“Where did you get that?” she asked.
Jilly looked down at her palm. The scab was gone, but the skin was all dark around the puncture wound now—an ugly black discolouration that was twice the size of the original scab.
“I scratched myself,” she said. “Down in Old City.”
Meran shook her head. “No,” she said. “They’ve marked you.”
Jilly suddenly felt weak. Skookin were real. Mysterious winds rose to animate trees. And now she was marked?
She wasn’t even sure what that meant, but she didn’t like the sound of it. Not for a moment.
Her gaze went to the stone drum where it stood on Meran’s mantel. She didn’t think she’d ever hated an inanimate object so much before.
“Marked…me…?” she asked.
“I’ve heard of this before,” Meran said, her voice apologetic. She touched the mark on Jilly’s palm. “This is like a…bounty.”
“They really want to kill me, don’t they?”
Jilly was surprised that her voice sounded as calm as it did. Inside she felt as though she was crumbling to little bits all over the place.
“Skookin are real,” she went on, “and they’re going to tear me up into little pieces—just like they did to the man in Christy’s stupid story.”
Meran gave her a sympathetic look.
“We have to go now,” she said. “We have to go and confront them now, before…”
“Before what?”
Jilly’s control over her voice was slipping. Her last word went shrieking up in pitch.
“Before they send something worse,” Meran said.
Oh great, Jilly thought, as she waited for Meran to change into clothing more suitable for the underground trek to Old City. Not only were skookin real, but there were worse things than those pumpkinhead creatures living down there under the city.
She slouched in one of the chairs by the mantelpiece, her back to the stone drum, and pretended that her nerves weren’t all scraped raw, that she was just over visiting a friend for the evening and everything was just peachy, thank you. Surprisingly, by the time Meran returned, wearing jeans, sturdy walking shoes and a thick woolen shirt under a denim jacket, she did feel better.
“The bit with the trees,” she asked as she rose from her chair. “Did you do that?”
Meran shook her head.
“But the wind likes me,” she said. “Maybe it’s because I play the flute.”
And maybe it’s because you’re a dryad, Jilly thought, and the wind’s got a thing about oak trees, but she let the thought go unspoken.
Meran fetched the long, narrow bag that held her flute and slung it over her shoulder.
“Ready?” she asked.
“No,” Jilly said.
But she went and took the drum from the mantelpiece and joined Meran by the front door. Meran stuck a flashlight in the pocket of her jacket and handed another to Jilly, who thrust it into the pocket of the coat Meran was lending her. It was at least two sizes too big for her, which suited Jilly just fine.
Naturally, just to make the night complete, it started to rain before they got halfway down the walk to McKennitt Street.
* * *
For safety’s sake, city work crews had sealed up all the entrances to Old City in the mid-seventies—all the entrances of which the city was aware, at any rate. The street people of Newford’s back lanes and alleys knew of anywhere from a half-dozen to twenty others that could still be used, the number depending only on who was doing the bragging. The entrance to which Jilly led Meran was the most commonly known and used—a steel maintenance door situated two hundred yards or so down the east tracks of the Grasso Street subway station.
The door led into the city’s sewer maintenance tunnels, but had long since been abandoned. Skells had broken the locking mechanism and the door stood continually ajar. Inside, time and weathering had worn down a connecting wall between the maintenance tunnels and what had once been the top floor of one of Old City’s proud skyscrapers—an office complex that had towered some four stories above the city’s streets before the quake dropped it into its present subterranean setting.
It was a good fifteen-minute walk from the Kelledys’ house to the Grasso Street station and Jilly plodded miserably through the rain at Meran’s side for every block of it. Her sneakers were soaked and her hair plastered against her scalp. She carried the stone drum tucked under one arm and was very tempted to simply pitch it in front of a bus.
“This is crazy,” Jilly said. “We’re just giving ourselves up to them.”
Meran shook her head. “No. We’re confronting them of our own free will—there’s a difference.”
“That’s just semantics. There won’t be a difference in the results.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
They both turned at the sound of a new voice to find Goon standing in the doorway of a closed antique shop. His eyes glittered oddly in the poor light, reminding Jilly all too much of the skookin, and he didn’t seem to be the least bit wet.
“What are you doing here?” Jilly demanded.
“You must always confront your fears,” Goon said as though she hadn’t spoken. “Then skulking monsters become merely unfamiliar shadows, thrown by a tree bough. Whispering voices are just the wind. The wild flare of panic is merely a burst of emotion, not a terror spell cast by some evil witch.”
Meran nodded. “That’s what Cerin would say. And that’s what I mean to do. Confront them with a truth so bright that they won’t dare come near us again.”
Jilly held up her hand. The discolouration was spreading. It had grown from its pinprick inception, first to the size of a dime, now to that of a silver dollar.
“What about this?” she asked.
“There’s always a price for meddling,” Goon agreed. “Sometimes it’s the simple curse of knowledge.”
“There’s always a price,” Meran agreed.
Everybody always seemed to know more than she did these days, Jilly thought unhappily.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” she told Goon. “Skulking about and following us.”
Goon smiled. “It seems to me, that you came upon me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I have my own business in Old City tonight,” he said. “And since we all have the same destination in mind, I thought perhaps you would appreciate the company.”
Everything was wrong about this, Jilly thought. Goon was never nice to her.
Goon was never nice to anyone.
“Yeah, well, you can just—” she began.
Meran laid a hand on Jilly’s arm. “It’s bad luck to turn away help when it’s freely offered.”
“But you don’t know what he’s like,” Jilly said.
“Olaf and I have met before,” Meran said.
Jilly caught the grimace on Goon’s face at the use of his given name. It made him seem more himself, which, while not exactly comforting, was at least familiar. Then she looked at Meran. She thought of the wind outside the musician’s house driving away the skookin, the mystery that cloaked her, which ran even deeper, perhaps, than that which Goon wore so easily….
“Sometimes you just have to trust in people,” Meran said, as though reading Jilly’s mind.
Jilly sighed. She rubbed her itchy palm against her thigh, shifted the drum into a more comfortable position.
“Okay,” she said. “So what’re we waiting for?”
* * *
The few times Jilly had come down to Old City, she’d been cautious, perhaps even a little nervous, but never frightened. Tonight was different. It was always dark in Old City, but the darkness had never seemed so…so watchful before. There were always odd little sounds, but they had never seemed so furtive. Even with her companions—maybe because of them, she thought, thinking mostly of Goon—she felt very much alone in the eerie darkness.
Goon didn’t appear to need the wobbly light of their flashlights to see
his way and though he seemed content enough to simply follow them, Jilly couldn’t shake the feeling that he was actually leading the way. They were soon in a part of the subterranean city that she’d never seen before.
There was less dust and dirt here. No litter, nor the remains of the skells’ fires. No broken bottles, nor the piles of newspapers and ratty blanketing that served the skells as bedding. The buildings seemed in better repair. The air had a clean, dry smell to it, rather than the close, musty reek of refuse and human waste that it carried closer to the entrance.
And there were no people.
From when they’d first stepped through the steel door in Grasso Street station’s east tunnel, she hadn’t seen a bag lady or wino or any kind of skell, and that in itself was odd because they were always down here. But there was something sharing the darkness with them. Something watched them, marked their progress, followed with a barely discernible pad of sly footsteps in their wake and on either side.
The drum seemed warm against the skin of her hand. The blemish on her other palm prickled with itchiness. Her shoulder muscles were stiff with tension.
“Not far now,” Goon said softly and Jilly suddenly understood what it meant to jump out of one’s skin.
The beam of her flashlight made a wild arc across the faces of the buildings on either side of her as she started. Her heartbeat jumped into second gear.
“What do you see?” Meran asked, her voice calm.
The beam of her flashlight turned toward Goon and he pointed ahead.
“Turn off your flashlights,” he said.
Oh sure, Jilly thought. Easy for you to say.
But she did so a moment after Meran had. The sudden darkness was so abrupt that Jilly thought she’d gone blind. But then she realized that it wasn’t as black as it should be. Looking ahead to where Goon had pointed, she could see a faint glow seeping onto the street ahead of them. It was a little less than a half block away, the source of the light hidden behind the squatting bulk of a half-tumbled down building.
“What could it…?” Jilly started to say, but then the sounds began, and the rest of her words dried up in her throat.
It was supposed to be music, she realized after a few moments, but there was no discernible rhythm and while the sounds were blown or rasped or plucked from instruments, they searched in vain for a melody.
“It begins,” Goon said.
He took the lead, hurrying them up to the corner of the street.
“What does?” Jilly wanted to know.
“The king appears—as he must once a moon. It’s that or lose his throne.”
Jilly wanted to know what he was talking about—better yet, how he knew what he was talking about—but she didn’t have a chance. The discordant notmusic scraped and squealed to a kind of crescendo. Suddenly they were surrounded by the capering forms of dozens of skookin that bumped them, thin long fingers tugging at their clothing. Jilly shrieked at the first touch. One of them tried to snatch the drum from her grip. She regained control of her nerves at the same time as she pulled the artifact free from the grasping fingers.
“1789,” she said. “That’s when the Bastille was stormed and the French Revolution began. Uh, 1807, slave trade was abolished in the British Empire. 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed.”
The skookin backed away from her, as did the others, hissing and spitting. The not-music continued, but its tones were softened.
“Let me see,” Jilly went on. “Uh, 1981, the Argentines invade—I can’t keep this up, Meran—the Falklands. 1715…that was the year of the first Jacobite uprising.”
She’d always been good with historical trivia—having a head for dates—but the more she concentrated on them right now, the further they seemed to slip away. The skookin were regarding her with malevolence, just waiting for her to falter.
“1978,” she said. “Sandy Denny died, falling down some stairs….”
She’d got that one from Geordie. The skookin took another step back and she stepped toward them, into the light, her eyes widening with shock. There was a small park there, vegetation dead, trees leafless and skeletal, shadows dancing from the light cast by a fire at either end of the open space. And it was teeming with skookin.
There seemed to be hundreds of the creatures. She could see some of the musicians who were making that awful din—holding their instruments as though they’d never played them before. They were gathered in a semi-circle around a dais made from slabs of pavement and building rubble. Standing on it was the weirdest looking skookin she’d seen yet. He was kind of withered and stood stiffly. His eyes flashed with a dead, cold light. He had the grimmest look about him that she’d seen on any of them.
There was no way her little bits of history were going to be enough to keep back this crew. She turned to look at her companions. She couldn’t see Goon, but Meran was tugging her flute free from its carrying bag.
What good was that going to do? Jilly wondered.
“It’s another kind of truth,” Meran said as she brought the instrument up to her lips.
The flute’s clear tones echoed breathily along the street, cutting through the jangle of not-music like a glass knife through muddy water. Jilly held her breath. The music was so beautiful. The skookin cowered where they stood. Their cacophonic noisemaking faltered, then fell silent.
No one moved.
For long moments, there was just the clear sound of Meran’s flute, breathing a slow plaintive air that echoed and sang down the street, winding from one end of the park to the other.
Another kind of truth, Jilly remembered Meran saying just before she began to play. That’s exactly what this music was, she realized. A kind of truth.
The flute playing finally came to an achingly sweet finale and a hush fell in Old City. And then there was movement. Goon stepped from behind Jilly and walked through the still crowd of skookin to the dais where their king stood. He clambered up over the rubble until he was beside the king. He pulled a large clasp knife from the pocket of his coat. As he opened the blade, the skookin king made a jerky motion to get away, but Goon’s knife hand moved too quickly.
He slashed and cut.
Now he’s bloody done it, Jilly thought as the skookin king tumbled to the stones. But then she realized that Goon hadn’t cut the king. He’d cut the air above the king. He’d cut the…the realization only confused her more…strings holding him?
“What…?” she said.
“Come,” Meran said.
She tucked her flute under her arm and led Jilly toward the dais.
“This is your king,” Goon was saying.
He reached down and pulled the limp form up by the fine-webbed strings that were attached to the king’s arms and shoulders. The king dangled loosely under his strong grip—a broken marionette. A murmur rose from the crowd of skookin—part ugly, part wondering.
“The king is dead,” Goon said. “He’s been dead for moons. I wondered why Old City was closed to me this past half year, and now I know.”
There was movement at the far end of the park—a fleeing figure. It had been the king’s councilor, Goon told Jilly and Meran later. Some of the skookin made to chase him, but Goon called them back.
“Let him go,” he said. “He won’t return. We have other business at hand.”
Meran had drawn Jilly right up to the foot of the dais and was gently pushing her forward.
“Go on,” she said.
“Is he the king now?” Jilly asked.
Meran smiled and gave her another gentle push.
Jilly looked up. Goon seemed just like he always did when she saw him at Bramley’s—grumpy and out of sorts. Maybe it’s just his face, she told herself, trying to give herself courage. There’s people who look grumpy no matter how happy they are. But the thought didn’t help contain her shaking much as she slowly made her way up to where Goon stood.
“You have something of ours,” Goon said.
His voice was grim. Christy’s story
lay all too clearly in Jilly’s head. She swallowed dryly.
“Uh, I never meant…” she began, then simply handed over the drum.
Goon took it reverently, then snatched her other hand before she could draw away. Her palm flared with sharp pain—all the skin, from the base of her hand to the ends of her fingers, was black.
The curse, she thought. It’s going to make my hand fall right off. I’m never going to paint again….
Goon spat on her palm and the pain died as though it had never been. With wondering eyes, Jilly watched the blackness dry up and begin to flake away. Goon gave her hand a shake and the blemish scattered to fall to the ground. Her hand was completely unmarked.
“But…the curse,” she said. “The bounty on my head. What about Christy’s story…?”
“Your curse is knowledge,” Goon said.
“But…?”
He turned away to face the crowd, drum in hand. As Jilly made her careful descent back to where Meran was waiting for her, Goon tapped his fingers against the head of the drum. An eerie rhythm started up—a real rhythm. When the skookin musicians began to play, they held their instruments properly and called up a sweet stately music to march across the back of the rhythm. It was a rich tapestry of sound, as different from Meran’s solo flute as sunlight is from twilight, but it held its own power. Its own magic.
Goon led the playing with the rhythm he called up from the stone drum, led the music as though he’d always led it.
“He’s really the king, isn’t he?” Jilly whispered to her companion.
Meran nodded.
“So then what was he doing working for Bramley?”
“I don’t know,” Meran replied. “I suppose a king—or a king’s son—can do pretty well what he wants just so long as he comes back here once a moon to fulfill his obligation as ruler.”
“Do you think he’ll go back to work for Bramley?”
“I know he will,” Meran replied.
Jilly looked out at the crowd of skookin. They didn’t seem at all threatening anymore. They just looked like little men—comical, with their tubby bodies and round heads and their little broomstick limbs—but men all the same. She listened to the music, felt its trueness and had to ask Meran why it didn’t hurt them.