Picking the Ballad's Bones (16 page)

"Oh, so you take the
credit for every time we've been
able
to
escape from a trap you've gotten us
into? Is that it?" Anna Mae asked.

"You
do
see, then, don't you?" Torchy
beamed approvingly. "Why, I've been like a fairy godmother to you,
a guardian angel, a—"

Gussie's cough erupted and continued
for a few seconds as she looked up over her glasses at
Torchy.

"Well, I suppose there's
no sense in getting sloppy about it. But I've been a peach and I do
think you should
trust
me when I tell you that while I can see where you'd
want
to do this thing
auld Mike's set up, I don't
think
it's
a very good idea and I
don't
think you know
what you're letting yourselves in for. More tea, Willie,
luv?"

"Sure."

"Like I said, you'll
only
have
seven
years—"

"What's this seven-year jazz?" Brose
demanded.

"Why, luv, when you put yourself under
an enchantment and oblige yourself, so to speak, to Fairie, it's
always seven years, didn't you know that?"

"He's a bluesman really," Julianne
apologized for him. "He's not really into the Celtic
stuff."

"Oh. I do see. Well, then,
I'm very glad I've got a chance to explain a few things to you.
Seven years is quite the common contract unless, of course, you do
something
to make it permanent and you
certainly wouldn't want to do that."

"Why not?"

"Well,
darling,
think about it! They did
not make songs that lasted for hundreds of years out of days of
long, dreary peace and quiet or the contented moo of the livestock.
Ballads are full of treachery, murder, lost
love
,
rape,
war, etcetera, and in order for you to do what Sam Hawthorne and
this implement of his want you to do, you'll have your hands full
in seven years going into a new persona just long enough to live
out the ballad situation, claim it for your own, and emerge into a
new one. The whole scenario is perfect
hell and
there are so few of you to
do it."

"There's Faron and Ellie," Gussie
reminded her.

She smiled a phony, society-lady
smile, lips-up-lips-down. "Sorry, dear. They're out of the picture.
My minions took care of them back at Abbotsford. Besides, they
didn't hear the tune Michael Scott played, and you'll find you
can't really teach it, you know. Spells can be like
that."

Sir Walter sighed. "My
Lady, Your Majesty,
you
burned my Abbotsford?"

"Don't be such a puppy,
Wattie dear. Grow up. You're dead. You don't need a house. If you
want to haunt something you can haunt the ruins. Much more
appropriate anyway. And I may be a tad more simpatico to this
operation than my bosses really like, but I must do my job
competently, don't you see? I couldn't allow any of the printed
collections to fall into your hands or it would be as much as my
job is worth. And I have
no
desire to be busted to pitchfork patrol. Plays
perfect
hell
with
one's manicure."

"But if you destroyed all the
collections and we have to go to the source to reclaim the songs,
then we don't have any choice but to do what the Wizard said if we
want to get the songs back, do we?" Julianne asked.

"No. You don't. Actually,
you haven't got any choice anyway. It's the tea, you see. Water's
from the river in Fairie and I'm afraid boiling doesn't do a thing
to the
enchanted quality. Once you drink
it you're into me for the seven years. Sorry. Part of the job. Of
course, I could just take you on for seven years and you wouldn't
have to do the musical enchantment bit. We'd have lots of fun. Oh,
I don't have much in the way of jeweled underground realms anymore
and a court and such, but I have plenty of other folks at my
command. Probably most of them are motes of my former subjects,
Michael Scott would say. People who still want to get away from it
all with a little glamourie—these days they find it in a bottle or
a syringe or a dab of fairy dust rather than by falling asleep on
some knowe or the other—and some of them look for it in sex or try
to win it, but they're all my subjects, you see. You, Willie, have
always been, though without the special allegiance you'd owe me if
you went the route I'm proposing, and you too, Brose, before you
broke faith with me. Juli has been looking in all the wrong places
though she would have come around sooner or later, I've faith, with
a little nudge in the right direction. You, Anna Mae, were going to
choose one of the other routes—in the ballad days, they'd send you
to Bedlam the way you've been carrying on and you'd have gotten
worse by the time we were done with you, especially after your dear
friends in the capital had you committed for all of your strange
delusions and hallucinations, whether you had them or not—but then,
you see, given proper medication and stimulus, you really
would
have had them.
I've grown very fond of you all and I wouldn't be too taxing a
mistress and you'd get to do things you already like—just no songs
and no stories of any sort, I'm afraid, except for certain
orchestrated misdirections in a good cause."

"I don't think this seven years at
finding ballads sounds all that bad," Brose said.

"It's
no longer than it would take you to get a doctorate in
folklore if you had to start as a freshman in a BA program," Juli
said. "And it is what we started out to do.
It's
not like it would be
real"

"Oh, it's real, okay,
ducky." Torchy smiled the lips-up-lips-down unpleasant little smile
again. "You'll see if
one of you is fool
enough to try it—your body is gone and it doesn't come back unless
and until you've done all your gathering—and followed all of the
rules and regulations, of course. If you slip up, well, then, you
stay there and all of your little motes get to come back as
somebody else—and I promise you, they'll be so scattered even your
best friends would never want to know the people you'll come back
in. As for that little spark the Wizard was so fond of, why, if you
break the rules that's forfeit to me, of course. And you've all
heard the ballads. I needn't tell you what deliciously gruesome
things are apt to happen to your bodies."

"The Wizard didn't say anything about
any rules," Anna Mae said.

Torchy smiled again. "My dear, that's
because we're playing by mine. The tea water, you know."

"And just what might those be?" Gussie
asked.

"Oh, they're not
complicated. It's just that you will only come to as the ballad
character at the moment that the situation is happening—as it truly
happened. Oh, and that brings me to the last little rule. It's my
favorite and very simple really. You'll find that a lot of these
situations boil down to two things—sex and death. If you get
laid
or
murdered,
you lose, game's mine. You have to get out just before either of
those things happens, or come in just after they happen to the
character, but not with you—er—
in
character. Clear?"

"Not especially," Anna Mae said
antagonistically.

"Good. Then you do see that it's much
more sensible to take me up on my proposition. More tea? In for a
penny, in for a pound, as they say. Oh, yes, there is one more
thing. Riddles. You'll have to answer any riddles put to you
correctly or again. you lose."

"Is there any way we
can
avoid
losing?" Willie asked.

Sir Walter's ghost cleared
his throat. "It is customary, Your Ladyship, to give some sort of
magical encouragement or enabling device to folk on a difficult
quest. You were kind enough, though you forbade True Thomas to eat
or drink or speak to any others while in your realm, to provide him
with earthly food and drink and to speak
to
him
yourself. You've made it much more difficult for these folk.
Have mercy, lady, for you once loved music as well as
they."

The woman in green first
frowned, then looked thoughtful. "Your appeal strikes, if you will
pardon the expression, the right chord with me, Wattie. Very well.
Though I know
I'll
get in hot water for being such a softie.
I'll
tell you what. For every song
each of you survives collecting, I'll throw in seven other
associated ballads, free of charge. Now that couldn't be any
fairer, could it?"

Sir Walter cleared his throat. "It
raises the incentive, lady, but 'tis not the sort of thing tae help
them survive the task."

"You
do
drive a hard bargain, but then, I
forget, you were a lawyer while alive," Torchy said, smiling a
brittle but fond smile. "Okeydoke then. Let me think. An escape
clause. Oh, I've got it. Very well. Here it is. You see the extra
lengths of string at the tuning pegs, curled into little rings when
last Mr. Sam Hawthorne strung those strings that always stay in
tune? You will not be able to take the banjo with you to the other
side, but if you decide to go, when you have played the first note
of the tune, you may clip off one ring each and wear it on your
middle finger
where it will
remain while you are within the ballad. If you
find yourself in one of the forbidden situations, you have but to
twist the ring three times widdershins around your middle finger
and the string will sound the tune that will take you to the next
ballad. What could be fairer?" she asked, her smile deepening to a
dazzle beamed in Gussie's and Sir Walter's direction. "I think that
takes care of all the details. The caretaker will be here at ten.
That's three hours from now which is more than ample time to make
up your minds.
I'll
be back with the car then to pick up any of you who have been
sensible."

CHAPTER 16

Gussie and the musicians
sat stunned for several moments listening to the stutter of the
engine as the woman they knew as Torchy started
the
van Terry Pruitt had
loaned
them
and
drove away in it.

Afterward, the cottage was
so quiet Gussie heard the tick of Anna Mae's watch. No one looked
at anyone else for a few seconds, each person staring at the pink
and white tablecloth and at his or
her
teacup.

"Well, are we going to sit
here for the three hours or use what we know and do what we came
here to do?"
Anna Mae
demanded
.
By now,
Gussie knew her well enough
to
know that Anna Mae got angry mostly because when
she didn't know what else to do, getting angry gave her the energy
to move.

"Be my guest,
little
darlin'," Willie said,
handing her the banjo, "I got to give this a
little more thought myself before I, personally, go getting myself
exploded
into
motes."

"Thanks, MacKai,"
Anna
Mae replied. "It's
good to be able to count on you for such a positive
attitude when
there's
something tough that needs doing."

But
Willie's back was turned to her, since he had risen to his
feet and started pacing away from the table. So he didn't see that
when Anna Mae took the banjo from him, her hands were not quite
steady, and she set it on her lap to keep it still and strummed it
in a general way once or twice to calm herself. Brose watched
stone-faced and Julianne with wide, agonized eyes as Anna Mae took
a deep breath, placed her third finger on the third fret of the
third string, and picked the string.

"Anna Mae—the string ring," Julianne
reminded her.

Brose tightened his lips and Willie,
pacing back toward them, looked as if he was trying hard not to
bolt.

Gussie plunged into her
Mexican basket bag and pulled out a nail clipper, handing it to
Anna Mae, who clipped off the first little circle of extra E string
at the peg and wound it around the middle finger of her
left
hand.

She closed her eyes and took another
breath so deep her skinny little chest swelled like a frog's and
then she picked the tune, what would have been the chorus, what
would have been the verse, and when nothing happened, she played
the chorus and verse again, and yet again. Brose let all the air
out of him as she shrugged with bewilderment and handed the banjo
to him. He was still looking at the wire string ring on the left
hand in which she'd held the neck as she handed him the banjo when
he realized that there was no finger there anymore, and then no
ring, and no Anna Mae.

Brose held the banjo and kept looking
at where Anna Mae had been, as if he expected her to come back.
Tears welled up suddenly in Juli's eyes and rolled down her cheeks
and Gussie dug a minipack of Kleenex out of the basket bag and
silently handed Juli one, then blew her own nose. "It's okay,
Gussie," Juli said sniffing. "It's just—wow—did you feel that shock
wave run through the ether when Anna Mae disappeared?"