She had a brightness to her eyes, curiosity lurked there, like she wanted to know everything. Her features were delicate, she had no doubt been a beauty once, but hard times and cruel words had faded that to a cosy prettiness and her good looks only really came alive when she smiled and her blue eyes twinkled.
‘You know my mother died when I was born,’ said Lorelei. Her spiked shoes on the polished parquet gave the illusion of confidence, though Lorelei felt anything but.
‘That must have been very sad for you sweetie,’ said the woman.
‘I’ve never given it a moment’s thought,’ replied Lorelei.
‘Yes, I hear you’re good at moving on. It’s a useful quality sweetie, but you have to be careful not to move on so quickly that you don’t leave things behind, telltale things that might give you away. I’m talking about loose ends: they can unravel so easily if you don’t tie them up.’ She winked. ‘I hate loose ends, don’t you? I mean, for example, take this one about your mother; can you be so sure that she isn’t still alive? Maybe she didn’t die when you were born. I mean if I told you that you’re looking at her now, could you be sure I was lying?’ She laughed. ‘Your doorman seemed convinced.’
She shrugged before continuing. ‘But, coming back to the point as we must, I have a sneaking feeling that perhaps you haven’t been as tidy as you should have been. Perhaps you have left a few loose ends sweetie.’
Lorelei tried hard to swallow, but her throat was tight and her mouth dry.
‘You’re a sweet girl Lorelei, your fragrance suits you, but you seem a bit out of your depth here, is that true?’
Lorelei bristled a little at this, but said nothing.
‘If I hadn’t heard such good things about you, I might let my imagination run away with me, let myself think that you were trying to double-cross me, but I guess that would be silly, you being such a good girl and everything. So reliable, so professional.’
Lorelei felt her heart beating twice as fast as it should.
‘You see, I’ve come to collect what I paid you to deliver, but I get the impression that you don’t have it, is that right?’
Lorelei struggled to come up with a good answer. ‘It’s true there have been a few obstacles and things haven’t run smoothly, but your delivery will be made.’
‘OK sweetheart, I’m going to allow you to see this thing through because I think you’re capable of getting results, but if, and I say this merely to inform you, to warn you should I say. . .’ Suddenly her appearance changed from someone kind and sympathetic to someone whose face was tough like iron.
“If you fail, then it’ll be over for you, not in a wishy-washy-you’ll-never-work-in-this-town-again way, but in a final kind of way. Does that make sense? I need you to deliver – double-cross me and. . . well, let’s leave it at that, shall we?’
She smiled kindly like a mother might smile at her baby.
‘Now, I’ve kept you long enough. I’m sure you want to get on; we can have a cuppa and a catch-up when you get back. . . if you get back.’
She got up and walked to the door, then turned back. ‘I’d close that window if I were you sweetie; you could catch your death if the weather breaks.’
Chapter 45.
CLANCY HAD BEEN LOOKING ROUND THE STORE for what seemed like the whole morning, but had actually been about forty minutes. He wasn’t a very interested shopper and he was only there because it was his mom’s birthday and he had to get her something. He was prepared to use all his savings since what he had been saving up for was now an impossible dream.
Clancy Crew had never been particularly interested in money or acquiring stuff, occasionally there might be an invisible-ink pen, or pair of running shoes or bike, but these came along once in a blue moon, that was all. Now he couldn’t buy the Windrush 2000, what was the point of stuffing all this money into his piggy bank? But the gift he knew his mom wanted he couldn’t begin to afford: a bottle of 1770 was way out of his price range.
He walked out of Melrose Dorff into the searing heat, dejected. He felt worse than ever, since he had just failed in the simple mission of buying a gift for someone he had known all his life. As he made his way along the sidewalk into the park, he noticed a woman sitting on a bench, the sun on her face, the store behind her. She looked kind of familiar, but at the same time not, and it was only when he got near that he realised why. She smelled of Turkish delight.
Clancy looked at the name badge pinned to her blouse. ‘Lyla,’ he read.
The woman looked puzzled and shaded her eyes with her hand as she tried hard to recognise his face. Then she smiled a beautiful smile, like she was very pleased to see him. ‘Hey,’ said Clancy, ‘how’s your neighbour doing?’
‘That’s sweet of you to ask,’ she said. ‘He’s doing much better, thank you.’
‘He looked pretty sick,’ said Clancy. ‘I guess he must be back at home taking it easy?’
‘No,’ said the woman, ‘no, he’s out of Twinford for good now. He finally saw that city life doesn’t agree with him; he needed to grab hold of his dream.’
‘Yeah, this city can get to you sometimes,’ said Clancy. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting out of town myself, just for a while.’
‘So why don’t you?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you on summer vacation by now?’
‘Almost,’ said Clancy ‘but still I’m a long way from grabbing hold of my dream, I can tell you that for nothing, and without that there’s no chance of me going anywhere.’
‘So what is it?’ asked Lyla. ‘This thing you want so badly.’
Clancy sighed. ‘It’s a Windrush 2000,’ he replied as if that was enough information for anyone. He saw that it wasn’t and added, ‘Oh, it’s this really great bike. It handles well over any terrain, the tyres won’t puncture, the steering is super good and the speed is something else, and also. . .’ he smiled, ‘it’s this amazing blue. I would do anything just to have one good ride on it.’
The woman looked at him like she was really thinking; her face was sympathetic as if she understood just how it feels not to be able to get what you want.
‘So what were you looking for inside the store, surely not a bicycle?’ said Lyla.
‘Oh, my mom’s been yakking on about that perfume, you know, 1770,’ said Clancy. ‘I was going to buy her a bottle, but there’s no way I can afford it, even with my bike savings. She’s got a big birthday coming up and I wanted to get her something she actually wants.’
Lyla’s pretty eyes sparkled. ‘Maybe. . .’ she said, ‘maybe I can help you out with that – you were so kind to me and my friend, I’d like to do you a good turn. Come back the day after tomorrow. I think I can get you a great deal on that perfume.’
Clancy smiled. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘You’d do that?’
Lyla stood up. ‘It would be my pleasure.’ She turned to leave. ‘I never asked you what your name was.’
‘Clancy, Clancy Crew.’
‘Sounds like a detective.’ She laughed.
‘You should meet my sister Nancy,’ he said.
‘Your sister’s called Nancy Crew?’ said Lyla.*
‘Yeah, well, my parents weren’t thinking too hard when they came up with it. My dad was probably too busy thinking about becoming an ambassador.’
‘Oh, so your father is Ambassador Crew. How interesting.’
‘That’s one word for it,’ said Clancy.
She looked at her watch. ‘I’d better be getting back,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you could do me a small favour, could you?’
‘Probably,’ said Clancy.
‘I don’t suppose you have any gum, do you? I have the most strange taste in my mouth – must be all that perfume I’ve been mixing, it’s hard not to breathe it in. . . Bubblegum would do just fine.’
‘You’re in luck,’ said Clancy, ‘I have both.’ He handed her his chewing gum and Ruby’s pack of Hubble-Yum.
Lyla held the bubblegum to her nose and breathed in the fake-strawberry smell.
&
nbsp; ‘Oh, I remember this brand.’ She took another long sniff. ‘It takes me right back. . . like I smelled it yesterday.’
‘Keep it,’ said Clancy.
‘Thanks,’ said Lyla and she began to walk off down the path back towards the store.
‘Hey,’ called Clancy, ‘so you never said– what do you want?’
Lyla laughed. ‘Nothing much, but I wouldn’t mind being impossibly rich; it could be fun, all that money, all that power, or maybe just world domination.’
‘I don’t think I can help you with that,’ shouted Clancy, smiling.
‘You never know,’ said Lyla.
Chapter 46.
RUBY HAD GONE TO BED UNUSUALLY EARLY and so was wide awake when Hitch called up at 6 am the next morning. She was lying on her bed reading one of her comics and lazily reached out a hand to answer the donut phone.
‘Twinford animal wranglers.’
‘Hey kid, I thought you might want to go talk to a friend of mine.’
‘Sure,’ said Ruby, ‘but is this really a good time for a social call? Aren’t we a little busy here?’
‘Why? What are you doing?’ asked Hitch.
‘Broadening my horizons,’ said Ruby, still flipping through her Garbage Girl comic.
‘Glad to hear it, but this isn’t really a social call. In fact, to be entirely frank with you, this friend of mine could never be accused of sociability. She’s more likely to tell you to get off her porch than shake your hand.’
‘So why do I want to put down my comic?’ asked Ruby.
‘Because this friend might be able to help you with your navigation problems,’ he replied.
‘How’s that?’
‘You’ll see – Connie Slowfoot has helped more than a few agents in her time,’ said Hitch, ‘but as far as liking her goes – don’t expect to.’
‘So what address does this unlikeable woman reside at?’ said Ruby.
Hitch might have sniggered at this, she couldn’t quite tell over the phone, but if he did then Ruby understood why when he dropped her at the end of a rough overgrown path and pointed her in the direction of a wood-patched cabin that clung to the mountainside.
As Ruby climbed, she saw outside it a hunched and bent-up figure, a strange, gnarled-looking creature puffing out smoke.
The old woman looked up long before Ruby would have expected her to spot her.
‘Who are you girl?’ Miss Slowfoot shouted.
‘Hitch sent me,’ said Ruby.
‘I don’t recall asking who sent you. I asked you who you was.’
‘Ruby Redfort,’ said Ruby, ‘my name’s Ruby Redfort.’
The woman sat down then, right back in her rickety chair, and rocked a bit while she sucked on her pipe.
‘Hitch thought you could help me out,’ called Ruby. She was still walking towards the shack even though she wasn’t sure the old lady might tell her to get lost.
Connie Slowfoot nodded. ‘Help you find your way I suppose; you got no-good eyes.’
‘He told you?’ asked Ruby.
‘No,’ said Connie, ‘but I can tell.’ She laughed her old crone laugh and rocked some more. Her accent was thick and strong like a character from history; no one spoke like that now, not in Twinford at least. ‘I never heard your name before, but I can tell you blind as a bat in daylight without those glasses of yours.’
Jeepers! thought Ruby. The whole wild woman of the woods thing was kind of rankling.
‘So,’ said Ruby, ‘what’s your advice?’
The woman closed her eyes. ‘You gotta see with your nose girl, ears too; you gotta feel your way through these woods, use your homing instinct.’ She tapped her head and her hand disappeared into her wild, unruly hair. ‘I know where my hand is because I can feel it. I don’t need to see it.’
Ruby wasn’t going to argue with the logic of that. She would listen for a while and then get out of there: this Connie was clearly one crazy old buzzard.
‘You thinking I’m crazy girl, but you need to listen beyond your thoughts, you need to let your senses tell you what’s true and what ain’t. Don’t rely on those eyes of yours, they no good.’
Connie was right about that. Ruby’s eyes were not her strong point.
‘You got brains girl, you just gotta stop relying on them, use your gut like nature intended.’
‘How dya mean?’ asked Ruby, waking up to the idea that this woman had something to say after all. She might be crazy, but she was sharp as a shard of broken glass.
‘You see more with your eyes closed,’ said Connie Slowfoot. ‘You feel what’s underfoot, what brush against your arm, your leg; you smell the air and hear the birds and the insects crawling up the trees, you taste the wind, feel the way it blowing, smell if rain coming; you make yourself blend and be part of it so you are the outdoors.’
Ruby said nothing. She just stared at the old lady while she rocked back and forth in her ancient chair.
‘You know what I’m saying, you gotta think like a creature thinks girl, like people used to think afore they got too clever for their own socks. You gotta think like Mr Wolf think.’
‘Mr Wolf?’ repeated Ruby. ‘You mean I gotta think like I’m a wolf?’
Connie snorted at this. ‘You think you so well read, but you don’t know about Mr Wolf. What books you been reading girl? Not the right ones that’s for darn sure. Mr Wolf, he this man lived in the forest and tracked down that king of the woods, just about wiped him out.’
Connie stared into the middle distance as if she was seeing the whole thing played movie-like in front of her eyes.
‘Many died afore him at the mercy of that big bad creature, it drew ’em to itself, and they met their end, torn to pieces, but Mr Wolf he knew better: he knew how to trap that wolf with its ownself’s trap. He tricked him good, and that poor big bad wolf was no more.’
The old woman cackled. ‘That was hundreds of years ago when we had Cyan wolves in these parts.’
‘Cyan wolves?’ said Ruby.
‘The most dangerous kind,’ said the woman, the laughter gone. ‘They’re man’s enemy and man is the Cyan’s enemy; neither wolf nor man does the other any good, no good, not at all.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said Ruby.
‘Can’t get near ’em, can’t stay away.’ The woman leaned back in her chair and took another drag on her pipe.
Ruby furrowed her brow. ‘You’re talking about the Blue Alaskan, right?’
‘Same difference,’ chuckled the woman. ‘All killers, all killed. Same wolf by another name.’
‘Sounds like some old story to me,’ said Ruby.
The woman laughed. ‘You think as you please, but if you should smell it you’ll change your mind swift enough, that’s if you’re able to think at all.’
‘You’re saying that there’s some wolf no one seems to have ever heard of, at least not nowadays, that has a special power which can control folks?’ Ruby was interested, but unsure whether to believe such a far-fetched tale.
The woman nodded her head as she rocked back and forth. ‘That’s right, a creature that can make you remember and forget all at the same time, that’s what folks said anyways.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said Ruby.
‘A smell so good that if you smelled enough of it, it took you back to all the best times of your life, a smell so good it made you forget all the bad – so good it gave you that amnesia condition. That’s what they said.’
She set about laughing again; the woman laughed a lot and it was setting Ruby on edge. She was fascinating in her own way, a bit too much mountain air perhaps, or maybe she had eaten one too many grubs, but still she was one interesting lady.
Connie stared back out into the middle distance and rocked back and forth in the creaking chair, her lips pressed tightly closed. Ruby got the feeling that their conversation was at an end and she turned to leave.
‘Thank you for your time Connie Slowfoot. I won’t take up any more.’
‘Time is for free,’ said Connie. ‘Time don’t belong to no one; no one owns me and no one owns time.’
‘I guess that’s true,’ agreed Ruby, ‘but if it’s all the same to you, I got a get back.’
Connie Slowfoot shrugged. ‘You do as you please girl.’
Ruby nodded and began walking away from the cabin. She hadn’t made it ten paces when she heard Connie call, ‘Girl, you mind my words, that blue wolf will rip you apart as soon as sniff you.’
‘I’m not afraid of wolves,’ said Ruby.
‘I’m not talking about “wolves”,’ said Connie, ‘I’m talking about the wolf.’
Ruby turned around. ‘There aren’t any Blue Alaskans, not for years.’
‘That’s what folks say and I thought they was right, but now I’m feeling something in my skin, telling me different.’
‘I read they went extinct at least a hundred years back.’
‘You can believe that if you want to,’ said the old woman, ‘I choose to play it safe. I shut my door tight at night just like my grandma did and her grandma afore her.’
‘The Cyan wolf?’ said Ruby.
‘I don’t know, I’m just a lunatic old woman,’ said Connie, ‘but I do know that wolf will rip you to shreds soon as sniff you. . . Unless, of course, you got the scent.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Ruby called.
‘What I say,’ shouted the old woman. ‘You meet that wolf, you better be sure you got the scent.’
These words curled through the air, carried on the breeze – they followed Ruby down the path and worked their way inside her head and echoed on as she walked down the mountainside, all the way to the road where Hitch was parked.
He opened the door for her. ‘So did Connie give you any useful advice?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Ruby. ‘Maybe she told me everything I need to know and maybe she told me nothing.’
‘Sounds like Connie,’ said Hitch.
‘So how come you didn’t introduce me to her before,’ asked Ruby, ‘if it would have saved me a whole lot of trouble?’