“Probably worse. I think she’s scared of two things, actually. The first is that the pennymen aren’t real, and that means I’m going to go the same route her mother did.”
“And the second?”
“That the pennymen are real and so maybe her mother wasn’t crazy.”
“But she was diagnosed—”
“By the same terms of reference that say pennymen can’t exist.”
Jilly gave a slow nod. “I get it.”
“The guilt would kill Sarah. You know, what if the voices and the invisible people were real?”
“Except there’s a big difference between mental illness and an encounter with magic,” Jilly said.
“But you can see how some people wouldn’t see it that way. For them it has to be one or the other with no grey areas in between.”
“Too true,” Jilly said. “Unfortunately.”
“And it was so hard for Sarah,” Eliza went on. “I mean, by all accounts, her mother was way out there. Violent, if she stopped taking her medication. Imagine growing up in an environment like that. Screaming and flailing at things no one else could see. And maybe the worst thing was that her father wouldn’t accept that it was an actual illness they were dealing with, so he wouldn’t let her be hospitalized during the worst of it. He’d go off to work during the day, hang out with his buds in the evening, and there’d be Sarah and her little brother, left at home, trying to deal with all of this.”
Eliza looked away, out the window again. The freezing rain was still coming down.
“Anyway,” she said without looking away. “You can see why she wouldn’t want to go through it again.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Eliza said. “All I know is I miss her terribly.”
“Would it help if I tried to talk to her?”
That woke the first smile Jilly had gotten from her so far this evening.
“What do you think?” Eliza said.
“This is true,” Jilly admitted. “I’m not exactly renowned for my objective point of view when it comes to this sort of thing.”
“But thanks awfully for offering.”
Jilly nodded. “I guess we’ll just have to hope that when she really thinks about it, when she weighs your friendship against how she has to deal with what you’ve experienced, the friendship will win out. That she’ll realize that you’re not her mother.”
“I suppose,” Eliza said. “But I’m not holding my breath waiting for it to happen.”
“But you can hope.”
“Of course,” Eliza said. “There’s always hope.”
She didn’t sound convinced. Jilly reached across the table and took her hand.
“The one thing I refuse to do,” she said, “is give up on anyone. We’re all carrying around devils inside us, but the thing to remember is, we’re carrying angels, too. Sometimes we just have to wait a little longer for the angels to show up, that’s all.”
“Thanks,” Eliza said. “I needed to hear something like that.”
9
I’ve taken to riding the subways this past week—like I used to before I met the boy. Somehow I don’t feel quite so lost and all alone sitting in one of these rattling cars, watching the dark tunnels go by. I don’t know what I’m trying to find—or maybe hide from. I’m not really thinking at all. Except that’s a lie, because at the same time as my head feels like a numbed bruise that can’t hold one clear thought, I’m thinking about everything, all at once. The boy and my mother and coins that can turn into little men. Or is it vice versa?
I went to the Crowsea Public Library, to the Newford Room, and took down the faerie-myth book of Christy’s. There’s a whole section on the boy’s pennymen in it and I read it through a few times. Doesn’t make it any more real. I mean, where’s the proof? Where’s some straightforward empirical evidence? Surely if they actually existed we’d be reading about them in the real newspapers. They’d have pennymen in labs somewhere, running experiments on them, scientists would be publishing their findings. But there’s nada. Just a few inches of type in an admittedly entertaining, but hardly textbook-factual collection of folk tales and myths.
The train pulls into the Williamson Street Station. The three people sharing my car get off. Nobody gets on. I stare down at my feet as the train pulls away again, heading for the next station. My clunky shoes don’t hold a lot of interest, so I keep going, looking at the floor in the middle of the aisle, attention traveling across the car, under the opposite seat. Then I stop, gaze locked on the shiny copper penny lying there beside a candy wrapper.
I smile mirthlessly.
Penny? Or pennyman?
If I reach over to pick it up, will it scurry away? Or will it hold to its shape? Would I pick up a coin, or something soft and fleshy, squirming in between my fingers as it tries to escape?
We hit a rough patch of track and I grab for the nearest pole to keep my balance. When I look back under the opposite seat, the coin is gone. Did it simply roll away, or did it sprout limbs and walk away?
I realize it doesn’t matter. Somewhere between seeing the coin and its disappearance, I remember how much the boy means to me. Her friendship is more important than the question of whether or not pennymen exist. Where does it say that we both have to agree on everything to be friends? Where does it say that just because she’s convinced her pennymen are real, she’s going to slide away from me the way my mother did?
I get off at the next station and find a pay phone. I’m calling home, but the boy doesn’t answer. That’s okay. I’d rather talk to her in person, anyway.
I decide to walk back to the apartment. Maybe she’ll be back by the time I get there. If not, I can wait.
I don’t know what I’ll say to her when I see her. I won’t say I believe—I can’t do that because it wouldn’t be true. I guess I’ll just start with I’m sorry and see where that takes us.
Twa Corbies
As I was walkin’ all alane
I heard twa corbies makin’ mane . . .
—from “Twa Corbies,” Scots traditional
1
Gerda couldn’t sleep again. She stood by the upright piano, wedding picture in hand, marveling at how impossibly young she and Jan had been. Why, they were little more than children. Imagine making so serious a commitment at such an age, raising a family and all.
Her insomnia had become a regular visitor over the past few years—often her only one. The older she got, the less sleep she seemed to need. She went to bed late, got up early, and the only weariness she carried through her waking hours was in her heart. A loneliness that was stronger some nights than others. But on those nights, the old four-poster double bed felt too big for her. All that extra room spread over the map of the quilt like unknown territories, encroaching on her ability to relax, even with the cats lolling across the hills and vales of the bed’s expanse.
It hadn’t always been that way. When Jan was still alive—before the children were born, and after they’d moved out to accept the responsibility of their own lives—she and Jan could spend the whole day in bed, passing the time with long conversations and silly little jokes, sharing tea and biscuits while they read the paper, making slow and sweet love. . . .
She sighed. But Jan was long gone and she was an old woman with only her cats and piano to keep her company now. This late at night, the piano could offer her no comfort—it wouldn’t be fair to her neighbors. The building was like her, old and worn. The sound of the piano would carry no matter how softly she played. But the cats . . .
One of them was twining in and out against her legs now—Swarte Meg, the youngest of the three. She was just a year old, black as the night sky, as gangly and unruly as a pumpkin vine. Unlike the other two, she still craved regular attention and loved to be carried around in Gerda’s arms. It made even the simplest of tasks difficult to attend to, but there was nothing in Gerda’s life that required haste anymore.
Replacing the wedding p
icture on the top of the piano, she picked Swarte Meg up and moved over to the window that provided her with a view of the small, cobblestoned square outside.
By day there was always someone to watch. Mothers and nannies with their children, sitting on the bench and chatting with each other while their charges slept in prams. Old men smoking cigarettes, pouring coffee for each other out of a thermos, playing checkers and dominoes. Neighborhood gossips standing by the river wall, exaggerating their news to give it the desired impact. Tourists wandering into the square and looking confused, having wandered too far from the more commercial streets.
By this time of night, all that changed. Now the small square was left to fend for itself. It seemed diminished, shadows pooling deep against the buildings, held back only by the solitary street lamp that rose up behind the wrought-iron bench at its base.
Except . . .
Gerda leaned closer to the windowpane.
What was this . . . ?
2
Sophie’s always telling me to pace myself. The trouble is, when I get absorbed in a piece, I can spend whole days in front of the canvas, barely stopping to eat or rest until the day’s work is done. My best times, though, are early in the morning and late at night—morning for the light, the late hours for the silence. The phone doesn’t ring, no one knocks on your door. I usually seem to finish a piece at night. I know I have to see it again in the morning light, so to stop myself from fiddling with it, I go out walking—anywhere, really.
When the work’s gone well, I can feel a deep thrumming build up inside me and I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I wanted to, doesn’t matter how tired I might be. What I need then is for the quiet streets of the city and the swell of the dark night above them to pull me out of myself and my painting. To render calm to my quickened pulse. Walking puts a peace in my soul that I desperately need after having had my nose up close to a canvas for far too long.
Any part of the city will do, but Old Market’s the best. I love it here, especially at this time of night. There’s a stillness in the air and even the houses and shops seem to be holding their breath. All I can hear is the sound of my boots on the cobblestones. One day I’m going to move into one of the old brick buildings that line these streets—it doesn’t matter which one, I love them all. As much for where they are, I suppose, as for what they are.
Because Old Market’s a funny place. It’s right downtown, but when you step into its narrow, cobblestoned streets, it’s like you’ve stepped back in time, to an older, other place. The rhythms are different here. The sound of traffic seems to disappear far more quickly than should be physically possible. The air tastes cleaner and it still carries hints of baking bread, Indonesian spices, cabbage soups, fish, and sausages long after midnight.
On a night like this I don’t even bother to change. I just go out in my paint-stained clothes, the scent of my turps and linseed trailing along behind me. I don’t worry about how I look because there’s no one to see me. By now, all the cafés are closed up and except for the odd cat, everybody’s in bed, or checking out the nightlife downtown. Or almost everybody.
I hear the sound of their wings first—loud in the stillness. Then I see them, a pair of large crows that swoop down out of the sky to dart down a street no wider than an alleyway, just ahead of me.
I didn’t think crows were nocturnal, but then they’re a confusing sort of animal at the best of times. Just consider all the superstitions associated with them. Good luck, bad luck—it’s hard to work them all out.
Some say that seeing a crow heralds a death.
Some say a death brings crows so that they can ferry us on from this world to the next.
Some say it just means there’s a change coming.
And then there’s that old rhyme. One for sorrow, two for mirth . . .
It gets so you don’t know what to think when you see one. But I do know it’s definitely oh so odd to see them at this time of night. I can’t help but follow in their wake. I don’t even have to consider it, I just go, the quickened scuff of my boots not quite loud enough to envelop the sound of their wings.
The crows lead me through the winding streets, past the closed shops and cafés, past the houses with their hidden gardens and occasional walkways overhead that join separate buildings, one to the other, until we’re deep in Old Market, following a steadily narrowing lane that finally opens out onto a small town square.
I know this place. Christy used to come here and write sometimes, though I don’t think he’s done it for a while. And he’s certainly not here tonight.
The square is surrounded on three sides by tall brick buildings leaning against each other, cobblestones underfoot. There’s an old-fashioned streetlight in the center of the square with a wrought-iron bench underneath, facing the river. On the far side of the river I can barely see Butler Common, the wooded hills beyond its lawns, and on the tops of the hills, a constellation of twinkling house lights.
By the bench is an overturned shopping cart with all sorts of junk spilling out of it. I can make out bundles of clothes, bottles and cans, plastic shopping bags filled with who knows what, but what holds my gaze is the man lying beside the cart. I’ve seen him before, cadging spare change, pushing that cart of his. He looks bigger than he probably is because of the layers of baggy clothes, though I remember him as being portly anyway. He’s got a touque on his head and he’s wearing fingerless gloves and mismatched shoes. His hairline is receding, but he still has plenty of long, dirty blonde hair. His stubble is just this side of an actual beard, greyer than his hair. He’s lying face-up, staring at the sky.
At first I think he’s sleeping, then I think he’s collapsed there. It’s when I see the ghost that I realize he’s dead.
The ghost is sitting on the edge of the cart—an insubstantial version of the prone figure, but this one is wearing a rough sort of armor instead of those layers of raggedy clothes. A boiled leather breastplate over a rough sort of tunic, leggings and leather boots. From his belt hangs an empty scabbard. Not big enough for a broadsword, but not small either.
I start forward, only I’ve forgotten the crows. The flap of their descending wings draws my gaze up and then I can’t hold onto the idea of the dead man and his ghost anymore, because somewhere between the moment of their final descent and landing, the pair change from crows into girls.
They’re not quite children, but they don’t have adult physiques either. I’m just over five feet, but they’re shorter and even slighter of build. Their skin is the color of coffee with a dash of milk, their hair an unruly lawn of blue-black spikes, their faces triangular in shape with large green eyes and sharp features. I can’t tell them apart and decide they must be twins, even dressing the same in black combat boots, black leggings, and black oversized raggedy sweaters that seem to be made of feathers. They look, for all the world, like a pair of . . .
“Crow girls,” I hear myself say in a voice that’s barely a whisper.
I lower myself down onto the cobblestones and sit with my back against the brick wall of the house behind me. This is a piece of magic, one of those moments when the lines between what is and what might be blur like smudged charcoal. Pentimento. You can still see the shapes of the preliminary sketch, but now there are all sorts of other things hovering and crowding at the edges of what you initially drew.
I remember how I started thinking about superstitions when I first saw these two girls as crows. How there are so many odd tales and folk beliefs surrounding crows and other black birds, what seeing one, or two, or three might mean. I can’t think of one that says anything about seeing them flying at night. Or what to do when you stumble upon a pair of them that can take human form and hold a conversation with a dead man. . . .
One of the girls perches by the head of the corpse and begins to play with its hair, braiding it. The other sits cross-legged on the ground beside her twin and gives her attention to the ghost.
“I was a knight once,” the ghost says.
“We remember,” one of the girls tells him.
“I’m going to be a knight again.”
The girl braiding the corpse’s hair looks up at the ghost. “They might not have knights where you’re going.”
“Do you know that?”
“We don’t know anything,” the first girl says. She makes a steeple with her hands and looks at him above it. “We just are.”
“Tell us about the King’s Court again,” her twin says.
The ghost gives a slow nod of his head. “It was the greatest court in all the land . . . .”
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the wall of the building I’m sitting against, the bricks pulling at the tangles of my hair. The ghost’s voice holds me spellbound and takes me back, in my mind’s eye, to an older time.
“It was such a tall building, the tallest in all the land, and the King’s chambers were at the very top. When you looked out the window, all creation lay before you.”
I start out visualizing one of the office buildings downtown, but the more I listen, the less my mind’s eye can hold the image. What starts out as a tall, modern office skyscraper slowly drifts apart into mist, reforms into a classic castle on top of a steep hill with a town spread out along the slopes at its base. At first I see it only from the outside, but then I begin to imagine a large room inside and I fill it with details. I see a hooded hawk on a perch by one window. Tapestries hang from the walls. A king sits on his throne at the head of a long table around which are numerous knights, dressed the same as the ghost. The ghost is there, too. He’s younger, taller, his back is straighter. Hounds lounge on the floor.
In Old Market, the dead man talks of tourneys and fairs, of border skirmishes and hunting for boar and pheasant in woods so old and deep we can’t imagine their like anymore. And as he speaks, I can see those tourneys and country fairs, the knights and their ladies, small groups of armed men skirmishing in a moorland, the ghost saying farewell to his lady and riding into a forest with his hawk on his arm and his hound trotting beside his horse.