” she said. “Because they’ll probably be back.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Well, they brought me here for some reason.”

To nail her with wooden spikes to a tree the way they had Timony?

“And I did kill one of them,” she added.

“Ah, yes,” Timony said. “You must be much fiercer than you look.”

“I could say the same of you, coming back from the dead and all.”

The doonie nodded.

“What was it like?” Lizzie had to ask. “Did you see the light and the tunnel that they talk about?”

“I don’t remember anything,” Timony told her. “I have only a vague recollection of the blind man, and then there was you, drawing me out of the dark with your tears. I’m lucky you knew the spell to bring me back.”

“The spell?”

“Washing me with your tears. The genuine tears of a human hold a potent charm. All human secretions have a gift to some degree or another.”

Lizzie pulled a face.

“Thanks for putting those images in my head,” she said.

Timony gave her a puzzled look.

“Never mind,” she told him. “It’s not important.”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “I owe you my life. Ask me anything, and if it’s in my power, I will give it to you.”

“You mean like a magic wish?”

He nodded.

She shook her head. “No, that wouldn’t be right. I didn’t know that my tears would bring you back to life, but even if I had, what kind of a person would I have been to just leave you lying there like you were dead? You can’t trade on that kind of thing.”

“That doesn’t change my debt to you.”

Lizzie shook her head. “Let’s just concentrate on how to get out of here. Or at least find someplace safe.”

“I have a house,” Timony began, “under the ground . . .” But then he shook his head. “Except that’s where I was when the blind man pulled me out with a binding word.”

He gave Lizzie a considering look.

“What?” she said, feeling self-conscious.

“You’re not really dressed for any kind of a journey,” he told her.

“That’s because I’m dressed for bed. God, do you think I just walk around like this? I’m a fiddler, not some pop tart.”

“Let me see if I have something that will fit,” he said.

And then he did that disappearing thing that all the fairy people seemed to be so good at, like they were walking through a door that only they could see. She moved her hands in the air where he’d been standing, but there was nothing there that she could either sense or feel. Before she could start to worry “What if he never comes back?” he appeared back in front of her, stepping out of nowhere with a huge armload of clothes that he dumped on the ground between them.

“See if any of this appeals to you,” he said.

Like anything that belonged to somebody half her height had the remotest chance of fitting.

But when she picked up the first item—a pair of pants made of some sort of thick cotton, dyed a greenish brown—both the waist and inseam looked to be about her size. When she tried them on, they were a perfect fit. There was also a cream-coloured jersey with three-quarter sleeves, a long-sleeved shirt made of some sort of soft blue material that was like flannel, socks, and a pair of boots that all fit as though they’d been tailored for her.

“You can turn around,” she told Timony, who’d been sitting with his back to her to offer her some privacy.

“Do you like your new clothes?” he asked.

“Anything’d be better than wandering around the forest in just a T-shirt,” she said, “but these are wonderful, thank you. They’re all so comfortable. Not really my colours, but I’m totally grateful.”

“What’s your colour?”

She smiled. “Not really a colour, per se. Just your basic blacks.”

Timony made a motion with his hands, as though he was writing something in the air, and just like that, everything she was wearing changed to a black as deep as a moonless night. It gave Lizzie a shiver, as though they weren’t clothes on her skin, but some living thing.

“Okay, how did you do that?” she asked. “Not to mention how did you find me a wardrobe that’s such a perfect fit?”

It was his turn to smile. “That’s a doonie’s gift. Our magics are of a helping nature—unless you cause us offense. But when we take a liking to you, we can call up the small changes that bring comfort against common hardships.”

“So magic just lets you do anything?”

“No. All I did just now was to ask your clothing to be a different colour and happily it agreed.”

“So it
is
alive. I got this creepy feeling when you made it change colour.” Then she realized what she was saying, so she held up her arm and told her sleeve, “No offense.”

The doonie laughed. “It’s only alive in the same sense that everything is alive with a spirit of some sort. But your clothes can’t get up and walk off on their own.”

“Then how can you ask it to change colour? Who are you talking to?”

“The great dream of the world—that’s how my granddad put it. Everything is connected, so when you ask the whole of it all for a favour—with the right words, and the right amount of respect—oftentimes, it will do as you ask. So your clothes changed colour, while the clothing itself was made from root and leaf and briar, convinced to take another shape.”

“Is that how the blind man caught you?” Lizzie asked. “You said he used a binding word.”

Timony gave a glum nod. “The great dream of the world grants favours through its grace, but if you know the true name of a thing, and if you have power and the will to use it, you need ask no one. You simply take and do.”

“So, even though you don’t know him, the blind man must know you.” Then she had another thought. “You told me your name.”

“I told you my speaking name—it’s not the same.”

“Oh.”

She was vaguely disappointed in that. But then it made perfect sense. Why should he trust her? They’d only just met and hadn’t some other stranger gone and nailed him to a tree with wooden spikes?

“I should have remembered,” she said. “Somebody else told me about the whole business with names.”

“But it’s a cold soul who uses such advantages against another,” Timony told her.

As though responding to a cue, they heard a sudden hubbub of voices from the direction of the glade.

Oh god, Lizzie thought. The bogans were finally back. She looked around for where she’d dropped the knife.

Timony dropped to his hands and knees.

“Quick!” he whispered. “Stand above me.”

“What?”

“If you want to live, you’ll do as I say. Now, without question.”

Lizzie hesitated only a moment longer before doing what he’d told her. She swung a leg over so that she was straddling the crouching doonie, then gasped as he
changed
under her, transforming into a small brown pony that was still large enough to lift her feet from the ground. She grabbed onto his mane to keep her balance.

Hold tight,
a voice said inside her head.

“But . . .”

Too late. Before she could register the shock of his changing shape, of his voice inside her head, the pony that had been Timony dashed toward the wall of thorns and briars. Lizzie stared wide-eyed, wanting to jump off, too scared to let go. She heard a cry from behind them, then everything went grey, the forest dropped away, and they were somewhere else. A place of thick mists, filled with the salty smell of the sea.

Crap, she thought. I forgot the knife.

Bogan Boys

The bogans appeared by The Doonie Stane
in a jostling crowd, a half-dozen plus one of them, followed a moment later by Odawa and Big Dan who arrived at a slower pace. The bogans cursed loudly when they found Gathen, his body sprawled near the stone, head bent at an awkward angle. Big Dan stepped over to where it lay and frowned.

Lairds help them, there was no doubt about it. Gathen was as dead as the doe they’d taken down in that hunt the other night. But it made no sense. How could this pluiking slip of a girl have killed him with only her bare hands? Big Dan had been there at the crossroads. He’d seen her tremble and shake, for all the brave stance she took. She had no magics. She had no power. There was nothing special about her except for her relationship with Grey.

“She’s there,” Odawa said, pointing to a section of the woods.

Big Dan looked up, his gaze moving from Odawa’s face to the direction he was pointing. The blind man appeared to be taken off guard by something, but whatever it was, he wasn’t sharing it.

Fine, Big Dan thought. Keep your secrets. You won’t have them forever.

He turned his attention back to his men.

“Well, you little shites?” he said. “What are you waiting for? Go fetch her.”

The bogans ran off in the direction Odawa had indicated. Big Dan heard one of his men shout in surprise as he followed them.

Bother and damn, he thought as he picked up his pace. However she does it, don’t let her kill another one of my boys.

But when he and Odawa caught up to the others, it was only to see the girl disappear, riding bareback on a pony as she shifted out of this world. He caught a flash of her unnaturally bright red hair, a flick of the pony’s tail, and then the pair were gone. All that remained behind were a discarded T-shirt and the knife the woman had stolen from Gathen’s body.

Big Dan turned to Odawa. “That was a doonie she was riding.”

“So it seems.”

“I hate the stink of those do-gooders,” Big Dan said. He waited a beat, then added, “I thought you’d killed him.”

“I did,” the blind man said. “This woman has power indeed if she can raise the dead.”

Unless you never killed him at all, Big Dan thought. But all he said was, “She didn’t seem so powerful at the crossroads. We could have had her easy if Grey hadn’t shown up.”

Odawa nodded. “But he did, and you lost her, and now we’ve lost her again.”

“We can track her,” Big Dan said. “Rabedy’s got a nose like a Church Grim.”

Rabedy flushed and the other bogans snickered.

“Not to mention the ears and tail to match,” Scantaglen said.

Big Dan glared at him. When Gathlen was still alive, he and Scantaglen had made it their personal crusade to torment his nephew, and it seemed Scantaglen planned to continue the practice. Big Dan had thought it might build Rabedy’s character—make him stand up for himself for a change—so he’d let it go on, but Rabedy had yet to stand up for himself and Big Dan grew tired of the endless baiting. And after all, while there might not be much to his nephew, he was still family.

“At least Rabedy’s learned some part of the shapeshifting spell,” he told Scantaglen, before turning his dark gaze on the others. “That’s better than the rest of you pluiking lot. I don’t know why I bother with any of you.”

Scantaglen cast his gaze to the ground, apparently cowed, but Big Dan knew he was unrepentant. It was a bogan’s way to give ground to the more powerful, biding a moment of weakness. And there was always a weakness. The trick of being a boss was to never show it.

“You and you,” Big Dan said, pointing to Luren and Geric. “Go with Rabedy and see what you can find.”

The three bogans stepped away, out of this little pocket of a world. Big Dan toed the girl’s T-shirt with his boot, then walked over to the trunk of a nearby tree. There was blood on the bark, wooden spikes on the ground at its base, holes in the trunk from which he assumed the spikes had been pulled. Odawa joined him, his passage as unerring as always. Just once Big Dan would like to see him stumble.