The Very Best of Charles De Lint

  “That tree was John’s friend,” the conjure man said. “The last friend I ever had. She was ten thousand years old and they just cut her down.”

  Wendy gave him an odd look. Ten thousand years old? Were we exaggerating now or what?

  “Her death is a symbol,” the conjure man went on. “The world has no more time for stories.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you,” Wendy said.

  He turned to look at her, eyes glittering with a strange light under the dark brim of his hat.

  “She was a Tree of Tales,” he said. “There are very few of them left, just as there are very few of me. She held stories, all the stories the wind brought to her that were of any worth, and with each such story she heard, she grew.”

  “But there’s always going to be stories,” Wendy said, falling into the spirit of the conversation even if she didn’t quite understand its relevance to the situation at hand. “There are more books being published today than there ever have been in the history of the world.”

  The conjure man gave her a sour frown and hooked his thumb towards the library again. “Now you sound like him.”

  “But—”

  “There’s stories and then there’s stories,” he said, interrupting her. “The ones with any worth change your life forever, perhaps only in a small way, but once you’ve heard them, they are forever a part of you. You nurture them and pass them on and the giving only makes you feel better.

  “The others are just words on a page.”

  “I know that,” Wendy said.

  And on some level she did, though it wasn’t something she’d ever really stopped to think about. It was more an instinctive sort of knowledge that had always been present inside her, rising up into her awareness now as though called forth by the conjure man’s words.

  “It’s all machines now,” the conjure man went on. “It’s a—what do they call it?—high tech world. Fascinating, to be sure, but John thinks that it estranges many people, cheapens the human experience. There’s no more room for the stories that matter, and that’s wrong, for stories are a part of the language of dream—they grow not from one writer, but from a people. They become the voice of a country, or a race. Without them, people lose touch with themselves.”

  “You’re talking about myths,” Wendy said.

  The conjure man shook his head. “Not specifically—not in the classical sense of the word. Such myths are only a part of the collective story that is harvested in a Tree of Tales. In a world as pessimistic as this has become, that collective story is all that’s left to guide people through the encroaching dark. It serves to create a sense of options, the possibility of permanence out of nothing.”

  Wendy was really beginning to lose the thread of his argument now.

  “What exactly is it that you’re saying?” she asked.

  “A Tree of Tales is an act of magic, of faith. Its existence becomes an affirmation of the power that the human spirit can have over its own destiny. The stories are just stories—they entertain, they make one laugh or cry—but if they have any worth, they carry within them a deeper resonance that remains long after the final page is turned, or the storyteller has come to the end of her tale. Both aspects of the story are necessary for it to have any worth.”

  He was silent for a long moment, then added, “Otherwise the story goes on without you.”

  Wendy gave him a questioning look.

  “Do you know what ‘ever after’ means?” he asked.

  “I suppose.”

  “It’s one bookend of a tale—the kind that begins with ‘once upon a time.’ It’s the end of the story when everybody goes home. That’s what they said at the end of the story John was in, but John wasn’t paying attention, so he got left behind.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” Wendy said.

  Not sure? she thought. She was positive. It was all so much…well, not exactly nonsense, as queer. And unrelated to any working of the world with which she was familiar. But the oddest thing was that everything he said continued to pull a kind of tickle out from deep in her mind so that while she didn’t completely understand him, some part of her did. Some part, hidden behind the person who took care of all the day-to-day business of her life, perhaps the same part of her that pulled a poem onto the empty page where no words had ever existed before. The part of her that was a conjurer.

  “John took care of the Tale of Trees,” the conjure man went on. “Because John got left behind in his own story, he wanted to make sure that the stories themselves would at least live on. But one day he went wandering too far—just like he did when his story was ending—and when he got back she was gone. When he got back, they’d done this to her.”

  Wendy said nothing. For all that he was a comical figure in his bright clothes and with his Santa Claus air, there was nothing even faintly humourous about the sudden anguish in his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  And she was. Not just in sympathy with him, but because in her own way she’d loved that old oak tree as well. And—just like the conjure man, she supposed—she’d wandered away as well.

  “Well then,” the conjure man said. He rubbed a sleeve up against his nose and looked away from her. “John just wanted you to see.”

  He got on his bike and reached forward to tousle the fur around Ginger’s ears. When he looked back to Wendy, his eyes glittered like tiny blue fires.

  “I knew you’d understand,” he said.

  Before Wendy could respond, he pushed off and pedaled away, bumping across the uneven lawn to leave her standing alone in that once wild place that was now so dispiriting. But then she saw something stir in the middle of the broad stump.

  At first it was no more than a small flicker in the air like a heat ripple.

  Wendy took a step forward, stopping when the flicker resolved into a tiny sapling. As she watched, it took on the slow stately dance of time-lapse photography: budded, unfurled leaves, grew taller, its growth like a rondo, a basic theme that brackets two completely separate tunes. Growth was the theme, while the tunes on either end began with the tiny sapling and ended with a full-grown oak tree as majestic as the behemoth that had originally stood there. When it reached its full height, light seemed to emanate from its trunk, from the roots underground, from each stalkless, broad saw-toothed leaf.

  Wendy stared, wide-eyed, then stepped forward with an outstretched hand. As soon as her fingers touched the glowing tree, it came apart, drifting like mist until every trace of it was gone. Once more, all that remained was the stump of the original tree.

  The vision, combined with the tightness in her chest and the sadness the conjure man had left her, transformed itself into words that rolled across her mind, but she didn’t write them down. All she could do was stand and look at the tree stump for a very long time, before she finally turned and walked away.

  * * *

  Kathryn’s Café was on Battersfield Road in Lower Crowsea, not far from the university but across the river and far enough that Wendy had to hurry to make it to work on time. But it was as though a black hole had swallowed the two hours from when she’d met the conjure man to when her shift began. She was late getting to work—not by much, but she could see that Jilly had already taken orders from two tables that were supposed to be her responsibility.

  She dashed into the restaurant’s washroom and changed from her jeans into a short black skirt. She tucked her T-shirt in, pulled her hair back into a loose bun, then bustled out to stash her knapsack and pick up her order pad from the storage shelf behind the employee’s coat rack.

  “You’re looking peaked,” Jilly said as she finally got out into the dining area.

  Jilly Coppercorn and Wendy were almost a matched pair. Both women were small, with slender frames and attractive delicate features, though Jilly’s hair was a dark curly brown—the same as Wendy’s natural hair colour. They both moonlighted as waitresses, saving their true energy for creative pursuits: Jil
ly for her art, Wendy her poetry.

  Neither had known the other until they began to work at the restaurant together, but they’d become fast friends from the very first shift they shared.

  “I’m feeling confused,” Wendy said in response to Jilly’s comment.

  “You’re confused? Check out table five—he’s changed his mind three times since he first ordered. I’m going to stand here and wait five minutes before I give Frank his latest order, just in case he decides he wants to change it again.”

  Wendy smiled. “And then he’ll complain about slow service and won’t leave you much of a tip.”

  “If he leaves one at all.”

  Wendy laid a hand on Jilly’s arm. “Are you busy tonight?”

  Jilly shook her head. “What’s up?”

  “I need to talk to someone.”

  “I’m yours to command,” Jilly said. She made a little curtsy which had Wendy quickly stifle a giggle, then shifted her gaze to table five. “Oh bother, he’s signalling me again.”

  “Give me his order,” Wendy said. “I’ll take care of him.”

  * * *

  It was such a nice night that they just went around back of the restaurant when their shift was over. Walking the length of a short alley, they came out on a small strip of lawn and made their way down to the river. There they sat on a stone wall, dangling their feet above the sluggish water. The night felt still. Through some trick of the air, the traffic on nearby Battersfield Road was no more than a distant murmur, as though there was more of a sound baffle between where they sat and the busy street than just the building that housed their workplace.

  “Remember that time we went camping?” Wendy said after they’d been sitting for a while in a companionable silence. “It was just me, you and LaDonna. We sat around the campfire telling ghost stories that first night.”

  “Sure,” Jilly said with a smile in her voice. “You kept telling us ones by Robert Aickman and the like—they were all taken from books.”

  “While you and LaDonna claimed that the ones you told were real and no matter how much I tried to get either of you to admit they weren’t, you wouldn’t.”

  “But they were true,” Jilly said.

  Wendy thought of LaDonna telling them that she’d seen Bigfoot in the Tombs and Jilly’s stories about a kind of earth spirit called a gemmin that she’d met in the same part of the city and of a race of goblin-like creatures living in the subterranean remains of the old city that lay beneath Newford’s subway system.

  She turned from the river to regard her friend. “Do you really believe those things you told me?”

  Jilly nodded. “Of course I do. They’re true.” She paused a moment, leaning closer to Wendy as though trying to read her features in the gloom. “Why? What’s happened, Wendy?”

  “I think I just had my own close encounter of the weird kind this afternoon.”

  When Jilly said nothing, Wendy went on to tell her of her meeting with the conjure man earlier in the day.

  “I mean, I know why he’s called the conjure man,” she finished up. “I’ve seen him pulling flowers out of peoples’ ears and all those other stage tricks he does, but this was different. The whole time I was with him I kept feeling like there really was a kind of magic in the air, a real magic just sort of humming around him, and then when I saw the…I guess it was a vision of the tree….

  “Well, I don’t know what to think.”

  She’d been looking across the river while she spoke, her gaze fixed on the darkness of the far bank. Now she turned to Jilly.

  “Who is he?” she asked. “Or maybe should I be asking what is he?”

  “I’ve always thought of him as a kind of anima,” Jilly said. “A loose bit of myth that got left behind when all the others went on to wherever it is that myths go when we don’t believe in them anymore.”

  “That’s sort of what he said. But what does it mean? What is he really?”

  Jilly shrugged. “Maybe what he is isn’t so important as that he is.” At Wendy’s puzzled look, she added, “I can’t explain it any better. I…look, it’s like it’s not so important that he is or isn’t what he says he is, but that he says it. That he believes it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s just like he told you,” Jilly said. “People are losing touch with themselves and with each other. They need stories because they really are the only thing that brings us together. Gossip, anecdotes, jokes, stories—these are the things that we used to exchange with each other. It kept the lines of communication open, let us touch each other on a regular basis.

  “That’s what art’s all about, too. My paintings and your poems, the books Christy writes, the music Geordie plays—they’re all lines of communication. But they’re harder to keep open now because it’s so much easier for most people to relate to a TV set than it is to another person. They get all this data fed into them, but they don’t know what to do with it anymore. When they talk to other people, it’s all surface. How ya doing, what about the weather. The only opinions they have are those that they’ve gotten from people on TV shows. They think they’re informed, but all they’re doing is repeating the views of talk show hosts and news commentators.

  “They don’t know how to listen to real people anymore.”

  “I know all that,” Wendy said. “But what does any of it have to do with what the conjure man was showing me this afternoon?”

  “I guess what I’m trying to say is that he validates an older kind of value, that’s all.”

  “Okay, but what did he want from me?”

  Jilly didn’t say anything for a long time. She looked out across the river, her gaze caught by the same darkness as Wendy’s had earlier when she was relating her afternoon encounter. Twice Wendy started to ask Jilly what she was thinking, but both times she forbore. Then finally Jilly turned to her.

  “Maybe he wants you to plant a new tree,” she said.

  “But that’s silly. I wouldn’t know how to begin to go about something like that.” Wendy sighed. “I don’t even know if I believe in a Tree of Tales.”

  But then she remembered the feeling that had risen in her when the conjure man spoke to her, that sense of familiarity as though she was being reminded of something she already knew, rather than being told what she didn’t. And then there was the vision of the tree….

  She sighed again.

  “Why me?” she asked.

  Her words were directed almost to the night at large, rather than just her companion, but it was Jilly who replied. The night held its own counsel.

  “I’m going to ask you something,” Jilly said, “and I don’t want you to think about the answer. Just tell me the first thing that comes to mind—okay?”

  Wendy nodded uncertainly. “I guess.”

  “If you could be granted one wish—anything at all, no limits—what would you ask for?”

  With the state the world was in at the moment, Wendy had no hesitation in answering: “World peace.”

  “Well, there you go,” Jilly told her.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You were asking why the conjure man picked you and there’s your reason. Most people would have started out thinking of what they wanted for themselves. You know, tons of money, or to live forever—that kind of thing.”

  Wendy shook her head. “But he doesn’t even know me.”

  Jilly got up and pulled Wendy to her feet.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go look at the tree.”

  “It’s just a stump.”

  “Let’s go anyway.”

  Wendy wasn’t sure why she felt reluctant, but just as she had this afternoon, she allowed herself to be led back to the campus.

  * * *

  Nothing had changed, except that this time it was dark, which gave the scene, at least to Wendy’s way of thinking, an even more desolate feeling. Jilly was very quiet beside her. She stepped ahead of Wendy and crouched down beside the stump, running her hand along the to
p of it.

  “I’d forgotten all about this place,” she said softly.

  That’s right, Wendy thought. Jilly’d gone to Butler U. just as she had—around the same time, too, though they hadn’t known each other then.

  She crouched down beside Jilly, starting slightly when Jilly took her hand and laid it on the stump.

  “Listen,” Jilly said. “You can almost feel the whisper of a story…a last echo….”

  Wendy shivered, though the night was mild. Jilly turned to her. At that moment, the starlight flickering in her companion’s blue eyes reminded Wendy “You’ve got to do it,” Jilly said. “You’ve got to plant a new tree. It wasn’t just the conjure man choosing you—the tree chose you, too.”

  Wendy wasn’t sure what was what anymore. It all seemed more than a little mad, yet as she listened to Jilly, she could almost believe in it all. But then that was one of Jilly’s gifts: she could make the oddest thing seem normal. Wendy wasn’t sure if you could call a thing like that a gift, but whatever it was, Jilly had it.

  “Maybe we should get Christy to do it,” she said. “After all, he’s the story writer.”

  “Christy is a lovely man,” Jilly said, “but sometimes he’s far more concerned with how he says a thing, than with the story itself.”

  “Well, I’m not much better. I’ve been known to worry for hours over a stanza—or even just a line.”

  “For the sake of being clever?” Jilly asked.

  “No. So that it’s right.”

  Jilly raked her fingers through the short stubble of the weeds that passed for a lawn around the base of the oak stump. She found something and pressed it into Wendy’s hand. Wendy didn’t have to look at it to know that it was an acorn.

  “You have to do it,” Jilly said. “Plant a new Tree of Tales and feed it with stories. It’s really up to you.”

  Wendy looked from the glow of her friend’s eyes to the stump. She remembered her conversation with the conjure man and her vision of the tree. She closed her fingers around the acorn, feeling the press of the cap’s bristles indent her skin.