In this mood, Cerin didn’t know that they’d get anything useful out of the pair, but at least they’d agreed to come. He’d let Meran sort out how to handle them once he got them home.
Zia took his other hand and with the pair of them tugging on his hands, they started back up Stanton Street. Lucius taking the rear, a smile on his face as the crow girls chattered away to Cerin about exactly what their favorite sweets were.
3
Jilly was no stranger to the impossible, so she wasn’t as surprised as some might have been to find herself transported from the Kelledys’ living room, full of friendly shadows and known corners, to an alleyway that could have been anywhere. Still, she wasn’t entirely immune to the surprise of it all and couldn’t ignore the vague, unsettled feeling that was tiptoeing up and down the length of her spine.
Because that was the thing about the impossible, wasn’t it? When you did experience it, well, first of all, hello, it proved to be all too possible, and secondly, it made you rethink all sorts of things that you’d blindly agreed to up to this point. Things like the world being round—was gravity really so clever that it kept people on the upside down part of the world from falling off into the sky? That Elvis was dead—if he was, then why did so many people still see him? That UFOs were actually weather balloons or swamp gas— never mind the improbability of so many balloons going AWOL, how did a swamp get indigestion in the first place?
So being somewhere she shouldn’t be didn’t render Jilly helpless, stunned, or much more than curiously surprised. By looking up at the skyline, she placed herself in an alleyway behind the Williamson Street Mall, right where the crow girls had found—
Her gaze dropped to the mound of litter beside the closest Dumpster, and there he was, Meran’s comatose patient, except here, in this wherever she was, he was sitting on top of the garbage, knees drawn up to his chin, and regarding her with a gloomy gaze. She focused on the startling green of his eyes. Odd, she thought. Weren’t albinos supposed to have red, or at least pink eyes?
She waited a moment to give him the opportunity to speak first. When he didn’t, she cleared her throat.
“Hello,” she said. “Did you bring me here?”
He frowned at the question. “I don’t know you … do I?”
“Well, we haven’t been formally introduced or anything, and while you weren’t exactly the life of the party when I first met you, right now we’re sharing the same space somewhere else as well as here, which is sort of like us knowing each other, or at least me knowing you.”
He gave her a confused look,
“Oh, that’s right. You wouldn’t remember, being unconscious and all. I’m not sure of all the details myself, but you’re supposed to have been, and I quote, ‘laid low by ill will,’ and when I went to brush some hair out of your eyes, I found myself here. With you again, except you’re awake this time. How were you laid low by this ill will? I’m assuming someone hit you, which would be ill-willish enough so far as I can see, but somehow I think it’s more than that.”
She paused and gave him a rueful smile. “I guess I’m not doing a very good job with this explanation, am I?”
“How can you be so cheerful?” he asked her.
Jilly drew a battered wooden fruit crate over to where he was sitting and sat down herself.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The world is a terrible place,” he said. “Every day, every moment, its tragedies deepen, the mean-spiritedness of its inhabitants quickens and escalates until one can’t imagine a kindness existing anywhere for more than an instant before being suffocated.”
“Well, it’s not perfect,” Jilly agreed. “But that doesn’t mean we have to—”
“I can see that you’ve been hurt and disappointed by it—cruelly so, when you were much younger. Yet here you sit before me, relatively trusting, certainly cheerful, optimism bubbling in you like a fountain. How can this be?”
Jilly was about to make some lighthearted response, speaking without thinking as she did too often, but then part of what he’d said really registered.
“How would you know what my life was like when I was a kid?”
He shrugged. “Our histories are written on our skin—how can you be surprised that I wouldn’t know?”
“It’s not something I’ve ever heard of before.”
“Perhaps you have to know how to look for the stories.”
Well, that made a certain kind of sense, Jilly thought. There were so many hidden things in the world that only came into focus when you learned how to pay attention to them, so why not stories on people’s skin?
“So,” she said. “I guess nobody could lie to you, could they?”
“Why do you think the world depresses me the way it does?”
“Except it’s not all bad. You can’t tell me that the only stories people have are bad ones.”
“They certainly outweigh the good.”
“Maybe you’re not looking in the right place.”
“I understand thinking the best of people,” he said. “Looking for the good in them, rather than the wrongs they’ve done. But ignoring the wrongs is almost like condoning them, don’t you think?”
“I don’t ignore them,” Jilly told him. “But I don’t dwell on them either.”
“Even when you’ve been hurt as much as you have?”
“Maybe especially because of that,” she said. “What I try to do is make people feel better. It’s hard to be mean, when you’re smiling, or when a laugh’s building up inside you.”
“That’s a child’s view of the world.”
Jilly shook her head. “A child lives in the now, and they’re usually pretty self-absorbed. Which is what can make them unaware of other people’s feelings at times.”
“I meant simplistic.”
Jilly wouldn’t accept that either. “I’m aware of what’s wrong. I just try to balance it with something good. I know I can’t solve every problem in the world, but if I try to help the ones I come upon as I come upon them, I think it makes a difference. And you know, most people aren’t really bad. They’re just kind of thoughtless at times.”
“How can you believe that? Listen to them and then tell me again how they’re really kind at heart.”
Jilly’s head suddenly filled with conversation.
… why I have to buy anything for that old bag, anyway …
… hello, cant we leave the kids at home for one afternoon … the miserable, squalling monsters …
… hear that damn song one more time, I’ll kill…
No, they were thoughts, she realized, stolen from the shoppers in the mall that lay on the other side of the alley’s wall. It was impossible to tell their age or gender, except by inference.
… damn bells … oh, it’s the Sally Ann, doing their annual beg-a-thon … hey, nice rack on her… wonder why a looker like her’s collecting money for losers …
… doesn’t get me what I want this year, I’ll show him what being miserable is all about…
Jilly blinked when the voices were suddenly gone again.
“Now do you see?” her companion said.
“Those thoughts are taken out of context with the rest of their lives,” Jilly told him. “Just because someone has an ugly thought, it doesn’t make them a bad person.”
“Oh no?”
“And being kind oneself does make a difference.”
“Against the great swell of indifferent unkindnesses that threaten to wash us completely away with the force of a tsunami?”
“Is this what they meant with the ill will that laid you low?”
“What who meant?”
“The crow girls. They’re the ones who found you and brought you to the Kelledys’ house because they couldn’t heal you themselves.”
A small smile touched his features. “I remember some crow girls I saw once. Their good humor could make yours seem like grumbling, but they carried the capacity for large angers as well.”
&n
bsp; “Was that when you were a buffalo?”
“What do you know about buffalo?”
“You’re supposed to have buffalo blood,” Jilly explained.
He gave her a slow nod.
“Those-who-came,” he said. “They slaughtered the buffalo. Then, when the People danced and called the buffalo spirit back, they slaughtered the People as well. That’s the history I read on the skin of the world—not only here, but everywhere. Blood and pain and hunger and hatred. It’s an old story that has no end. How can a smile, a laugh, a good deed, stand up against the weight of such a history?”
“I… I guess it can’t,” Jilly said. “But you still have to try.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s all you can do. If you don’t try to stand up against the darkness, it swallows you up.”
“And if in the end, there is only darkness? If the world is meant to end in darkness?”
Jilly shook her head. She refused to believe it.
“How can you deny it?” he asked.
“It’s just… if there’s only supposed to be darkness, then why were we given light?”
For a long moment, he sat there, shoulders drooped, staring down at his hands. When he finally looked up, there was something in his eyes that Jilly couldn’t read.
“Why indeed?” he said softly.
4
When Meran returned to the living room it was to find Jilly slumped across the body of her patient, Professor Dapple standing over the pair of them, hands fluttering nervously in front of him.
“What’s happened?” she said, quickly crossing the room.
“I don’t know. One moment she was talking to me, then she leaned over and touched his cheek and she simply collapsed.”
He moved aside as Meran knelt down by the sofa once more. Before she could study the problem more closely, the roseharp began to play upstairs.
The professor looked surprised, his gaze lifting to the ceiling.
“I thought Cerin had gone with Lucius,” he said.
“He did,” Meran told him. “That’s only his harp playing.”
The professor regarded her for a long slow moment.
“Of course,” he finally said.
Meran smiled. “It’s nothing to be nervous about. Really. I’m more worried about what’s happened to Jilly.”
The sofa was wide enough that, with the professor’s help, she was able to lay Jilly out beside the stranger. Whatever had struck Jilly down was as much of a mystery to Meran as the stranger’s original ailment. In her mind, she began to run through a list of other healers she could contact to ask for help when there was a sudden commotion at the front door. A moment later the crow girls trooped in with Cerin and Lucius following behind them.
“Jilly… ?” Cerin began.
Meran briefly explained what little she knew of what had happened since they’d been gone.
“We can’t help him,” Zia said before anyone else could speak.
“We tried,” Maida added, “but we weren’t so very useful, were we?”
Zia shook her head.
“Not very useful at all,” Maida said.
“But,” Zia offered, “we could maybe help her.”
Maida nodded and leaned closer to peer at Jilly. “She’s very pretty, isn’t she? I think we know her.”
“She’s Geordie’s friend,” Zia said.
“Oh, yes.” Zia looked at Cerin. “But he plays much nicer music.”
“Ever so very much more.”
“It’s for listening to, you see. Not for making you do things.”
“I’m sorry,” Cerin said. “But we needed to get your attention.”
“Well, we’re ever so very attentive now,” Maida told him.
Whereupon the pair of them went very still and fixed Cerin with expectant gazes. He turned helplessly to his wife.
“How can you help Jilly?” she asked.
“Jilly,” Maida repeated. “Is that her name?”
“Silly Jilly.”
“Willy-nilly.”
“Updowndilly.”
“I’m sure making fun of her name’s helpful,” Lucius said.
“Oh, pooh,” Maida said. “Old Raven never gets a joke.”
“That’s the trouble with this raven, all right,” Zia agreed.
“We’ve seen jokes fly right out the window when they see he’s in the room.”
“About Jilly,” Meran tried again.
“Well, you see,” Maida said, suddenly serious. “The buffalo man is a piece of the Grace.”
“And we can’t help the Grace—she has to help herself.”
Maida nodded. “But Jilly—”
Zia giggled, then quickly put a hand over her mouth.
“—only needs to be shown the way back to her being all of one piece again,” Maida finished.
“You mean her spirit has gone somewhere?” Cerin asked.
“Duh.”
“How can we bring her back?” Meran asked.
The crow girls looked at Cerin.
“Well,” Zia said. “If you know her calling-on song as well as you do ours, that would maybe work.”
“I’ll get the roseharp,” Cerin said, standing up.
“Now he needs it in hand,” Lucius said.
Cerin started to frame a reply, but then he looked at Meran and left the room.
“We were promised sweets,” Maida said.
Zia nodded. “The actual promise was that there’d be mountains of them.”
“Do you mind if we finish up here first?” Meran asked.
“Oh, no,” Maida said. “We love to wait.”
Zia gave Meran a bright smile. “Honestly.”
“Anticipation is so much better than being attentive.”
“Though they’re much the same, in some ways.”
“Because they both involve waiting, you see,” Maida explained, her smile as bright as her companion’s.
Meran stifled a sigh and returned their smile. She’d forgotten how maddening the crow girls could be. Normally she enjoyed bantering with their tricksy kind, but at the moment she was too worried about Jilly to join the fun. And then there was the stranger whose appearance had started it all. They hadn’t even begun to deal with him.
When Cerin returned with the roseharp, he sat down on a footstool and drew the instrument onto his lap.
“Play something Jilly,” Maida suggested.
“Did you say silly?” Zia asked. “Because that’s not being serious at all, you know, making jokes about very serious things.”
“I didn’t say silly.”
“I think maybe you did.”
Cerin ignored the pair of them and turned to his wife. “I might not be able to bring her back,” he said. “Because of him. Because of the doors he can close.”
“I know,” Meran said. “You can only try.”
5
“I think I know now what the crow girls meant,” Jilly said.
The buffalo man raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“About this ill will business,” Jilly explained. “Every ugly thought or bad deed you come into contact with steals away a piece of your vitality, doesn’t it? It’s like erosion. The pieces keep falling away until finally you get so worn away that you slip into a kind of coma.”
“Something like that.”
“Has this happened before?”
He nodded.
“So what happens next?”
“I die.”
Jilly stared at him, not sure she’d heard him right.
“You … die.”
He nodded. “And then I come back and the cycle begins all over again.”
Neither of them spoke for a long moment then. It was quiet in the alley where they sat, but Jilly could hear the traffic go by down the block where the alley opened into the street. There was a repetitive pattern to the sound, bus, bus, a car horn, a number of vehicles in a group, then the buses again.
“I guess what I don’t understand,??
? Jilly finally said, “is why all the good things in the world don’t balance it out—you know, recharge your vitality.”
“They’re completely overshadowed,” he said.
Jilly shook her head. “I don’t believe that. I know there are awful things in the world, but I also know there’s more that’s good.”
“Then why am I so weak right now—in this, your season of goodwill?”
“I think it’s because you don’t let the good in anymore. You don’t trust there to be any good left, so you’ve put up these protective walls that keep it out.”
“And the bad? Why does it continue to affect me?”
“Because you concentrate on it,” Jilly said. “And by doing that, you let it get in. It’s like you’re doing the exact opposite to what you should be doing.”
“If only it could be so simple.”
“But it is,” she said. “In the end, it always comes down to small, simple things, because that’s the way the world really works. We’re the ones who make it so complicated. I mean, think about it. If everybody really and truly treated each other the way they’d want to be treated, all the problems of the world would be solved. Nobody’d starve, because nobody’d want to go hungry themselves. Nobody steal, or kill, or hurt each other, because they wouldn’t want that to happen to themselves.”
“So what stops them from doing so?” he asked.
“Trust. Or rather a lack of it. Too many people don’t trust the other person to treat them right, so they just dig in, accumulating stuff, thinking only of themselves or their own small group—you know, family, company, community, whatever. A tribal thing.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “And that’s what’s holding you back, too. You don’t trust the good to outweigh the bad.”
“I don’t know that I even can.”
“No one can help you with that,” Jilly told him. “That’s something that can only come from inside you.”
He gave her a slow nod. “Maybe I will try harder, the next time.”
“What next time? What’s wrong with right now?”
He held out his arms. “If you could read the history written on my skin, you would not need to ask that question.”
Jilly pushed up her sleeves and held out her own arms.