...The Bird and The Bat
In an evening's wakefulness, The roosting bird saw the early bat as it Made its way to the deeper forest.
"Hi! You! Spend a time with me," called the bird, "I see you have an hour, for it is still too bright for you."
The bat circled, coming to hang on a branch above, looking down the bird's rest "I am early to escape the boy's lines. Net's with hooks flown in the sky Take my brethren. Another danger of the free, and the night."
"The night?" the bird sang, sounding silly and bright in its sleepiness. "Tell me about this rarity."
"Rare? It happens daily! How do you mean Rare?"
The bird fluttered in its confusion. The night was a thing best avoided, unawares. Unknown, until morning's call. "Perhaps I should not have interrupted your journey." It preened its pillow beneath a wing.
"It is done." The bat yawned, squinting into twilight. "You do not like the night?"
"I think my life is better," the bird said, arrogant dreams crowding its head. "I have the bright and the warmth, color and sound, while you have all the...Wrongs."
"Oh, I have Songs," The bat spoke, wings wrapped in a momentary napping. "My songs are warnings while yours are hopes. Who is to maintain Which is better?"
"Mine!" the bird cried. "I do not hide. My plumes are bright, my song is joy, my appearance is handsome Not fearful! You should know your place in the world, and not insult your betters!"
"I am sorry I answered your call." the bat spread its darkness, dropped from the limb and continued its dangerous existence
"Arrogant weirdo," the bird scolded from inside the belly of a night python.
The mists of the Scottish countryside surrounded Grace's car as a soft, welcoming embrace. She filled her lungs with the cool, forgotten perfume, scents from another, gentler lifetime. She was still not used to steering on the "wrong side," but there was nothing to hit on these vast moors, unless you counted a low shrub or two, and she was sure impact would almost be.. springy, at least. Grace almost wanted to try it out on the rental. It wasn't her car's paint job at risk, after all.
The girl scout inside her held out. Sigh. Just when she was getting back something lost to her a long time ago.
The required leave of absence ("just consider it a vacation, Grace. You've heard of those, right? Or do you like people thinking your whole career really is the vacation?") was a present / order from Mr. Knight. The bookstore was more now an "old family friend," rather like an old car that is hard to give up, than a necessity. Knight wanted Grace to get on with her career, or what she thought it would be, before, well, just before. ("You can't do anything about it, Grace, so why don't you just..." She grabbed the tickets before he could finish the line. (That's what I usually say, Gab, and I say it soooo much better.)
Actually, Grace had to admit to himself that she was enjoying it all, of which she would never forgive him. It will only make it harder to get back. The last few months did take too much from her. Which was difficult, following the last few years. Hell, why not just crap out the entire decade and feel better.
Grace watched a few clouds through a gap in the mist. Well, she thought they were clouds.... (It's nice not having to watch for demons, huh, kiddo?)
She had wanted to get out of New Orleans altogether, and even out of the States, to a place and a time where, well, if she couldn't call himself happy, at least she was excitedly looking forward to. At her short stay in Cambridge, she was a kid who liked people and wanted to help them. Actually wanted to make people happy, show them beautiful things, a sweet and arrogant naivete that would probably make her violently ill today. Grace looked along the almost dirt path she was driving on. (Yes, I've lost many things along this road out, haven't I? So many things.) She was so glad for the lonely travel, so lost in thought that she feared for any fellow tourists crossing her way. Yet... yet... Grace looked out at the gentle hills ahead of her, sensed steeper, grayer mountains beyond. A falcon sounded from some lonely patch of sky. Maybe on this road back in, she would find a shadow of some of those things.
********************
The children were gathering mushrooms along the wild, untapped moors. Delicate flowers glowed as the cold mists redewed buds in the late afternoon sun. Birds sang their evening song and began nesting for the night. The children found wonderful specimens, skipping those nibbled by deer, and contested which had the largest or most perfectly colored gatherings of the evening.
"Kat! We don't need anymore. It's heavy enough already." The young boy's overstretched arms tired as he held the sturdy, hard basket against his chest, stopping for a moment as tangerine rimmed fungi overflowed their container. Even his robust family wouldn't be able to eat as much as they gathered in one evening's meal.
"Look at this big cricket, Alex. It looks so old." The insects and other forest life started to slow as the warmth left the moors, and Katherine was fascinated at what small life her young eyes could pick out in the growing dark. Happily, she began to hum a little to the cricket. The cricket slowly regarded the little girl too.
"Kathy! Leave it alone and let's go!" Sometimes his little sister would get so engrossed in the wood's creatures (the results of all those stupid girl cartoons she always watched). Still, to be fair, she did find and pick more than her share of mushrooms.
A soft voice called to the boy.
"Kat?" The boy couldn't think of anyone else to call.
"Alex," the voice sang so perfectly in harmony with the moors that he wondered if it was the voice of the wind itself.
"Kathy!"
The moors began to sing. The young boy's eyes teared in fear.
*******************
"Ahhh, Ms. Nakimura, good to see you once again." The older, bulkier gentleman beamed at his past student.
"Sir. It's very good to see you."
"Ach! Sir! Whenever I hear that coming from an accomplished young person like yourself, I always think they are addressing my stomach." The man lightly tapped his ample midsection, presenting the evidence. "This is the results of my success, and I have at least enough common sense to show it off."
"Who's the liar that says I'm successful?" Grace grinned, but the professor caught the frown in it.
"Well, you finished your studies so quickly, madam. And your stride, your demeanor... You have accomplished something... I know I can't be wrong about it."
"I wonder." Grace sat in the professor's soft, worn leather chair, her smile relaxing in the older man's presence. Every unchanged thing in the old man's office brought back such happy memories of cheerier times, of accomplishments and wondrous goals that seem too... too...
"Why? What have you done with my simple notions, colleague?" The older man leaned forward in his squeaky chair, elbows resting lightly on his heavy oak desk. Little grooves on the desktop informed cautious observers, like Grace, that this was an oft used, to be wary of gesture.
"This should be a couch, not a chair. You don't expect me to confess all sitting up, do you, doctor?"
"Oh, well then, Ms. Nakimura. Let me introduce you to some fine, local cuisine. You don't expect me to listen all on an empty stomach. My other, smarter colleague keeps far better hours than I."
"Hmmm, local cuisine. Did I ever apologize to you for all those college pranks my classmates may have pulled on you, but forgotten about?"
"No, Ms. Nakimura. You haven't."
The man lead Grace from the beautiful, quiet office down through the busy, harried streets of his city.
Grace seemed to be enjoying the contents of her half-full plate. Most of the potatoes and vegetables were gone, but the main entrée was untouched. Her professor eyed the young woman's pickings, a bemused frown pursing his lips. "It's okay, Ms. Nakimura. There's nothing mixed in there you haven't eaten before. It tastes alright, doesn't it?"
Grace thought about her college days. Pranks... pranks... "What parts of what animals are in these sausages?"
"Oh, come now my girl. It's not like you're some ugly American neophyte on her first trip outside big city borders? When did you get so... picky?"
"It must be because I've seen some unappetizing things since we've last eaten together, doc." Grace's smile came easier now, not so much as the flashy defense mechanism used even in college days. It was probably the influence of the older man's presence and the even older surroundings. She found it hard to be quite so anxious in a place that breathed immutability. The professor really wanted to show the anxious young woman the even greater, and older, wild Scottish countryside.
"So, Ms. Nakimura, why the vacation here of all places? Why not the old school?"
"I had heard you left Cambridge for some boonie university. A nicer place than I first imagined, though." She looked around the simple restaurant. Brick walls and old cobblestone floors surrounded a real hearth with an oversized iron soup pot fragrantly boiling the evening's meal. She had already sampled two bowls from the pot, and the hall's warmth came from actual activity versus piped in heat from some government boiler room. Grace looked at the patrons, some sitting alone at the tables, resting, while others played quiet games of strategy and chance. A farming community, mostly, isn't it?"
"Well, if you mean actual families with land that still live off it, yes, a "farming community" might be what some would call it. Poor, would be another name. It's a hard place, that description no one argues with. The ones that still live here are just too stubborn to give up the land. And their children deserve a good education, don't they?"
"Of course, professor." Grace smiled again, and placed the tiniest speck of link into her mouth.
"I'm getting defensive, aren't I?" The older man sat back , took in a deep, fragrant breath of fresh foods and country air. He seemed to enjoy the air more than his old pipe back at the university, and seemed to grow another hour younger. He did look so much more relaxed, and fit, than he had 8 years ago when all his time was occupied with publishing "exploitable, new concepts of history and art," as he would put it. Now it was all about directing fresh, young minds - even if it meant, unfortunately, directing them out of the community to better, or at least more profitable, futures. "It's a wonderful place."
"But what does a small farming community need with a premiere historical professor in the bowels of a... a vet college, really?"
"Unkind, Grace! What does anyone need with a premiere historical professor anywhere, really?" The professor sighed. "It is true, I am THE liberal arts department in this school, but everyone needs to know their roots, their history. Solutions from the past prevent problems in the future, if people care to remember them. I teach more hard history than before, and try to direct my students into a variety of careers.
Grace quoted the professor's opening, and closing, "war memorial" lecture. "To learn about evil means you didn't work hard enough to prevent it. To capture evil means you are already too late. To prevent it is to move in its exact opposite direction."
"So what are you all doing here, Grace, talking to this old man? There is something deeply troubling you, though I don't know how traveling all this way and talking to me can help you?"
"Maybe I'm just passing through, professor. Going on a roundabout way to visit another friend. It's just nice meeting up with you again, trying to remember my old goals in a previous life. It's a sort of turning point... a decision I have to make."
The Professor looked at Grace, but did not press the issue. "Well, young lady, you should at least enjoy some of the sights of the land. The cities are fine, but you can explore them on your own. What I want to show you is our fame. The weather has been good lately. Would you care to go and see the famous countryside?"
"A quiet day of aimlessly wondering about sounds lovely right now. And the moors are quiet aren't they?"
"Oh yes, though the winds never stop. Wear something quite warm, Ms. Nakimura, and we'll make a day of it."
*******************
Gabriel sat in his study, wrapped in two sweaters and a sheep skin parka, complete with hood. He remembered longing for the day he could chuck out his decades old, rusting space heater, the main heating to his little back bedroom at the bookstore - the day he became The Famous Writer. Well, he certainly traded up from there. The rent's kinda high though, he thought as he looked at the amulet in its familiar place on the desk. Correction, his desk. (I just want to look at that old blasted heater right now, look at it and remember being warm.) There was hardly a place he could even plug it in at the castle, well, without worrying about overloading the entire place. Knight supposed what he was doing, his fate now, far outweighed a little creature discomfort, but spiritual fulfillment, blood destiny and all that just didn't seem to cut it tonight.
His (bad) writing often helped, individual creativity lifting him out of an unfamiliar sadness that lately crept in with other worries. How those worries have changed.
(Before I used to get depressed because I wasn't famous, and had no real justification for it all. Now I'm infamous, richer, and have all kinds of people depending on me, and I just want back what I had before...) That wasn't entirely true, but tonight it was.
He looked around his study - old, fragrant books resting in darkly grained shelves, beautiful family shields adorning the smooth stone walls, even his desk spoke of generations. He wondered about how many dark nights his uncle spent in this room, and the years ahead of him.
(I don't know if I can do it.) At first, the things he encountered were a dark fascination, excitement even in the discovery of physical darkness. He tried to understand these things, maybe even predict them so he could better defend himself. He had thought all his own darkness had been burned from him, so it was safe seeking after such remnants in himself. Wrong, kiddo. Very wrong.
Gracie had said she liked this room. Gracie. There was a gal who knew how to say things, if not what to say. All those heated exchanges, battles over nothing, maybe did save his sanity a little. There was something about fighting with her that made the rest of the world seem easier to take on. He really missed that right now. She'd probably tell him to quit whining, he had a CASTLE for Pete's sake, and then would scowl at him. There was a soft knock on the study door.
Gabriel slowly got up, feeling he had aged at least eight months just sitting at the desk, and opened the door. Gerde smiled and said that his young lawyer friend had bounded up the castle walk again, wanting to talk about some minor legal things, and his latest gore-fest. "I think he wants to be a horror writer, is it? Steward King?"
"Well, he's driven too long a way for an absolute rejection. I think he counts on that."
"I could just get the papers from him, and tell him you are too busy, or tired?"
"No, sometimes it's nice to see a little enthusiasm, even if it's not my own. Besides, maybe a bit of... Steward King would make me see that my situation really isn't all that bad, for a change."
******************
The historian and his former student stood looking over the moors at the valley below. Stunted trees, permanently crooked into the hills by fierce winds, seemed to welcome the strangers, pointing them toward home. Nakimura felt alive among this activity, though the winds were very mild and pleasant today. They walked off most of the morning, ate a few wild foodstuffs the professor had pointed out (though Gracie still remembered the sausages, and pranks), and were mostly content in the quiet of each other's company. Until now, she didn't feel compelled to speak much, though the harmony she felt around her begged it.
"Professor, what... do you have any theories on...hmmm."
"Ms. Nakimura," the professor chuckled slightly, "you were Never like this in the classroom. Just say whatever is on your mind."
"Well... what do you think... can I ask you about evil?" Grace rushed the words out hoping they might be misunderstood.
In his confusion, the doctor's smile dropped slightly, and Grace looked embarrassed.
"I mean, Ms. Nakimura, I have lots of theories... about everything. It's why I think my first wife left me. I'm just "plumb full" of theories, for what they are worth. I don't know how to begin. Why it exists?"
"No, not exactly. More about what it does to people. I mean, like its effects on someone's ... psyche? Oh, I don't know why I brought this up." Grace found a very interesting worn spot on the tip of her boot to look at - frustratedly.
"Is someone around you... Well, the subject is Evil, huh?" Doctor Rainsford turned the word over in his mind. "People who immerse themselves in evil, like law enforcement personnel, have to have a very strong personality even before deciding to take on such jobs. That is why they must learn the law, and procedure, in order not to get... confused. Even so, such jobs can get very depressing, or the thinking of people who take them, corrupted. It's a very hard thing to deal with daily, even the potential of meeting it. It certainly colors your view of the rest of the world very poorly. Are you thinking of dating a trial lawyer right now, Ms. Nakimura?"
Gracie smirked. "I mean, when would you know, even though someone is doing something good, something needed, that they should just stop?"
"Is this fellow one of those I.B.F. guys?" Grace looked at the man. "Oh, Grace. It's hard to say anything without more specifics."
"You wouldn't want them, professor," she said as she walked over to a lighter patch of moors that seemed to glisten in the warm sun. There was an interesting smell coming from that direction, actually very appetizing, and she noticed what looked like an abandoned basket of mushrooms, slightly cooked, drying in the heat.
*********************
Katherine's and Alex 's family were out in the moors too that day, but their search was much closer to home. They had no idea the children had gone so far, and even though they began their searches well before midnight, some even minorly trapping themselves in thicket and bog, they would never have found them in their blind panic. The mother was inconsolable and the searchers exhausted by the time Grace wondered what the little story behind the small, beautifully hand woven basket meant. She brought the basket and spilling contents over to Rainsford.
"Isn't this strange, professor?" She quickly looked around the clearing to see if the picker might be somewhere nearby.
"Not really, Ms. Nakimura. There are a lot of edible foods around this area. I showed you a few this morning."
"But why just leave all these here? It looks like quite a lot of work just to let waste. And mushroom picking is very exacting work, because it is so dangerous."
Rainsford looked more closely at what Grace held. It was not something cheaply made, nor its contents valueless. "Hmmm, this is true. These particular mushrooms are very distinct, though, and abundant when the weather conditions are right. See the outer orange ring around the outer cap. There are no other fungi around this area that have that mark except these. Still, it is a lot of pickings, and these seem partially cooked for some reason. Hmmm, it is very windy around here sometimes. I would say that perhaps they got tumbled away from whatever area the person was working in, except these seem very fresh and undamaged, and most of them are still inside the container."
Grace looked around again. (And such a tiny basket. Something a child could easily carry around.) She put the basket back on the moors, in case the picker ever decided to come back. They looked so strange sitting there, waiting. "Do you think we should look around a little, Michael? Just in case someone might be in trouble?"
Rainsford looked at the miles of lonely moors, listened for human voices, tried to decide which direction this small mystery may have come from. The path the winds took were always confusing, and changed constantly. "Perhaps a little, Ms. Nakimura. Perhaps."
Gabriel received the phone call around 10 p.m. that night. Grace was planning to call that day anyway, to tell Knight what a bad time she was having, and that he could have spent his Schattenjager money on a hundred year old bench or something instead. Instead, she was calling from a sorta "pub" or eating hall, a noisy one at that, and the atmosphere seemed agitated.
"What, Grace? I can hardly hear ya. Why did you have to call me from a bar?" He heard some sort of muttered reply, and then more shouting in the background. "A what? Missing children? That's not something I'm good at Gracie. There are local police far better at that than I am."
Grace growled an exasperated noise and began shouting into the phone. "I SAID, it's NOT SOMETHING the LOCAL POLICE might be GOOD AT LOOKING FOR!" She calmed down as a few closer patrons began looking in her direction. "Just Listen, don't talk, okay?" Grace tried to explain to Knight (and it was true, it was not fair because of all the noise) of the near riot that was happening around her because of what they had found on the moors. When Nakimura and Rainsford returned from their excursion, very tired and hungry from the long hike, they met an unusual crowd of people at the professor's favorite, and the small town's biggest, eating establishment. Someone was trying to gather a large search party for the children earlier in the day, and more people were told the news as the evening progressed. By the time Grace and Michael arrived, people were already going back and forth between the "meeting hall" and the search areas with bits of news and updates. Grace and Michael were able to grab some quick food from the bustling kitchen, and watch a little of the local news from the bar's television. All the real news they needed was around them, though. At first, people were just anxious, worried that the children were lost in the forest and exposed to the night. Some tried not to think about, though they did, the whispered possibility that their fate might be in more human hands. The bar was anxious, but not violently so, until Grace and Michael heard what the children were doing on the moors, and told of the seemingly innocent discovery they had made.
"But the children can't just be lost then!" one searcher exclaimed, "Because who would leave food when lost and hungry in dark woods?"
"Maybe something chased them from it?" another answered.
"Well, then, either the food would have been eaten or at least nosed at, and some... " the speaker's voice lowered, "...some bits of clothes would have been found nearby."
"Or the Cantainn Fireach chased them."
"The WHAT, Gracie?" Knight had started laughing.
"It doesn't seem funny on this side, Gab."
"Not funny? How?"
"Well, Singing Moors doesn't actually mean Songs, Gabriel. It means the sounds of battles. Like the Singing Sword, the sound it makes when it hits a shield."
"Oh, girl. You're wasting your vacation on this?" Nakimura heard the snickering.
"Well, how about those children, Knight?"
Gabriel stopped joking. "I don't think I can really do much there, Grace."
"Well, give me a day or two, and I bet I can convince you that you can."
***********************
Gabriel hung up the phone, and threw a copy of his latest published book across the room. The book's soft cover crumpled quietly against the room's hard walls. Not satisfied with this petty destruction, Knight began to sweep the work on his desk (and other, satisfyingly heavier objects) onto the study's floor, stopped, put his head heavily into his hands, and stared vacantly at the desk's dark grain. He heard Gerde coming up the stairs. At the top of the landing, Gerde could hear Knight shouting at her NOT to enter the rooms (heard through two heavily wooded doors) and wisely decided to turn away.
Gabriel began to think lately that if he could only stay in this room, isolated in the heart of a deserted castle, then at least Grace and others would be safe from it all. If he had just stayed away from them, do whatever business he had to do without their knowledge, then they wouldn't have a part in it, or his life. He never returned Mosley's calls (The Fricking Famous Snotty Writer who has No Time for his friends, as he was known to the cop now), and his grandmother only knew of the wonderful letters Gerde wrote her telling of his great life in Germany. He was even hoping to sell the bookstore, once Grace had her goals, her life, back in order. Maybe he could even let Gerde go, for it seemed such an unfair job (full of memories) for her now that his uncle, her love, was gone.
But now Grace had to go (it was suppose to be a vacation!) and involve herself again. Knight heard a soft tapping on the door. He didn't say anything as the door slowly opened.
"You should talk to people more, Herr Knight."
"Who should I talk to Gerde?" Knight said softly, and was surprised he expressed the thought at all.
"You cannot just stay in these rooms, Herr Knight. It is not good for the soul. And you will become worthless because of it." Gerde took a firm tone with the Shattenjager, but only met more silence. Looking around the mess of the room, and then at Gabriel, she remarked, "Well, I think if you are not going to make much use of this place, you should leave it for another," and shut the door.
Grace stood alone on the moors the following night. She borrowed a large oil lantern from some of the people in the village, and peered through its fussy light at the surrounding darkness. Somehow she felt that whatever it was that lived in these forests would be more likely to show itself to a lantern's glow, and a vulnerable presence. The people from town had already swept through this area during the day, and it was deserted now.
(Belief.) She tried to ask the townspeople more about the Cantainn Fireach, but they would not evoke that spirit by speaking about it. She looked up folklore myths in the college library, the largest library in the city, but it held very little specifics about singing spirits. "Belief in the impossible will lessen the shock." That was why she didn't bring the professor out with her. His disbelief would only get in the way, and asking him to do otherwise would be too much to expect right now. She held the light in front of her, willing the moors to sing. Silence.
She wondered again if the moor's noises could even be recorded, and touched her coat pocket to reassure herself that her bosses old tape recorder was still there. She walked further up the slope, glad for the small heat the oil lamp emitted as it warmed her hands.
I'm here, she thought to the winds. Sing for me.
A nightingale chirped overhead and startled her. Nakimura chided herself for being so nervous. After all, children had walked here, innocently gathering food for the evening meal. Her defenses were much more powerful than that of children. Maybe... maybe if I sang to the spirits? Were the children doing that at all as they walked through the forest? She began by humming a little, trying to think of something appropriate to sing. A phrase came to mind, something she heard a little about in the meeting hall that night.
"Amaid... amaid as a Cantainn Fireach," she sang in a quiet, lilting voice as she strode along. Grace cringed as she turned on the little recorder, hoping it wouldn't record her voice. "Amaid as a Cantainn Fireach"
A huge tree shook in front of her. Startled birds shrieked and crashed into the sky. A voice, in gaelic, swore at her, anger coming at her from all around.
"YOU ARE NOT ONE OF MINE!" the voice screamed. "Dare you call MY NAME!" There were noises of clashing all around her, though nothing in the woods moved now. A maddened horse neighed beside her, invisible, its hooves churning up the ground. She heard the sounds of arrows, still quivering as they struck invisible bodies to her right. Swords clanged with shields and too often sank into defenseless flesh before her.
"Would you join the moors, Stranger?" another voice seemed to laugh. Grace willed not to do so tonight, and ran.