Drink Down the Moon (3 page)

Two old Canadiana hutches stood against the south wall, holding Johnny’s stereo and record collection. The west wall didn’t exist, except as a hall that led from the front door to the rest of the apartment— a kitchen at the end of the hall, two bedrooms and a washroom. A door at the back led from the kitchen to a storage shed that was set snug against the rear of the house. The walls of the living room and throughout the apartment were covered with posters and pictures of folk festivals, Irish crofters’ cottages, Scottish landscapes and the like.

“All I’ve got is a couple of domestics,” Johnny said as he returned with a can of Labatt’s Blue in each hand.

“No problem,” Henk said.

Johnny gave him one of the cans and took the other to one of the two chairs that stood opposite the sofa. There was a low coffee table between sofa and chairs, covered with magazines and a coffee mug that was half full of cold tea.

“You going to pick up Tom’s stuff tomorrow?” Henk asked.

Johnny nodded.

“You want a hand with it?”

“There’s not that much— but thanks.”

“I was thinking more of some moral support.”

“Well, I could use that. Thanks, Henk.”

“Hey, no problem.”

They sipped at their beer, neither speaking for a while. Just when Henk thought he’d better come up with something to pull his friend out of his funk, Johnny looked up.

“I had something weird happen to me tonight,” he said.

“Weird curious, or weird spooky?”

“A little of both, I guess.”

He related what had happened to him.

“She was touching my hand,” Johnny said as he finished up, “giving me the bone carving, and then she was gone. Poof. Just like that. Now, I know I’ve been a little out of it lately, what with Tom and everything, but there’s no way she could have just slipped away from me. She vanished, and I can’t figure out how she pulled it off. Or what it was all about in the first place. Does it make any sense to you?”

Henk shook his head. He picked up the bone fiddle from where it lay on the coffee table between them and turned it over in his hands as he had when Johnny first showed it to him.

“Do you believe in ghosts

or fairies?” Johnny asked.

Henk smiled. “Only when I’m stoned.”

“Know anybody who does?”

“I’d’ve figured you— with all those books.”

“Those are— were mostly Tom’s,” Johnny said. “And besides, they’re not the same thing. They all talk about old farmers seeing things— country stuff. Old country stuff at that. I mean, some old guy living in the Shetland Islands, maybe, or the Black Forest— who knows what they’d see. But this is the city— or at least a park in the city.”

He sighed, staring at the carving in Henk’s hand.

“And I don’t believe in them either,” he added. “I’d like to, I guess. But

you know.”

Henk nodded. “It doesn’t make sense.” He laid the bone fiddle back down on the coffee table. “Did she really seem to know Tom?”

“We didn’t talk that much, but she seemed to. Except she acted like she knew him when he was young, and she didn’t seem any older than you or me.”

“And she really just vanished?”

Johnny nodded.

“Somebody’s playing games with you, Johnny. I don’t know how, or why, but that’s what it’s got to be.”

“I guess.”

Talking it over with Henk made it all seem different. When Fiaina had stood there talking to him, when she’d just vanished

it had seemed very real. Or very unreal, but actually happening.

He picked up the bone fiddle and rubbed his thumb against it. “This thing’s old.”

“Seems to be.”

“What if she really was what she said she was?”

“Uh-uh. You’re setting yourself up for a bad fall there. Somebody’s playing a scam on you and if you start taking it seriously, you’ll be playing right into their hands. Don’t go with it, Johnny. The best thing you could do is put that carving up on the mantel, with the rest of your fiddle collection, and forget about it.”

“But I’ve got a feeling

.”

“Yeah. Me, too. And it’s a bad one.”

Johnny gave him a curious look. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there, so I didn’t see what happened. But I know you, Johnny. You’re a pretty straightforward kind of a guy. You’ve never chased phantoms. We both know there’s no such thing as elves and goblins and all that kind of thing, so why start believing in them now?”

“That’s a pretty lame reason,” Johnny said. “But I know what you mean.”

He glanced at the wall of books, not at the paperbacks so much as the hardcovers that Tom had collected over the years. Douglas’s Scottish Lore and folklore. Alan Garner’s The Guizer. The Folklore of the Costwolds, by Katharine Briggs. Evans’s Irish Folk Ways. There were over a hundred of them, all collections of old stories and anecdotes, country customs, and the like. Johnny had read through some of them, liking the connection they made with his music— just liking them for what they were, really. Even those that were a little heavier going, like Graves’s The White Goddess or Baughman’s index of folktale types and motifs.

“But I like the idea of hobgoblins and little people still being around,” Johnny said, looking back at his friend. “I never liked the idea that we’d chased them away to some Tir na nOg, you know?”

“If,” Henk said, “and remember I’m saying if they ever existed, I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t adjust to the way the world’s changed.”

Johnny smiled, his first real smile since he’d got the phone call late one night last week, telling him that his grandfather had died.

“See?” he said. “It’s beginning to intrigue you now.”

His smile widened at the big “Why not?” grin that came to Henk’s features.

“Can you see punk elves?” Henk asked.

“Disco dwarves!”

They both laughed.

“We’ve got to have a plan,” Henk went on. “Whoever that woman was, we’ve got to track her down.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“Go back to the park tomorrow night.”

Johnny shrugged. “I suppose.”

“You’ve got a better idea?”

“No. It’s just that she gave me the feeling that she wouldn’t be showing up there again.”

He glanced at the books again.

“It’s too bad,” he added, “that there’s no one collecting contemporary folktales. Citylore. There’s got to be stories.”

“You hear about that kind of thing in a place like New York,” Henk said, “but Ottawa? What’ve we got? Anyway, what good would that do?”

“It’d give us a place to start looking, for one thing. Maybe there’s a certain part of the city that’s got more weird stories about it than another. We could go check it out

ask around.”

“If we asked most people about fairies, they’d think we were looking for gays.”

“Cute.”

“No, really. We can’t just go around and do what? Talk to winos and bag ladies?”

Johnny nodded. “Now, there’s an idea.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t seriously expect we’ll find your mysterious fairy queen by chatting up bums?”

“No. I’m not really thinking about her, to tell you the truth. It’s the idea that intrigues me now— of elves and the like living in an urban environment. Not that they really are— just what sort of perception people have of them in the city.”

“What?”

“You know. What kind of odd little stories or unexplained incidents people talk about.”

“Oh. Like the lunatic fringe. UFOs and stuff like that. We’ll have to have certain criteria to go by. Everybody we interview will have to have pink hair, say, and—” He paused and snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute.”

Johnny rolled his eyes. “Come on, Henk. You’re getting out of control— and on just one beer. Think of your rep.”

“No. This is something different. I just thought of somebody who fits your bill perfectly. Have you gone to see Greg’s new band yet?”

“No, I’ve just heard of them. What’re they called— AKT? I hear they’ve got a dynamic lead singer.”

Henk nodded. “I was thinking of their sax player.”

“I don’t listen to a lot of R&B.”

“You don’t have to. You just have to talk to this girl. She’s always making up stories about gremlins living in the sewers and stuff like that.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s her name?”

“Jemi Pook.”

It was one of the Laird of Kinrowan’s own foresters who found Jenna’s body just before dawn. He was a young hob named Dunrobin Mull, somewhat taller than most hobs and beardless, with a dark red stocking cap, and trousers and jerkin of mottled green. He rode a brown and grey speckled pony that was shaggy and short-legged. The pony came to an abrupt halt as it and its rider spied the Pook’s torn and battered body.

For a long moment the hob sat astride his mount, staring down, his stomach turning knots as he looked on the gruesome sight. His pony sidestepped nervously under him, nostrils widening. Mull leaned over and patted its neck, then slowly slid from its back and stepped closer towards the body.

Being neither gruagagh nor skillyman, he knew little of magic and so sensed nothing of the traces of it that were left in the air, nothing except a weird tingle at the nape of his neck that lifted the hair from his skin. He put that down to the eeriness of the moment. But he was a tracker, and it surprised him to find only a single set of man-sized tracks leading up to the corpse, and then away again. There was no sign of what had done such damage to the Pook, only the marks of her flailing about as she had tried to fight off her attacker.

“Hempen, hampen,” Mull muttered as he sketched a quick saining in the air. “What sort of a beast can do this damage and leave no sign?”

It hadn’t been the man, for it was plain by the tracks that he’d done no more than bend down over the Pook before turning away again. Mull looked about in all directions, through both Faerie and the world of men, but saw nothing. There were only the tracks of the man who’d come and gone.

It was a poor neighbor who left a body lying like this after discovery, Mull thought. He’d not treat the dead so poorly himself— none he knew would.

He took a blanket from where it was tied in a tight roll at the back of his saddle and gingerly placed Jenna’s body upon it. He folded the blanket around her, tied it shut, then struggled with it to his pony, staggering under its weight. The pony shied at the burden until Mull spoke a few comforting words, but it was still long moments before the beast was calm enough to let him tie the bundle to his saddle. Giving a last look around, Mull spotted the Pook’s journeysack where it lay a few feet away. He fetched it and tied it to the saddle as well.

“Come on, Goudie,” he murmured to his pony. “It’s not so far to the Laird’s Court.”

The pony whickered, thrusting its nostrils against the hob’s shoulders. Mull gave the broad nose a quick comforting pat, then led the pony away, heading eastward to where the Laird’s Court stood overlooking the Ottawa River from the heights that men named Parliament Hill.

Three

All Kindly Toes, better known to friends and fans as AKT, were playing a street dance the next night. According to the posters stapled to telephone posts, the dance was being billed as “The Last Days of Summer Tour.” It didn’t seem to bother anyone that just one gig was being advertised as a tour— it was all in good fun.

The band was already on stage and halfway through their first set by the time Johnny and Henk arrived. The easternmost block of Chesley Street in Ottawa South had been closed off and the stage squatted where the street made a “T” as it met Wendover, speakers racked up on either side. The sound board was set up on the northeast corner and there was a crowd of over a hundred people dancing in front of the stage or standing and watching from the sidewalks. The band was just finishing up a funky version of “Love Potion No. 9” and immediately launched into “River Deep, Mountain High.”

“They’re good,” Johnny said, speaking into Henk’s ear to make himself be heard over the music.

Henk grinned and nodded. He kept his gaze on the stage as he led them closer.

On the right side of the stage, Greg Parker, the founder and old man of the band, was playing guitar. He had short dirty-blond hair and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a clashing burgundy and white striped tie, blue jeans, and an off-white cotton sports jacket with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The bass player, Tommy Moyer, was dressed similarly, if a touch more tastefully, as his shirt and tie matched. He was a big bearish man, the Fender bass he played looking like a toy in his hands. David Blair, a thin black man wearing a UB40 T-shirt, was playing drums. Both he and Tommy, like the rest of the band except for Greg, looked to be in their early twenties. Greg was thirty-eight.

On the far left, Trudy MacDonald was playing the organ She had short brown hair and a round face, and grinned as she played. Center stage was the lead vocalist, an old girlfriend of Henk’s, Johnny remembered as he looked at her. Her name was Beth Kerwin. She swayed as she sang, holding the microphone in one hand, head tilting back as she hit the chorus. Her brown hair was cut short on top, the sides and back long and gathered into a French braid that fell halfway down her back. She wore a short black fifties-style dress that was covered with a design of multi-coloured jelly beans.

As the band went into the bridge between verses and the sax cut in, Johnny turned his attention to the girl they’d come to meet. Jemi Pook was tiny, her tenor sax seeming as huge in her hands as Tommy’s bass was diminutive in his. She was wearing a grey and pink minidress, the rectangular-shaped colours arranged in an Art Deco pattern. Her hair was pink, too, a brighter shade than her dress, and stood up in punky spikes— a look that was already passe, but on her it still worked.

Looking at her, Johnny’s chest went tight. He knew her, knew that face. With only a late-night memory of it, he still knew her.

There were three more songs before the band took a break, but Johnny hardly heard them. He watched the sax player, trying to understand her. She was relaxed and loose on stage, strutting in time with Greg and Tommy like Gladys Knight’s Pips, sharing Greg’s mike on choruses, leaning back, the bell of her sax rising up to her own mike when she had a riff to play. There was nothing in what he saw of her on stage during those songs that explained last night.