“There is no way back to them,” the little man said.
But I could hear Jilly’s voice in my head, repeating something I’d heard her say a thousand times . . . to me, to herself, to anyone who came up against the wall of “I couldn’t ever do that”:
“There’s no such thing as impossible; there’s only not trying.”
I repeated it now to the little man.
He shook his head. “It’s a pretty sentiment,” he said, “but one can’t do what can’t be done. That brother of hers has changed the two of them back into children and closed the road into her mind. There’s nothing we can do. Only she can stop him, but she has to believe that she can.”
“Changed them into children?” I asked. “You mean physically?”
The little man nodded. “They might be children in their minds, as well—I wasn’t there long enough to tell. I tried to tell them that he doesn’t have the magic himself—that he only has it if they believe he does—but I don’t think it took. And then I was cast out.”
“But you said you had to believe he has the power. If you didn’t, how could he cast you out?”
“I don’t believe, but she does. So long as Jilly believes, he does have the power.”
“And there’s nothing we can do?”
The little man shook his head.
“This sucks,” I said.
He gave me another of those blank looks that told me he didn’t catch the idiom, but I didn’t bother to explain it to him. My mind was too busy trying to figure out a way out of this mess. Then I had a thought.
“You know where they are, right?” I asked. “I mean, you can’t get to them, but you do know where they are?”
“Yes, much good that it does us. As I told you, I can’t get back to them.”
Maybe he couldn’t, but we weren’t completely alone in this.
“That’s okay,” I told him. “I’ve got a friend that might be able to take it from here.”
I was thinking of Joe. If anybody could get to Jilly, it would be him.
So I explained to the little man how I’d gotten here and who we needed to find if we were going to help Jilly and Lizzie.
“This is the man who left you here?” he asked.
“No, that was Walker, the deer man. And I don’t think he did it maliciously. He was just looking off into I don’t know where and then started talking to someone I couldn’t see. The next thing I knew, he was gone and I was stuck here.”
“I wonder what he saw,” the little man said.
He got that look in his eyes then that Joe so often had, that Walker’d had just before he vanished on me, as though he was seeing into an entirely other world—which, come to think of it, was probably exactly what they were doing.
After a long moment, the little man’s gaze cleared and he focused on me.
“This isn’t good,” he told me.
I was so not ready for more bad news.
“What is it?”
“See for yourself.”
I was about to tell him that I didn’t have access to whatever trick he knew that let you look out of one world into another, but before I could, he laid a hand on my arm and suddenly I could see. See and hear.
“I don’t understand,” I said as I studied what he showed me. “What does it mean?”
“War.”
Grey
Corin—the guard that Tatiana brought to where we’re waiting with Mother Crone and her little treekin—really is a mess. One eye’s almost closed and there’s a cut above the other. The left side of his face has swollen, rounding out his once-chiseled cheekbone. His suit’s torn and dirty, he cradles one arm that’s obviously giving him pain, and he’s favouring his right leg.
It all becomes clear when he tells how he and his men tracked the bogans down to a funeral in the Tombs. Vastly outnumbered, they still tried to bring Big Dan and his boys in and got the crap beat out of them for their effort. I feel bad for him, but my heart sinks for an entirely other reason as he tells his story. I look at Jack and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am: This isn’t good. It’s not just that Tatiana’s guard was routed and the bogans have now scattered from here to who knows where. It’s that when Joe finds out about it, there’s going to be all hell to pay.
Corin’s voice trails off and for a long moment nobody has anything to say. Finally, Jack turns to the queen.
“So, basically, you’ve got nothing,” Jack says.
“It’s not like we didn’t try,” Tatiana tells him. “I sent a dozen guards and a gruagagh.”
Jack nods. He starts to roll himself a smoke and looks at the guard.
“How many died?” he asks.
The guard and Tatiana are seriously taken aback by the question.
“None,” Tatiana says. “Fairy don’t kill their own.”
Jack just looks at her, then he gives a slow nod.
“That’s right,” he says. “You save the killing for my people.”
“We don’t condone—”
“Yeah, yeah. But you don’t do much to stop it, either.”
Jack lights his cigarette without offering it to Tatiana first. I’m not sure she picks up on the insult.
“I’ve gotta say,” he goes on, “I’m surprised at how this turned out, though if I’d stopped to think about it, I guess I wouldn’t have been.”
“You’re not being fair . . .”
“And your people aren’t dying. No offense, Tatiana, but we’ve played it your way about as long as it’s going to go. We’ll handle things from here on out.”
“You can’t just—”
“But I’ve got to tell you,” he says, cutting her off, “you’d better hope we find Jilly in one piece or you’re going to have more to worry about than what we’ll do with a few renegade bogans.”
“Threatening me won’t get your friend back any more quickly.”
“I’m not threatening you. It’s just a friendly warning because you just really don’t want to be in the firing line when Joe gets this news.”
He glances at Mother Crone and tips a finger to his brow, then turns to me. “You ready to hit the road, Grey?”
I nod, but before we can go, we’re interrupted by the sudden appearance of an odd little man who comes running in through the door. He’s the first of the aganesha I’ve seen here in the court that actually looks the way I’ve always imagined fairies did—I mean, before they showed up here and started mimicking human clothing and mannerisms. He’s a wizened little fellow with sharp features and pointed ears, dressed in a pale blue robe, the hem of which he’s holding in his hand to make it easier to run. His hair’s a pale cloud of frizz and his eyes are that steely blue of chicory flowers.
“Your Highness!” he cries as he bursts in the room. “You must come and see . . .
His voice trails off when it registers that we’re here, a pair of cousins. He stares at us wide-eyed. The hem of his robe drops from his grip and his bony ankles are hidden under its folds.
“It’s all right, Muircan,” Tatiana says after a moment’s hesitation. “You can speak freely in front of our guests.”
Jack and I exchange glances. Muircan waits another beat, plainly unhappy—either with his news, or his queen. Probably both.
“You must look into the between,” he finally says.
So we all do. I’m expecting some kind of fairy business, something of major concern to them, and I guess it is, but it’s really a big deal on all fronts: fairy, cousin, and maybe even human, depending on the fallout.
The first thing to hit me is the sound, because all that’s initially visible is an indistinct ocean of brown. I can’t make out what it is we’re looking at. But the sound . . . the sound is huge: the boom of a multitude of drums combined with hooves stamping on the ground, dancing in place, pounding like thunder when it’s rumbling directly overhead, playing a heartbeat rhythm—a single, cadenced pulse that immediately awakes an echoing response in my own chest.
At that moment, my br
ain separates the ocean of brown into individual shapes and I realize we’re looking at an enormous gathering of buffalo. I’m talking multitudes here. There are thousands upon thousands of the horned cousins assembling there on an open plain, drumming and dancing as more, and then still more, join their already swollen ranks.
Jack gives a low whistle.
I know he saw this coming—we were just talking about it not that long before Tatiana came in—but the actual moment seems to have come upon us way faster than I ever thought it would. And on a far larger scale.
“There must be thousands of them,” Tatiana says in a quiet voice.
Jack gives a slow nod. “And that’s just for starters.”
“What do you mean?”
“I see both living spirits and the ghosts of their dead, which tells me that they’re calling in all the buffalo tribes, past and present.”
“I still don’t know what it means.”
Jack gives her a look that says Who are you kidding?, but he only says, “Do you have any idea how many buffalo got displaced or killed when the humans you followed over here made a grab for their lands?”
“We had nothing to do with that.”
“Maybe not. But you still took advantage of their misfortune and moved right into their territories wherever you could.”
When Tatiana doesn’t respond, Jack adds, “Come on. You had to know this was coming. Sooner or later, there had to be a reckoning.”
“We settled that with Raven.”
Jack shakes his head. “You settled a local problem. And then you let your people go out and hunt cousins.”
Tatiana doesn’t look at him. She can’t take her gaze from the gathering buffalo.
“You have to get Joe back here,” she finally says. “He has to talk to them.”
When Jack doesn’t respond, she turns to look at him. He just shrugs.
“I can do that,” he says. “Soon as you bring Jilly and her friend back to us—safe and sound—I’m sure he’ll be happy to give it a shot.”
“So he’s just going to let the buffalo overrun the city because of two missing humans?”
“You know it’s not about that.”
“But it’s awfully convenient that they should all show up just when he thinks he needs some bargaining power.”
Jack gives her a hard look. “Joe had nothing to do with this. You called it down on yourselves by not keeping your bogans in check.”
“Maybe we could have kept a better eye on them,” she says, “but this is still overkill.”
“Fairies don’t much care for cousins,” Jack tells her. “Cousins don’t much care for fairy. It’s been like that since you first showed up on these shores. Sometimes we get along, sure, but that’s only been the easygoing among us. Back in the hills there have always been individuals, waiting and brooding and planning. It’s just your bad luck that one of them got elected war chief at the same time that some of your people decided it would be entertaining to kill a few cousins.”
“You know it’s something we don’t condone,” she says, falling back into royal speech and repetition.
Jack sighs. “But you didn’t control it, either.”
“So because of that, Joe’s going to make us suffer.”
Jack shakes his head. “No. Joe’s so focused on his family that he probably doesn’t care one way or the other what goes down. None of this’ll mean anything to him until his sister’s safe.”
“But we don’t know where the humans are.”
“Then you know Joe’s not going to be helping you.”
“In the time it would take for us to track them down, we could lose everything to that army. Tell him we’ll do whatever he wants if he first helps us stop this.”
Listening to the two of them talk, I feel for her. Once those buffalo start to move they’re going to wipe out pretty much every fairy they find in the city. And once they have the taste of fairy blood, I doubt it’ll stop there. After all, so far as a lot of cousins are concerned, there’s a whole continent to take back.
Yeah, I feel sorry for her, but I empathize with the cousins, too.
“And in the time he takes to help you,” Jack is saying, “Jilly and her friend could be killed.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We don’t know anything,” Jack says. “That’s a big part of the problem.”
“But—”
“And I doubt it’d make that much difference to him anyway. You know Joe. He looks at the little picture first. Until he knows his family’s safe, you’d have better luck whistling up the wind to help you.”
It’s pretty obvious from Tatiana’s face that she already knows this, but I guess she had to try.
“How about you?” she asks Jack. “Can you talk to them?”
“The buffalo wouldn’t listen to me. You need someone way up on the respect ladder, or at least someone who’s got the gift of calm, the way Joe does. I wouldn’t know where to start with that trick of his that has people putting down their weapons to listen to him pretty much as soon as he opens his mouth.” He shoots a glance at Mother Crone. “Barring one or two exceptions, that is.”
Tatiana lets the veil that separates the between from her court fall closed once more. We can still hear the buffalo, but it’s like a distant thunder now.
“So, what do we do?” she asks Jack.
“I haven’t a clue,” he says. “All I know is you’ve got a problem.”
“You can’t seriously not care.”
“What I feel’s got nothing to do with it.”
“You could at least try.”
“I’m telling you right now, they wouldn’t listen to me, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let them pound me into the ground under a few hundred hooves just to prove that to you.”
“But—”
“You’re just going to have to find your own way out of this,” Jack says, cutting her off. Then he turns to me. “We need to get out of here.”
I hear Tatiana calling Jack’s name, but we’re already on the move, shifting from the world the court is in to the between that lies next to it. The sound of the buffalo is louder once more. We’re not exactly on the plain where they’re gathering, but close enough to hear them. Really, how could we not hear them? Thousands of drums. Hundreds of thousands of hooves pounding on the dirt. A line of trees blocks our view, but we can see the dust from their dancing rising up above the topmost boughs.
“You were a little harsh back there,” I say.
Jack shrugs. “We were wasting time. There’s nothing you or I could do to help, in the court or with the buffalo.”
“But the queen was right. We could have tried.”
“We’re not going to try, we’re going to do.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Here’s how I see it,” Jack says. “This whole show is Minisino’s doing and though I don’t entirely disagree with his reasons, I don’t believe that everybody should pay for the sins of a few. Trouble is, all that war chief of the buffalo is going to listen to is someone with a bigger gun.”
“Which we don’t have.”
“Nope. But maybe we can find us one or two.”
“Now you’ve lost me.”
“You ever hear of Ayabe?” he asks.
I nod. People talk about wolves and bears—maybe elk—as being the lords of the forest, but the most powerful beings you’re going to find in the deep woods are the moose spirits. Like the buffalo, they don’t have a whole lot of give to them. Unlike the buffalo, they don’t have a herd mentality. They’re solitary by nature, but that doesn’t make them easy prey because nobody willingly takes on a moose. They weigh in at over half a ton, can have an antler spread of six feet, and they’re not the most even-tempered of the cerva. Easy to piss off, and impossible to shake if they get it in their heads to come after you.
Ayabe’s the oldest of the moose spirits in this area and his range takes in everything from the Kickaha Mountains down to Newford’s lake.
“You think he’d be interested in helping us?” I ask.
“If I can convince him it’d be in the best long-term interests of his people, yes.”
“Well, let’s go.”
Jack shakes his head. “No, I’ll go. I need you to talk to Lucius.”
He means Raven, the big gun of the corbae, my people. I’ve never met him, but from all I’ve heard I know what his reaction would be.
“I can already tell you what he’ll say,” I tell Jack. “He’ll say that the fairy brought this problem onto themselves, so they can fix it themselves. That’s pretty much his response to anybody who comes looking for him to get involved in something.”
And while I hate to say it of one of my own, he’d probably rationalize the whole thing along the lines of not wanting to be seen as pro-fairy when the buffalo run them over, but he also wouldn’t want to join them in case the fairy pull something out of a hat at the last minute. He’s always the mediator, the old stories say.
“I still need you to try,” Jack says.
“I’ll try. I don’t know if he’ll even hear me out, but I’ll give it a shot.”
“That’s all anyone can ask.”
“And if he won’t help?”
Jack grins. “Then stick around. There’ll be plenty of pickings for a carrion bird.”
With that, he steps away and I’m alone in the between with the sound of the buffalo ringing in my ears and echoing the drum of my own heartbeat, deep in my chest.
I find myself wondering what I’m doing here, going out on a limb for a people I don’t even like in the first place. All I was interested in doing was seeing that some justice was done to Anwatan’s murderers. Then that got complicated in this search for Lizzie and Joe’s sister Jilly. Now here I am, going off to petition the head of the corbae clan to intercede on behalf of what I’ve always pretty much felt were my enemies.
And none of this even comes close to dealing with my own problems with Odawa.
I listen to the buffalo for a little longer, let their righteous anger rise up and fill me.
But it won’t hold.