Ben read something of Peter's thoughts and nodded, almost to himself. "Okay," he said to Cat. "I'm here if you want a friend, but I won't push."
"It's not that I don't care about you…."
"I understand, Cat. Really I do. Look, maybe you should try to get some sleep."
She shook her head. "I can't, Ben. I just can't."
"You're going to have to sleep sooner or later. It's either go to sleep on your own, or keel over from exhaustion."
"We'll stay, if you want," Peter added. "Downstairs. You need something— anything— just call down to us."
"But I can't let you just—"
"No more arguments," Peter said. He gave Ben a quick glance.
Ben blinked, then came around the table and helped her to her feet. This close to her, it was hard not to just gather her in his arms, but he fought the impulse.
"I'll go to the glade," she said as Ben left her at the door to her bedroom. "I can't go back to the hill. I want to know if Tiddy Mun's all right, but I just can't go there yet."
"You do that," Ben said. "Just try to find some peace, Cat. That's what you need. Some distance between what happened tonight and the future. And it'll come."
He stood there and for a moment Cat thought he was going to kiss her, but then he turned and went back down the stairs. She watched him go, torn between wanting to call him back and knowing that she had to be alone. She didn't think she'd be able to sleep, not all wound up as she was and knowing that they were downstairs waiting for her to do just that. But the pillow was so soft against her cheek when she lay down, and she was feeling so drowsy….
* * *
The glade was deserted. Slowly she walked under the apple trees, pausing when she was a few feet away from the stone wall of the pool.
"Mynfel?" she called softly.
There was no reply. Morning had stolen into the glade. Sunlight gleamed on the surface of the pool as she drew near it.
"Please," she said. "Come to me this one last time. I have to understand. What's real? Am I a dream, or is it this place?"
Though she needed a voice to answer her, the quiet of the glade soothed her. She closed the remaining distance between herself and the pool and knelt down by the wall. Looking into its water, she knew she had to accept that the riddles would stay unanswered. Her own face looked back at her— without the antlers, without the strangeness in her eyes.
She wasn't sure when the wood's mistress came, but suddenly she looked up and Mynfel was standing across the pool from her.
"This world is real," the antlered woman said. "You and I are the strangers in it, but only one of us is real as you use the word. We are two sides of the same tree, dear heart. I was here because you needed me. But you do not need me anymore."
The horned woman had never spoken before. Her voice was low and throaty. Like one unused to speaking.
"I need you now more than ever," Cat said.
"Yours is now the strength."
"But that thing's inside me. I'm not strong enough."
"You are strong enough. Did Kothen not name you Yarrow? Heal-All?"
"Yes, but—"
"Then heal our world of its hurts, dear heart. Heal yourself of the shadow that worries you from within."
"Did… did I just make you up?"
"I was always your reflection." Mynfel smiled her smile of old. "As you were mine."
Cat looked back at the surface of the pool. Again there were antlers on the image's brow, but Cat couldn't feel their weight.
"Set me free," Mynfel said.
Their gazes met— Cat's searching, Mynfel's warm and full of riddles to which there could never be answers. Slowly Cat lowered her gaze. She leaned over the pool and stirred the reflection with her hand, the white scar on her palm shining through the water.
When she looked up again, Mynfel was gone. But Cat didn't feel alone. She knew she was strong now. Not just because she had to be, or because Peter and Ben and Mynfel said she had to be, but because she was.
She felt the thing that had been the parasite stir inside her. Rather than fighting it, she sent down peaceful, soothing thoughts. The shadow withdrew, deep and deeper, fleeing.
Cat stood up and smiled.
Years had been crammed into the past week. So much pain and sorrow. But at last she knew her own peace. Not borrowed from ghosts or the Otherworld, or lately from Peter and Ben. But a peace of her own. And because of it she had something more to offer them than just her need. She could be Peter's friend. And Ben…
She left the glade and headed west through the forest. Shafts of sunlight dropped through the giant oaks, giving the wood its cathedral effect again. The air was invigorating, and she began to run. In no time at all she was out of the forest. She saw Redcap Hill in front of her, the three standing stones stark and gray on its summit, the fairy thorn on its slope. She heard a shout and turned to find Tiddy Mun hobbling toward her, with Toby at his side, supporting him. It was because of them that she'd come.
Tiddy Mun waited for her to drop to her knees and hold open her arms to him, then he hugged her tight with his one good arm. "I missed you," he murmured in her ear, "I was so afraid. I couldn't get home. Whenever I tried to, I couldn't find the way. The darkness was everywhere. But then in the cave of the iron dragons, when you washed the darkness away, suddenly I could see the borders again and step my way home."
"Peter and Ben both told me how brave you were," she said. "You're the bravest gnome that I ever knew."
The little man blushed and hid his face against her shoulder. When she squeezed him, he winced and Cat, held him at arm's length, worry plain on her face.
"You were hurt," she said.
Tiddy Mun nodded. "The iron in… in the metal dragon. It burned me…."
"Oh, Tiddy!"
She turned him around and pulled up his tunic to examine his back. Her face paled. The skin on his back was raw in places, inflamed from the tops of his shoulder blades to the small of his back and all along his right side. She imagined how much it must hurt. The chaffing of cloth against the wound alone…
"The bravest gnome of all," she murmured.
She wanted to help, but didn't know what she could do. She lifted a hand, hesitated. Mynfel's words returned to her.
Yarrow. Heal-All. Heal our world of its hurts.
If only she could.
If she could be like some biblical healer and cure such afflictions by a laying on of her hands….
Her palm throbbed, and she looked down at the white scar. Again she felt the weight on her brow. Perhaps in her own world she'd be helpless, but here, in the Otherworld… If what it took was wanting to, wanting to so bad… caring so much…
She laid her palm gently against the little man's back and felt the hotness of his wound run into her hand as she willed his pain away with all her heart. Before her eyes his skin cleared, the inflammation dying, whitening, healing….
Tiddy Mun let out a long sigh of relief as Cat stepped back. She stared in wonder at her hand, his back, her hand again. The scar on her palm flamed red— a bright slash against her skin— then dulled and was white once more. The throbbing stilled. Her brow was light again, the weight gone, and she understood at last what it was that she had become in the Otherworld.
A warm brightness rose inside her. Mynfel, she thought. I think I understand. This Otherworld is our world, but you were only here until I could take your place. It was in your care, and now it's mine— mine until it's time for me to go on.
The warmth she felt inside, she realized, was her own acceptance of her responsibility. Not borne as a burden, but as a gift, a deepness of spirit, a kinship with all that made this small corner of the Otherworld hers to care for. She was like the raggedy man that Toby had met on the Road, like the Borderlord in her own book.
That was why Mynfel hadn't— couldn't have— helped her. It was a lesson that Cat had to learn for herself. The lesson she should have learned long ago. But she'd been too busy taking— from Kothle
n, from Mynfel, from the Other-world itself— to understand that she had to give as well. Otherwise she was no better than the dream thief.
It was because of this bond between the Otherworld and herself that she was a part of two worlds, just like Mynfel must have been before her. She'd been brought here so that the horned lady could go on. To where? It didn't matter. She'd find out when the time was right, when it was her turn to go on. When she'd found someone else who could live between the worlds, learning the same lessons, finding that same strength inside herself.
And it was, Cat realized, a lesson that couldn't be handed down in words. It couldn't be taught. It had to rise up from inside one's own self. It was a self-realization that had to be truly and instinctively understood to be valid. And it would have come sooner or later— even if there had been no dream thief— beause Mynfel and she were reflections of each other.
She turned to face her friend with shining eyes. Tiddy Mun regarded her with undisguised love, Toby with a bewildered smile. Her sudden good humor was infectious.
"A few hours have done wonders for you, Mistress Cat," Toby said.
She nodded. "Do you still want to learn magicks?" she asked.
"Of course. I'm still on the Road, as it were. The Secret Road—"
"'…while underfoot the merry Road, the gentle, winds to where it waits,'" she quoted.
Toby's smile grew broader. "The very one," he said.
"When I come back," she said, "I think I'd like to go a ways with you."
"You're going away already?" Tiddy Mun asked, his disappointment plain.
"But I'll be back soon. And if I'm not, you can always come and fetch me."
"I will," he assured her very seriously.
She kissed him on each cheek, then stepped back. "Goodbye," she said.
"Good-bye," they chorused back, and then she was gone.
Cat padded barefoot down the stairs and entered the living room. Ben was the first to notice her.
"Cat, are you…?"
"I'm fine, Ben."
Peter stood up from where he'd been slouching on the couch. "Things worked out then?" he asked.
"Thanks to both of you."
There was a long moment's silence, then Ben stood as well.
"We should get going," Peter said. "I'm dead on my feet."
Cat nodded and followed them to the door. Peter went on ahead, but Ben paused in the doorway. They both had losses to deal with, Cat thought. She had Kothlen and he had Mick. But if they could face their losses together… She put her hand on his arm as he went to follow Peter.
"Will you stay with me, Ben?" she asked.
"I…"
"We did have a date for dinner tonight, and dinnertime's not that far away."
Ben looked at Peter, who just smiled and closed the door on them.
Peter whistled as he went down the walk, pausing when he saw a big orange tomcat watching him from the far end of Cat's veranda. It wasn't Ginger or Pad, because both of Cat's pets were flaked out in the living room.
He and the cat regarded each other for a moment, then Peter gave it a brief salute and continued on down the walk. Just before going through the hedge, he looked back. The cat was gone, but there was a sound in the air. It could have been a snatch of song, or perhaps it was only the wind.
Smiling to himself, Peter went on home.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The preceding novel is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
I'd like to stress that, while there is a speciality SF bookstore in Ottawa called The House of SF, neither it nor its owners should be mistaken for Yarrow's Peter Baird and his bookstore. By the same token, Cat Midhir's writing habits, inspirations, and the course of her career do not parallel either my own or that of any other writer I know.
—Charles de Lint
Ottawa, Spring 1986
Charles de Lint, Yarrow
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