Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

He hated the winter, he decided. Or maybe just this winter, where it seemed that everything that could go wrong, had. And then some. He didn’t bother wasting his breath cursing how things had turned out. What was the point? But the miserable weather was putting him in the perfect mood for what he planned to do this evening.

Donal woke fully dressed on an unfamiliar bed, with a foul taste in his mouth and a pounding in his head. Sitting up made his stomach do a small flip. He waited a long moment, dully curious as to whether or not he was going to have to throw up, but the nausea went away. If only the headache would. Reaching under his pillow, he pulled out a mickey bottle of whiskey. About a half-inch of golden liquid sloshed in the bottom—what the old man used to call a cure in the morning. He downed it, grimacing at the bitter taste.

Jaysus. Jameson’s it wasn’t. It was barely a step above rubbing alcohol, insofar as taste was concerned. But it was eighty-proof and he could already feel the pounding in his head begin to recede a little.

Swinging his boots to the floor, he clomped across the uneven floorboards to what he hoped was a toilet. It wasn’t until he’d relieved himself and come back into the main room that he sat down on the edge of the bed and took a good look around, orienting himself. A hotel room, obviously, with the blinds drawn and next to no light coming in. Not exactly four-star. Not exactly a half-star, truth be told. The whole room seemed to sag—ceiling, furniture, the bed, the floor. Old and tired and worn out. But cheap, no doubt. He couldn’t remember checking in, but considering the state he must have been in, that was no surprise. He had so little memory of the latter part of the night, he’d probably blacked out before he’d passed out.

He picked up the mickey bottle and tilted it so that the last few errant drops could fall onto his tongue. Where had he gotten it? Most of the previous night really was a blur. He remembered leaving Miki’s apartment after she’d had her little snit, and really, what was her problem? You’d think she’d be happy that a Greer might do well for a change. Besides drinking and arguing, that was.

He turned the bottle over in his hands. There was no label on it, but why should there be? The bars had all been closed, so he’d come down to Palm Street, wandering aimlessly around the Combat Zone until he’d found a small after-hours bar down at the end of some alley. He’d had a few drinks there he was sure, then finally wandered off with this bottle of the barman’s homemade poteen, though it hardly deserved so poetic a designation.

Back home, poteen was the water of life. Kicked like hell once it got down, to be sure, but it was smooth on the going down. Or at least smoother than this rotgut the barman had foisted off on him. Jaysus, but wasn’t it foul. Mind you, he wouldn’t say no to another bottle of it right now.

He set the empty bottle down on the night table beside an old digital alarm clock radio with an LCD display so tired the time was barely visible. He leaned a little closer. Just past eight. There was something he was supposed to be doing by eight, he realized, but he was damned if he could remember what.

Go somewhere. Do something. With someone. Not Miki, he decided, bless her hard little heart. Cold as one of the Gentry, she was last night.

Then it came to him. It was Ellie. He’d promised to drive her up to Kel-lygnow this morning. Well, he’d be a little late, and she’d be a little ticked off, but surely she was used to it by now. Had he ever been on time for anything? Not likely. Ah, and what was the rush? That’s what he always asked. What was the rush? Jaysus, stop and appreciate things a little bit for a change, even if all you had to appreciate was that your life was shite.

Oh, don’t go all maudlin, he told himself. Things were looking up. Ellie was starting on the mask today, and between it and the Gentry backing him, he’d soon be looking back on days like these and fall down on his arse laughing that he’d taken it all so bloody seriously.

Pity he had to share the mask’s power with the Gentry though. He was taking all the risks, not them. Bloody mask could cook his brains into a stew if it wasn’t done just right. ’Course they were all vague about the details, them and herself, that strange old dyke who’d slammed the door in his face yesterday, Pretending she didn’t know him. Should’ve been a bloody actress, that one.

But Donal didn’t need their help. He had it all sussed out on his own. Because he knew how to pay attention, didn’t he? He hadn’t been like Miki, sitting there with her hands over her ears when Uncle Fergus and his cronies were going on back home. Nor falling down drunk like the old man. He’d paid attention to the tales those bitter old men told, sorted the wheat from the chaff in their spill of story.

It took intent. It took a man capable of putting everything aside and concentrating his will on what was needed. The new mask was merely a focus—powerful enough in its own way, especially when created by someone with the geasan the Gentry claimed Ellie carried, but hardly the almighty talisman they made it out to be. If that was the case, any fool could pick it up and call on its power. No, it required a man such as himself. Focused, determined. Someone who didn’t much bloody care about anything except getting exactly what he wanted for a change.

Of course it helped that he’d been as intimate as he had with the woman who was making it, left his seed in her and you couldn’t get much more bloody intimate than that, could you? Even the old dyke up in Kellygnow had to admit he was the best man for the job and you could just tell she was aching to slap that mask up onto her own face. But it needed a man to wear it and wield it, which she wasn’t, for all her dressing butch and pretending to be male. It needed a man, a mortal man, and that left the Gentry fretting, too, but sod them all. This was his turn to be on the top of the wheel and no one was going to take that away from him. Not Miki’s misguided conscience, nor the needs of the Gentry and that old dyke they’d kept alive well past her time. What use did they see in her anyway, exiled for two-thirds of the year in the Gentry’s otherworld for every few months she could live in this one?

Well, he thought, who really gave a shite?

He pushed himself up from the bed and tucked his rumpled shirttails into his pants. He’d better go pick up Ellie or the mask would never get made. He wondered where he’d left the van. Had to be somewhere nearby.

He didn’t bother closing the door when he stepped out into the shabby hall beyond his room. Humming a bit of reel, he followed the path that had been worn into the carpet by a few thousand other feet heading for the same stairwell as he was now. He stopped when he realized it was some tune of Miki’s. Ah, Miki. She wouldn’t be so high and mighty once he was wearing the mask. Once she saw the world give him his due, she’d be begging for a taste of the same.

Maybe he’d share, maybe he wouldn’t. It all depended on how repentant she was when she got down on her knees and asked him.

But they’d all listen to him. Miki and Ellie and that soft-spoken Spanish woman up at old Kellygnow who wanted him, he could tell. They’d be singing his praises and mooning about, looking for a bit of his kindness then.

He reached the lobby. The fat woman at the check-in desk looked up from her fashion magazine and gave him a once-over before returning to the depictions of that vastly better life that the waif models were living in its glossy pages.

No, Donal thought. I didn’t steal any of your towels. Jaysus, I wouldn’t want to touch the bloody things.