The Very Best of Charles De Lint Page 3

  Meran sighed again. “I never thought of it like that,” she said. She studied the tinker, a smile twinkling in her eyes. “Well, Yocky John the bodach. You’re welcome to stay in our rafters through the winter—but mind you leave my husband and I some privacy. Do you hear? And no more tricks. Or this time I’ll let his roseharp play a spell.”

  “I’m not a bodach,” Yocky John said. “At least not as you mean it.”

  “Yes, I know. A bodach’s an old man too—or it was in the old days.”

  “Do I look like a kowrie man to you?”

  Meran grinned. “Who knows what a kowrie man would look like? It all depends on the shape he chooses to wear when you see him, don’t you think? And I see you’re still sitting there with that wee bit of iron chain wrapped around you.”

  “That’s only because I’m too tired to get up.”

  “Have it your way.”

  She removed the chain then and went back to making supper. When she called him to the table, Yocky John rose very slowly to his feet and made his way over to the table. Meran laughed, thinking, oh, yes, play the part to the hilt, you old trickster, and went and fetched his chair for him. They ate and talked awhile, then Meran went to bed, leaving the old man to sleep on the mound of blankets that she’d readied for him in front of the hearth. When she woke in the morning, he was gone. And so was the charcoal drawing on the floor.

  * * *

  “So,” Cerin said when he came home that night. “How went the great war between the fierce mistress of the oak wood and the equally fierce bodach that challenged her?”

  Meran looked up towards the rafters where a small round face peered down at her for a moment, then quickly popped out of sight. It didn’t looked at all like the old tinker man she’d guested last night, but who could know what was what or who was who when it came to mischief-makers like a bodach? And was a tinker all that different really? They were as much tricksters themselves. So whether Yocky John and the bodach were one and the same, or merely similar, she supposed she’d never know.

  “Oh, we made our peace,” she said.

  The Badger in the Bag

  This is what happens:

  there is a magic made.

  —Wendelessen,

  from “The Old Tunes”

  They travelled in a tinker wagon that year, up hill and down. By the time they rolled into summer they were a long way from Abercorn and the Vale of the Oak King, roaming through Whistlederry now, and into the downs of Dunmadden. The wagon belonged to Jen Kelledy who was a niece of Old Tess, Cerin’s foster-mother, making her a cousin of sorts. She was a thin reed woman with a thatch of nutbrown hair as tangled as Meran’s, but without the strands of oakmaid green that streaked Meran’s brown curls. Among the tinkerfolk she was known as Tulo Jen—Fat Jen—because she was so thin.

  The road had called to them that spring—to Meran who was no longer bound to her tree, and to her husband the harper—so they packed the cottage up tight when Tulo Jen’s wagon pulled into their yard one fine morning and, before the first tulip bloomed, they were away, looking like the three tinkers that one of them was, following the road to wherever it led. They left Old Badger behind, for he was never one to travel, but they carried a badger all the same. Tulo Jen had a fiddle with a boar’s striped head carved into the scroll. She called it her badger and kept it in a bag that hung from the cluttered wall inside the wagon, just above the spot where Cerin’s harp was tied in place. There wasn’t a tune that, once heard, Tulo Jen couldn’t play on her fiddle.

  “There’s a trick to it,” she explained to Meran, who played the flute. Meran could pick up a tune quicker than most, but she still felt like a plodding turtle compared to the tinker.

  “There’s a trick to anything,” Cerin said.

  Tulo Jen gave him a mock frown. “Aye—just like there’s a trick to listening when someone else is talking and not adding your own two pennies every few words like some kind of bodach.”

  “Oh, don’t talk about bodachs,” Meran said. “I’ve had my fill of them this winter.”

  Having let one stay in their rafters over the winter, she and Cerin had found themselves with the dubious honour of guesting up to a half-dozen of the little pranksters some nights.

  “Part of the trick,” Tulo Jen went on as though she hadn’t been interrupted, “is to give your instrument the right sort of a name. Now a badger knows his tricks and, what’s more, he never lets go, so when Whizzy Fettle explained this thing about names to me, I knew straight-off what to call my fiddle.”

  Meran looked down at her flute. “I don’t know,” she said. “This looks more like a snake to me. I don’t much like snakes—at least I can’t imagine putting one up to my mouth.”

  “And besides,” Cerin added. “You already had the scroll carved into a badger’s head. How could you not call it that?”

  “What did I say about listening? Broom and heather, it’s like I’m talking to the wind. First off—” Tulo Jen, bristling, made a show of counting on her fingers, “—the badger’s head came after, but that’s another story. Secondly, it has to be the right sort of a name and you’ll know when it comes to you and not before. And thirdly, the second thing I was going to say was that one should listen, really listen—”

  “Thirdly, the second thing?” Cerin asked.

  “I’m getting confused,” Meran added. “Does the name come first or…”

  Tulo Jen looked straight ahead and stiffly concentrated on keeping the horses on the road—make-work, really, for they were too well-trained to stray. She said nothing, letting the clatter of the wooden wheels on the road fill the place left by her lack of words.

  “I was only teasing,” Cerin said after a few moments of her silence.

  “Oh, aye.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “And a grand one, too.”

  “I really do want to learn the trick,” Meran added.

  “Oh, hear me laugh.”

  “That’s the trouble with Kelledys,” Cerin said to his wife. “They don’t like to get bogged down with all sorts of silly things like facts and the like when they’re telling a story. So when you ask them to explain something, well…” He shrugged, smiling before giving Tulo Jen a quick glance.

  The tinker tried to keep a straight face, but it was no use. “You’re a hundred times worse than Uncle Finan,” she said at last, “and Ballan knows, he could drive a soul to the whiskey sack without even trying.”

  “You were talking about Whizzy Fettle’s advice,” Cerin reminded her. “Something about tricking a name out of an instrument.”

  “You’re the one to talk—with that roseharp of yours sitting in the back. Do you mean to tell me that its name means nothing?”

  “Well, no….”

  Telynros was a gift from the Tuathan, an enchanted harp that bore the touch of the Old Gods in its workmanship. Silver-stringed, with deeply resonating wood, it bore a living rose in the joint where the forepillar met the curving neck. A rose the colour of twilight skies.

  “Well then, listen to what I have to say, or at least let me tell Meran without all your interruptions—would that be possible?”

  There was an obvious glint of humour in her fierce gaze and Cerin nodded solemnly in acquiescence. Tulo Jen cleared her throat.

  “As I was saying,” she said, looking at Meran, “the name comes first. But that alone would never be enough. So…”

  The road wound on and Cerin closed his eyes, listening to the rise and fall of the tinker’s voice. The summer air was thick with the scent of hedgerow flowers and weeds. He was soon nodding. The sound of the wheels and the horses’ hooves, the buzz of Tulo Jen’s voice, all faded and he fell asleep with his head on Meran’s shoulder. The two women exchanged smiles and continued their talk.

  * * *

  That night they camped in a field, close by a stream. They had a fire for their supper, but let the coals die down after they made a last pot of tea, for the night was warm. When they finally went to
their beds, they rolled out their blankets on the grass and slept under the stars. All except for Meran.

  She couldn’t sleep, so she lay staring up at the night sky, tracing the constellations and remembering the tales her mother had told her of how they came to be. After awhile, she got up and dressed, then went to sit on the flat stones by the stream. The horses snorted at her as she went by and she gave them both a quick pat.

  By the stream the night seemed quieter still. The water moved too slowly to make a sound, the wind had died away. She took her flute from its bag at her belt and turned it over in her hands.

  A name, she thought.

  Her husband had carved the flute for her, carved it from the wood of her own lifetree when it came down in a storm. With three charms carved from its wood, he’d drawn her back from the realm of the dead—a hair comb, an oak leaf-shaped pendant, and the flute. Three charms and his love had set her free from the need of an oakmaid’s lifetree.

  The flute was very plain, but it had a lovely tone for all that it was carved from an oak. Something of a harpspell from Telynros gave its music its rich flavour.

  Shall I call you roseflute? she thought with a grin, imagining Cerin’s face when she told him. How he’d frown. Oakrose, maybe? Roseoak? The flute was so slender, perhaps she should call it Tulo Fluto.

  She stifled a giggle and looked back at the camp, then froze. Something moved close to the ground, creeping towards the sleeping figures of Tulo Jen and her husband. She was about to call out a warning to them when she recognized the shape for what it was by its striped head.

  It was a badger—like Old Badger, whom they’d left back in Abercorn. Meran knew the look of a badger by night. She’d seen it often enough, traipsing through the woods with Old Badger. But this badger looked small. A babe separated from a sow, Meran guessed.

  She rose quietly so as not to startle it and padded softly back to the wagon.

  When she reached the camp she was just in time to see the little badger crawl into Tulo Jen’s fiddle bag.

  Oh, no, you mustn’t, Meran thought.

  She hurried over and knelt by the bag, but when she touched its side, all she could feel was the shape of the fiddle and the bow inside. Slowly she drew the instrument out and studied it under the starlight. It looked the same as it had when Tulo Jen had been playing it this evening. The wood had a hue somewhere between chestnut and amber and the carved badger’s head on the scroll regarded her with a half-smile in its eyes. Meran admired the workmanship of the carving for a moment, then set the fiddle aside. She reached into the bag again, took out the bow and shook the bag, half-expecting a baby badger to tumble out, for all that the weight was wrong.

  There was nothing inside.

  She was letting the night fill her head with an impossibility, Meran thought. Too many tinker’s stories and harper’s tall tales—that was the trouble. She replaced the fiddle and bow in their bag and laid down on her own blankets beside Cerin. She’d say nothing about this in the morning, she decided, but tomorrow night, oh, she’d be watching. Never have a doubt about that.

  * * *

  She watched the next night, and the night after that, and the third night as well, but all there was in Tulo Jen’s bag was a fiddle and a bow. She gave up after the fourth night and put it down to her imagination and perhaps missing Old Badger. But she had to wonder. If she called her flute a snake, would it slither out of its bag one night and go adventuring? If she called it an oakrose, would the scent of acorns and roses spill out of the bag?

  She meant to talk to the others about it the next day, but by the time she woke, she’d forgotten, and when she did remember, she was a little embarrassed about the whole affair. The teasing she’d get from that pair—tinkers were bad enough and Cerin was always twice as bad in their company. So she kept it to herself, but did wonder about a name for her flute. She’d finger it through its bag during the day, listen to its tone when she played tunes with the others around the fire in the evening, and late at night, she’d sit up sometimes, looking at its wooden gleam in the moonlight and under the stars.

  * * *

  Two weeks later they were camping in a hollow, with hills on one side, rolling off into gorse-thick downs, and dunes on the other, shifting to the sea. They all stayed up late that night, drinking a little too much of Tulo Jen’s heather whiskey. Eventually, Cerin and the tinker fell asleep, but the strong drink just made Meran feel too awake. She got up and wandered down by the water to see if she could make out what the tide was saying to the shore.

  There was something hypnotic about the lap of the waves as they came to land. If she didn’t love her father’s wood so much, she could easily live by the sea, forever and a day. She came upon an outfall not far from the camp, a brook that ran down to the water from the gorse-backed hills. Seabirds stood by it, settled down for the night. A black and white oyster-catcher, as big as a duck, took to flight when she came too near, its wings beating rapidly as it flew off along the shore, sounding its high piping alarm call. But the gulls stayed put and watched her.

  She backed away, not wanting to disturb them as well, and made a slow circuit back towards the camp. Standing on the highest dune, the one that overlooked the camp, she held her breath as a small greyish shape with a striped head crept away from where Tulo Jen and Cerin lay sleeping. Meran slipped out of sight behind the dune and then followed the little shape, her heart beating fast in her breast. She gave herself a pinch at one point, just to make absolutely sure that she wasn’t dreaming, then realized that she could just as easily be drunk.

  The little badger led her a good distance away from the camp before it finally paused and crouched down amongst driftwood and drying seaweed to gaze out to sea. It began to sing then, a low mournful song that sounded for all the world like a fiddle’s strings when the bow pulled a slow air from them.

  Oh, this can’t be, Meran thought, who’d seen marvels in her time, but nothing like this. Not ever anything like this.

  But the little badger stayed there by the edge of the sea and sang, sometimes jaunty tunes and sometimes sad airs. The jigs and reels made Meran want to get up and dance in the wet sand, to feel it press up between her toes as she stomped about to the music. The slower tunes made her want to weep. Then her fingers crept to the bag that held her flute and she caressed the wood through the cloth, wanting to play along with the badger, but not daring to break the spell.

  There were more sad tunes than happy ones. And after a while, there were no more happy ones. What could make it feel such hurt? Meran wondered. When the little badger finally fell quiet, Meran’s eyes were brimmed with tears as salty as the briny water that lapped against the sand.

  “Don’t go!” she called softly as the little beast began to leave.

  The badger froze and met her gaze with eyes that seemed to hold their own inner light.

  “Who are you?” Meran asked. “What makes you so sad? Why were you singing?”

  Her head was filled with a hundred questions and they all came out in a jumble when all she really wanted to ask was, how can I ease your hurt?

  I sing the music that was never played on me, the little badger replied. His voice was like fiddle notes resounding in her head, staccato notes played on the high strings. Not unpleasant, just strange sounding. The music that never had a chance to live. If I leave it unsounded, it builds up in me until I can no longer bear it. It becomes a pain that…hurts.

  “Are you sad?” she asked, coming nearer.

  The badger held its ground, watching her. No. Not sad. Just… Its grey shoulders lifted and fell and a long note came from it, filling her head. It wasn’t a word, just a bittersweet sound.

  “Do…do all instruments feel that way?”

  It was perhaps the whiskey that made her take this all so seriously, a part of her decided.

  Meran thought about that. She imagined Cerin’s harp taking a walk to play some music for itself, then realized that there were times when she woke, late at night, and th
ought she heard it playing, thought it was just a dream….

  Instruments with names. She touched her flute.

  “Would you rather not have been named?” she asked.

  Without a name, how could I live? And besides, what instrument sounds so sweet as one that has been loved and given a name?

  “But…” Meran began, yet between one blink and the next, the badger had scurried away.

  By the time she returned to the camp, she was still feeling woozy from the drinks and the walk, but tired enough to sleep. Before she lay down, she took the time to touch Tulo Jen’s bag. There was a fiddle inside, and a bow—wood and gut strings and horsehair. No live badger. Meran went to sleep, holding her flute, and dreamed of an orchestra of instruments that changed into animals as they sounded, leapt from their player’s hands and capered about, still making music. She smiled in her sleep.

  * * *

  It was a week after that, as they were travelling through the wooded vales of Osterwen, the tag-end of the summer in the air now, that Tulo Jen asked Meran if she’d thought of a name for her flute yet.

  “Well, I’m not sure,” Meran replied. “I don’t know if it wants a name.”

  “Everything wants a name,” Tulo Jen said, and then she echoed the little badger’s words. “How else can it live?”

  Meran had been thinking about that, wondering if an instrument did want to live in such a way, but she hadn’t been able to come up with an answer that satisfied her. So she told Tulo Jen about what she’d seen happen to the tinker’s own fiddle.

  “Broom and heather,” Tulo Jen said when Meran was done. “Now there’s a marvel!” She never doubted the tale for a moment and for that, Meran was relieved.

  “I’ve heard that tale before,” Cerin said, “only it was a set of bagpipes and they set up such a wail every night at the stroke of midnight that—”