Charles De Lint - Dreams Underfoot

“That’s for Elderee,” she said, her voice soft but grim.

Dorn bit back a scream and glared at her. He sat up and scuttled a few paces away, moving on two bent legs and one arm, sideways like a crab. When he stopped, he cradled his hurt hand against his chest.

Silently they faced each other. Dorn knew that she was stronger than he was at this moment. Her will was too focused, the cloak of knowledge that Elderee had given her was too powerful in its newness.

She’d hurt him. Among humanoids, hands were needed to spark spells—fingers and voice. She’d effectively cut him off from the use of his own spells, from calling up a polrech, from anything he might have done to hurt her. In her eyes, he could see that she knew too.

She took a step towards him and he called up the one magic he could use, that which would take him from the road to safety in any one of the myriad worlds touched by the roads.

“There will be another time,” he muttered, and then he was gone.

Displaced air whuffted where he’d stood and Lorio found herself alone on the road.

She let out a long breath and looked around.

The road. The Chinese called it a dragon track. Alfred Watkins, in England, had discovered the old straight tracks there and called them leys. Secret ways, hidden roads. The Native Americans had them.

African tribesmen and the aborigines of Australia. Even her own people had secret roads unknown to the nonGypsy. In every culture, the wise people, the shamans and magicians and the outsiders knew these ways, and it made sense, didn’t it? It was by following such roads that they could grow strong themselves.

But not like Dorn, she thought. Not the kind of strength that destroys, but rather the kind of strength that gives back more than it takes. Like ... like playing on stage with No Nuns Here. Having something to say and putting it across as honestly as possible. When it worked, when something sparked between herself and the audience, a strength went back and forth between them, each of them feeding the other, the sensation so intense that she often came off the stage just vibrating.

Lorio smiled. She started to walk the road, giving herself to it as step followed step. She walked and a hum built up in her mind. Time went spilling down other corridors, leaving her to stride through a place where hours moved to a different step. The stars in their unfamiliar constellations wheeled above her. The landscape on either side of the road changed from hills to woodlands to deserts to mountainsides to seashores until she found herself back in the hills once more.

She paused there. A thrumming sensation filled her, giving her surroundings a sparkle. Rich scents filled her nostrils. The wind coming down from the hills was a sigh like a synthesizer, dreamy and distant.

And underfoot, the road glimmered faintly as though in response to what she’d given it by walking its length.

There’s no end to it, she realized. It just goes around and around. Sometimes it’ll be longer, sometimes shorter. It just goes on. Because it wasn’t where she was coming from, nor where she was going to that was important, but the road itself and how she walked it. And it would never be the same.

She ruffled through the knowledge that Elderee had planted in her and found a way to step off the road. But when she moved back into her own world, she didn’t return to the alleyway where it had all begun. Instead she chose a different exit point and stepped towards it. The road and surrounding hills shimmered around her and then were gone.

It was more a room than a cage, the concrete floor and walls smelling strongly of disinfectant and the unmistakable odor of a zoo’s monkey house. The only light came through the barred front of the cage, but it was enough for Lorio to see Elderee glance up at her sudden appearance. A look of fatherly pride came over his simian features. Lorio stood selfconsciously in the middle of the floor for a long moment, then after a quick look around to make sure they were alone, she walked over to where Elderee lay, her boots scuffing quietly on the concrete.

“Hi,” she said, crouching down beside him.

“Hello, yourself”

“How’re you feeling?”

A faint smile touched his lips. “I’ve felt better.”

“The doctors fixed you up?”

“Oh, yes. And a remarkable job they’ve done. I’m alive, am I not?” He paused, then laid a hand gently on her shoulder. “You found the road?”

Lorio smiled. “Along with everything else you stuck in my head. How did you do that?”

She didn’t ask why. Having walked the road, she knew that someone had to assume his responsibility of it. He’d chosen her.

“I’ll show you sometime—when I’m better. Did you go to the Wood?”

“No. I thought I’d save that for when I could go with you.”

“Did you have any ... trouble?”

Her dream of Mahail flashed into her mind. And Dorn’s very real presence. The hounds that he could have called down on her if he hadn’t been so sure of himself.

“Ah,” Elderee said, catching the images. “Dorn. I wish I’d been there to see you deal with him.”

“Are you reading my mind?”

“Only what you’re projecting to me.”

“Oh.” Lorio settled down into a more comfortable position. “He folded pretty easily, didn’t he? Just like the polrech that attacked us in the alley.”

Elderee shrugged. “Dorn is a lesser evil. He could control one hound at a time, no more. But like most of his kind, he liked to think of himself as far more than he was. You did well. As for the polrech—you were simply stronger. And quicker.”

Lorio flushed at the praise.

“And now?” Elderee asked. “What will you do?”

“Jeez, I I ... I don’t know. Take care of your part of the road until you get better, I guess.”

“I’m getting old,” Elderee said. “I could use your help—even when I’m better. There are more of them—” he didn’t need to name Mahail and his minions for Lorio to know whom he meant “—than there ever are of us. And there are many roads.”

“We’ll handle it,” Lorio said, still buzzing from her time on the road. “No problem.”

“It can be dangerous,” Elderee warned, “if a polrech catches you unaware—or if you run into a pack of them. And there are others like Dorn—only stronger, fiercer. But,” he added as Lorio’s humor began to drain away, “there are good things, too. Wait until you see the monkey puzzle tree—there are more birds in it, and from stranger worlds, than you could ever imagine. And there are friends in the Wood that I’d like you to meet—Jacca and Mabena and ...”

His voice began to drift a bit.

“You’re wearing yourself out,” Lorio said.

Elderee nodded.

“I’ll come back and see you tomorrow night,” she said. “You should rest now. There’ll be time enough to meet all your friends and for us to get to know each other better later on.”

She stood up and smiled down at him. Elderee’s gaze lifted to meet hers.

“Bahtalo drotn,” he said in Romany. Roughly translated it meant, follow a good road.

“I will,” Lorio said. “Maybe not a Gypsy road, but a good road all the same.”

“Not a Gypsy road? Then what are you?”

“Part Rom,” Lorio replied with a grin. “But mostly just a punker.”

Elderee shook his head. Lorio lifted a hand in farewell, then reached for and found the road that would take her home. She stepped onto it and disappeared. Elderee lay back with a contented smile on his lips and let sleep rise up to claim him once again.