Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“Do you have her number?”

Alan nodded. He made the call and five minutes later they were leaving his apartment, on their way to Isabelle’s new studio in Joli Coeur.

IX

It took Cosette forever, and then a little longer still, to find Solemn John. It wasn’t just that John was hard to find, which he was. John was always on the move, as restless as the sky was long and always so sad, so serious. He could be grim, too, though he was never like that with her. But he could be infuriating in the way he almost always answered a question with one of his own. He was the oldest of them, the strongest and the fiercest. Cosette liked to think that she could be fierce, but compared to John, she could only play at fierceness.

So John was hard to find. But the other reason it took Cosette so long to track him down was that the strange black-and-white girl had frightened her so badly. Afraid of encountering her again, Cosette didn’t walk down the middle of the sidewalks anymore, she crept through the shadows and alleyways.

When she had to cross a street or the open stretch of a deserted lot, she did it with a scurrying sideways movement, trying to look all around herself at once feeling so very much like a tiny little deer mouse in an open field as the shadow of the hawk falls upon it.

She went almost all around the downtown core of the city, from Battersfield Road as far east as Fitzhenry Park, from the Pier as far north as the abandoned tenements of the Tombs, and then found John sitting on a fire escape no more than two blocks from where she’d first set out to find him. Of course, she thought. Wasn’t that always the way? But she was so relieved to see him that she couldn’t even muster up a spark of irritation.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she said. She dug out an empty crate from a heap of garbage on one side of the alley and dragged it over to the fire escape. “You can be ever so hard to find,” she added as she sat down upon her makeshift stool.

John shrugged. “I’ve been here.”

“I can see that now.”

This time he made no reply. His solemn gaze was fixed on something far beyond the alleyway.

“Something awful’s happening,” Cosette told him.

John nodded, but he didn’t look at her. “I know. I started to poke around after we talked the other night, listening to gossip, chasing rumors.”

“Someone else is bringing people across from the before,” Cosette informed him.

Now John did turn to look at her. “You’ve seen him?”

“Her. She has no color to her, John. She’s a black-and-white girl and I think she’s going to kill me.”

“I’ve heard there’s more than one, but the only one I actually knew existed was my twin.”

“You have a twin?”

John shrugged. “Not so’s I ever knew. But I talked to Isabelle and she said he looks just like me.”

“You talked to Isabelle?”

“Briefly.”

The idea of John and Isabelle finally speaking to each other after all these years was enough to distract Cosette from her fear of the black-and-white girl and the danger that her existence appeared to represent. She gave John a careful look, then sighed.

“Did she send you away again?” she asked.

“Not exactly.”

“But still.”

“But still,” John agreed. “She didn’t call me back either—not in a way I could come.”

“I’m sorry about what I said to you the other night.”

John shrugged. “I knew you didn’t mean it.”

“No,” Cosette said. “I did mean it. I really don’t understand why people bother to fall in love. But I didn’t say it to make you feel bad. It just sort of popped out. I know how much you care about her. I know it’s not your fault that she makes you feel the way you do.”

“I used to think I loved her so much because she brought me across,” John said. “That it was all tied up with the magic that allowed her to open the gate for me. I didn’t think I had any choice in the matter at all. When I met Paddyjack and realized that he was hopelessly devoted to her as well, that only seemed to confirm it. But then she brought more and more of us across and I saw that it wasn’t so. Some liked her, some didn’t. Some didn’t care one way or the other. After a while I came to realize that while I still didn’t have any choice, it was a matter of my heart, not because of any enchantment of hers. But by then it was too late. She never called me back to her.”

“Couldn’t you have gone to her?” Cosette asked.

John shook his head. “She sent me away.”

“But—”

“It wasn’t a matter of my pride, Cosette. Isabelle just didn’t want me anymore. I’m not real to her.”

When he fell silent this time, Cosette didn’t know what to say. She sat on her crate and tapped the toes of her shoes together, picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of her sweater.

“So this man Isabelle told you about,” she asked finally. “Does he really look exactly like you?”

John gave Cosette a thin, humorless smile. “Apparently. He has my looks, but not my sunny personality.”

Cosette digested that slowly. For someone who looked exactly like John to have been brought across meant ...

“So,” she said. “Isabelle must have made another painting of you.”

Only when? Cosette made it a point to visit Isabelle’s studio on a regular basis as much as for a simple curiosity to see what Isabelle was currently working on as to borrow various paints and brushes and pencils and the like. She hadn’t seen a new painting of John. Isabelle hadn’t done a portrait in years.

“Not Isabelle,” John said. “But Rushkin. Couldn’t you feel his hand in the girl you saw?”

Cosette shivered. John was right. Rushkin had been the first to come to her mind when she saw the black-and-white girl.

“Can they feed on us, too?” she asked. “You know, the way that he can?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But they could bring us to him.”

“You said he could only hurt us through the paintings—or in Isabelle’s dreams.”

“I don’t know everything,” John replied sharply.

“Don’t be mad.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. I ... what I am is scared.”

Cosette started to feel sick to her stomach then. If John was scared, then they were all doomed, weren’t they? They were going to die without ever having the chance to dream.

“Can’t we do anything to stop him?” she asked in a small voice.

She wished she weren’t so scared. She wished she could be brave, but it was so hard. Just thinking of the dark man made her want to curl up into a small ball and hide away, far away. Maybe courage was something the red crow gave you along with dreams. She’d never thought of that before, but if even John was scared ...

“We could kill him,” John said.

Cosette looked at him in surprise. She couldn’t imagine killing anyone, couldn’t imagine silencing the beat of their red crow’s wings, spilling their dreams and blood. Not even a monster such as Rushkin.

“Have ... have you ever killed anyone?” she asked.

John hesitated, then slowly nodded his head.

“I don’t know if I ... if I could do it,” Cosette said.

“They mean to kill us,” John said.

“I know, but—”

“They mean Isabelle harm. They mean us all harm. You and I. Rosalind and Annie Nin. Bajel and Paddyjack. All of us who are left. There’ll be no more gathering in the birch woods to sing and dance then, Cosette. There’ll be no more chance than we can ever learn to dream. We’ll all be gone.”

Cosette gave him a strange look. “You’ve been to the island?” she asked. “You’ve seen us dancing?”

John nodded. “And listened to the stories that Rosalind tells. I’ve watched you paint. I’ve read Bajel’s poems and heard Annie sing.”