I’d have turned around and walked away, except for the faint puzzle of recognition I see in the back of his eyes.
“You don’t really remember me, do you?” I say.
He shakes his head. “You seem a little familiar. …”
“Guess I really made an impression.”
“I’m sorry, I just—”
“It was a joke,” I tell him.
He still doesn’t seem too big in the sense of humour department.
“It was a long time ago,” I say. “We met in a library.”
He shakes his head again. “I can’t remember the last time I was in a library.” He pauses for a moment, then steps aside. “Do you want to come in?”
“No,” I say. “I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
He gets a nervous look. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
I wonder at his nervousness, then I remember him telling us about the prank he played on some bank, the one that let Aaran blackmail him. So he remembers that much.
“No reason,” I tell him. I start to turn away, then look back at him. “A word of advice: Next time someone tries to blackmail you into sending a virus anywhere, maybe you’d be better off owning up to what you did and taking your medicine.”
“What do you know?”
I smile. Not “What do you mean?” but “What do you know?”
“Nothing that’s going anywhere. Just remember what I said.”
“But he—”
Jackson stops himself.
“Don’t worry about Aaran,” I say. “He’s out of your life now. Just don’t get into any more trouble.”
“Who are you?”
I shrug. “Maybe I’m your conscience,” I tell him.
“Do you have something to do with the bunch of people I found in my apartment when I…”
“When you what?”
I can see the confusion deepening in him as he tries to work it out.
“I was going to say when I got back,” he says, “but that’s not right. I haven’t been anywhere …”
“Don’t give yourself a headache,” I tell him. “And maybe try to find yourself a better hobby than hacking bank computers and sending out viruses.”
“Wait a second …”
But then I do walk away, down the stairs and out of his life.
Christy has a theory about all of this forgetfulness. Of course, Christy has a theory about everything, bless his heart, but this one makes a certain amount of sense. I can’t remember how we got to talking about it. I wasn’t even planning on having a conversation with him that morning. The shades and curtains are all drawn, and it’s comfortably gloomy inside when I slip into their apartment. I thought they’d both still be asleep—I just came by to stand at the end of their bed like the shadow I am, reassuring myself that, yes, they’re still safe. I don’t realize that Christy’s awake and lying on the sofa in the living room until his voice comes to me from out of the darkness.
“I wanted to thank you again for rescuing my girl,” he says. “I was so worried.”
He’s not being disrespectful, calling Saskia his girl. No more than she is when she refers to him as her boy. I think they’ll still be doing it in their eighties. At least I hope they will.
“You don’t have to,” I tell him. I sit down in the wing-backed chair so that we can see each other without Christy having to get up from where he’s lying. “I like her and I wouldn’t want to see anything happen to her either.”
“You do? Like her, I mean.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, you’re my shadow. I just assumed you wouldn’t.”
“Because I’m supposed to be all the things that you’re not?”
He nods his head.
“Jeez, will you get with the program,” I tell him. “That happened when we were seven years old. You’ve had plenty of time to reacquire all sorts of bad traits since then. Just like I’ve had the time to acquire some good ones.”
“So, do you think we’re more the same than not these days?”
What I want to say is: No. You’re real and I’m not. But I don’t feel like getting into a discussion about that at the moment. And I don’t want to make it sound like I’m feeling sorry for myself.
“I think we’re like twins,” I say instead. “We’re individual, but we still have this birth thread linking us to each other. We know how the other thinks and feels. We can feel each other’s presence in the world, no matter the distance between us.”
And that’s true, too.
He smiles. “I never have the slightest idea as to what you’re thinking about.”
I laugh. “Yes, but that’s only because I’m so mysterious.”
“Christiana Tree,” he says, and laughs with me. “Which makes you Ms. Tree.” At my raised eyebrows, he adds, “Saskia told me.”
“Has she left me any secrets at all?”
“You’ll be happy to know that she was most circumspect. She said your secrets weren’t hers to tell.”
“I’d just as soon people didn’t think about me at all,” I say.
“Why’s that?”
I shrug. “Life’s just easier when you’re anonymous—when people have no expectations about you.”
“You’re not exactly forgettable,” he says. “Look at Bojo. He only met you the one time, but he remembered you right away.”
“Maybe I was doing something outrageous.”
He smiles. “Were you?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. I find that people remember me more when I act just like them. Half the time I can step away into the borderlands right in front of someone and the next time I see them, it’s like it never happened.” That makes me stop and think for a moment. “Which,” I go on, “is pretty much like what’s happening with this whole business of the people who disappeared.”
“It’s a mental self-defense mechanism,” Christy says, “that seems to have been bred into the species. Sometimes it works just on the level of individuals, other times, society itself convinces itself to forget.”
“Is this more of your ‘consensual world’ theory?”
He nods. “The World As It Is exists the way it does for most people because they’ve agreed not to accept exceptions to what’s been decided is impossible.”
“So who decides?’
“No one person,” he says. “It’s something that becomes ingrained in the fabric of society as a whole. And there will be variations. It’s why religious sects exist. They’ve all agreed to a different take on some aspect of the accepted canon of how the world’s supposed to be. That agreement— that view into a different version of the World As It Is—becomes a rallying point for their beliefs and draws them together.”
“So nobody remembers that all these people disappeared because it contradicts the way the world’s supposed to be.”
It’s not a question, but Christy answers it as though it were with one of his own.
“Can you think of a better explanation?”
“Besides some vast hidden conspiracy?” I say.
He nods.
“Not really,” I say. “But why do you remember?”
I don’t have to ask about myself because I already know the answer: I’m not part of the consensual world in the first place. Considering my origin, my life, and where and how I live, I’d be in therapy forever if I didn’t accept that little bit of information as true.
“There are different reasons why people remember,” he tells me. “Someone like Jilly just expects the world to be more than it is, so she’s never surprised when reality strays from the acceptable norm. Holly won’t be forgetting because there’s too much magic in her life now, starting with having a hob for a business partner and friend.
“As for me, writing it down has helped a lot in the past, but it’s not foolproof. Looking at the words on paper is often too great a distance from what they’re describing and rationality kicks in, convincing me it probably didn’t happen.”
“But
in your books …”
“For some reason, the anecdotal evidence I collect for the books is easier for me to accept than what I experience myself. I mean, how long did it take for me to accept that you’re real?”
“I didn’t help.”
He smiles. “No. But then we also expect the supernatural to be mysterious and speak in riddles.”
“And now?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I’m starting to have more and more hands-on experience with the supernatural. It’s coming to the point where I can’t not believe, the whispering voice of reason inside me be damned.”
I start to snicker and a puzzled frown crosses his features.
“What?”
“ ‘Hands-on experience,’“ I repeat and then start to giggle. When he gives me a blank look, I manage to add, “You. Saskia,” before I dissolve into laughter.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
But he has to wait until I can get myself under control again.
I don’t know why I’m feeling so giddy. It must be relief that even though we were all so far out of our depth, we not only managed to survive, but we also set things right again. How often does that happen, in this or any world?
Finally I’m able to stop, though laughter’s still bubbling up in the corners of my bones, just waiting for any silly little thing to set it off again. I wish that for just once Christy would loosen up and let himself go. But though he’s smiling with me, he doesn’t lose it the way I do. Maybe he just doesn’t think it’s very funny, but I’m guessing it’s more because he’s always so in control of himself. It’s funny, we’re the same age, but sometimes our relationship seems more like parent/child. Right now he’s looking at me the way a father might his errant daughter.
I clear my throat and try to feel serious.
“So Saskia’s okay?” I say.
He nods. “She must be. She’s able to sleep while I’m still sitting up. I thought I’d work on those galleys for Alan, but I can’t seem to concentrate on anything.”
“I can’t help but feel that all of this is my fault,” I tell him. “If I hadn’t convinced her to try to make contact with the Wordwood spirit, none of this would have happened.”
Christy shakes his head. “It was in motion long before that.”
“I guess. But would we have been involved?”
“Maybe not. But think where that would have left the people who disappeared.”
I give him a slow nod. “Not to mention the leviathan.”
Christy closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, I see they’re filled with wonder.
“I only caught a glimpse of him,” he says. “Before the flare. But he seemed immense.”
“Like a mountain. I can’t imagine him standing up.”
Christy nods. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything so other.”
“Me, neither,” I say.
“Even with living in the borderlands and all you’ve done?”
“Even with that.”
“That was a pretty brave thing you did,” he says.
“Or pretty stupid. It could have all gone wrong. But I was running on instinct and there just didn’t seem to be anything else I could do.”
We fall silent awhile then, Christy lying on the couch, me slouched in the chair. He lights up a cigarette and offers me one. I shake my head. I feel like I should go and let him get back to bed, but I don’t want to be alone yet. And he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to get up.
“So how is everybody else?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Oddly enough, Geordie’s taking it the best of all. Considering his past history as our resident skeptic, I would have thought he’d be the quickest to put it all behind him, but the experience seems to have … I don’t know. Loosened him up, certainly. He was talking about how much he was going to relish telling Jilly about all of this.” Christy pauses for a moment, then adds, “And I think there’s a little mutual attraction thing happening between him and Mother Crone.”
I lift my eyebrows. Everybody knows that—his last long-term girlfriend notwithstanding—Geordie’s always carried an unrequited torch for Jilly. Well, everybody except for Geordie and Jilly. But one of them always seems to be in a serious relationship when the other’s not. At the moment it’s Jilly. So Geordie being interested in Galfreya could be a good thing. Especially if she’s interested in him.
“How mutual?” I ask.
“Well, when Holly asked her what payment she required for helping them cross over, she said his coming to play at one of their revels.” Christy smiles. “Then added that she’d also consider it a favour and an honour.”
I nod in understanding. Knowing Galfreya, she’d only offer such an invitation to a potential lover.
“I guess everybody’s pairing up,” I say.
“Traumatic experiences can do that. When you make it through, you find you just want to hold on to someone—you know, to feel grounded again.”
That probably explains why I’m here.
“And how about Holly?” I ask.
Christy shakes his head. “You’ll have to ask her yourself. But Bojo was still there when we all left.”
After awhile I sit up from where I’ve been slouching. I uncurl my legs from under me and set them on the floor. Christy sits up as well.
“I should go home,” I say.
“Home.”
“I do have one.”
“I never doubted it. It’s just…”
I smile. “You’re curious about where and what it is.”
“Saskia said it was like a room in a meadow.”
“It is,” I say. “But she wasn’t actually there. That was when she was riding around inside my head.” I hesitate for a moment, then say, “If you’re not doing anything, I can show it to you.”
“You mean right now?”
“Why not?”
“I…” He looks to the closed bedroom door. “I’d love to,” he says, “but it’s too soon since all of this happened. I know Saskia’s sleeping, but I want to stay close in case she wakes up. It’s all I can do not to pull up a chair by the bed and just sit there, watching her sleep.”
I wonder what it’s like to have someone feel like that about you.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “Some other time.”
I reach over to the coffee table and pick up the notepad and pencil that are lying there. I write my phone number on it and put it back down.
“Call me when you’re ready,” I say.
“You’ve got a phone?”
“A cell phone.”
“And it works over there?”
I nod. “I had to trade to get an ever-charge spell for the battery and rewire it. Don’t ask me to explain what satellite the signals are bounced off of now, but yes, it works just fine.”
“An ever-charge spell.”
“Don’t start banging up against the idea of magic again,” I tell him. “Not with all of what we’ve been through.”
“I’m not. It’s just… you don’t expect magic to be used for something so mundane.”
“Here’s a news flash,” I say. “Most magic is used to enhance the mundane.”
When I stand up, he does, too. He starts to put out his hand, but I give him a hug instead. I’ve never been very demonstrative with him for a whole bunch of reasons. I want to maintain my air of mystery with him and I know all too well that he’s not one of your touchy-feely people. And then there’s also that warning of Mumbo’s not to get into physical contact with the person whose shadow you once were.
But nothing happens except he hugs me back.
“Don’t be a stranger,” he says into my hair.
“I never was,” I tell him.
Then I let myself fade away into the borderlands and he’s left holding only air.
Holly
It seemed to take forever before the last of them left the bookstore. Not that Holly was unhappy to have them here—these were her friends, after all. Or at least most of them
were. And those that weren’t—Mother Crone and Hazel, Benny’s boyfriend Raul—were the sort of interesting people she could easily become friends with. But right now Holly was tired and the crowd of people—talking over each other, using the phone, vying for her attention as they retold some part of the story she already knew too well… it was all too much for her.
She needed to come down from the adventure, not relive it.
But finally it was simply Dick and Bojo still in the store with her. She stood holding Snippet, the little dog drowsing in her arms. Bojo leaned against her desk, looking handsome as ever, while Dick appeared asleep on his feet. When Christy closed the door behind him and the crowd that was going back to the mall to get his car, the hob blinked suddenly. He gave Holly and Bojo each a considering look.
“It’s time for this old hob to get himself to bed,” he said.
Which seemed odd to Holly, because she had the impression that Dick never slept. When he retired to his room, it was only to read until the morning when he could get up and go about his business in the store— when he wasn’t dusting and organizing in the middle of the night. But then she realized what the considering look had been about and found herself blushing.
“I’m glad you’re back, Mistress Holly,” Dick told her.
There was a knowing smile in his eyes, reminding Holly once again that while Dick might be no larger than a child, he was actually much older than her. And probably far more experienced, too. She remembered seeing little men not so unlike him, dancing close to pretty little fairy maids at the revel in the mall concourse. There had been nothing innocent in the way they rubbed up against each other.
Dick turned from her.
“And goodnight to you, Master Borrible,” he said.
He gave Bojo a nod, tipped a finger against his brow, then turned and went upstairs to the apartment. When the apartment door closed behind him, Bojo and Holly looked at each other.
There were a hundred things Holly wanted to say, but all she could think about was how handsome the tinker was.
“Well,” Bojo after a moment. “Here we are.”
Holly nodded.
Speak, she told herself.
But she was too shy.
“I should probably go see what the bodachs and piskies have been up to at Meran’s house,” the tinker added. “I was supposed to be looking after the place, after all.”