Moonlight & Vines (37 page)

Zia has a ring with a small spinning disc on it. Painted on the disc is a psychedelic coil that goes spiraling down into infinity. She keeps spinning it and the two of them stare down into the faraway place at the center of the spiral until the disc slows down, almost stops. Then Zia gives it another flick with her fingernail, and the coil goes spiraling down again.

“Where'd you get this anyway?” Maida asks.

Zia shrugs. “Can't remember. Found it somewhere.”

“In someone's pocket.”

“And you never did?”

Maida grins. “Just wish I'd seen it first, that's all.”

They watch the disc some more, content.

“What do you think it's like down there?” Zia says after awhile. “On the other side of the spiral.”

Maida has to think about that for a moment. “Same as here,” she finally announces, then winks. “Only dizzier.”

They giggle, leaning into each other, tottering back and forth on their perch, crow girls, can't be touched, can't hardly be seen, except someone's standing down there on the sidewalk, looking up through the falling snow, his worried expression so comical it sets them off on a new round of giggles.

“Careful now!” he calls up to them. He thinks they're on drugs—they can tell. “You don't want to—”

Before he can finish, they hold hands and let themselves fall backward, off the fence.

“Oh, Christ!”

He jumps, gets a handhold on the top of the fence and hauls himself up. But when he looks over, over and down, way down, there's nothing to be seen. No girls lying at the bottom of that big hole in the ground, nothing at all. Only the falling snow. It's like they were never there.

His arms start to ache and he lowers himself back down the fence, lets
go, bending his knees slightly to absorb the impact of the last couple of feet. He slips, catches his balance. It seems very still for a moment, so still he can hear an odd rhythmical whispering sound. Like wings. He looks up, but there's too much snow coming down to see anything. A cab comes by, skidding on the slick street, and he blinks. The street's full of city sounds again, muffled, but present. He hears the murmuring conversation of a couple approaching him, their shoulders and hair white with snow. A snowplow a few streets over. A distant siren.

He continues along his way, but he's walking slowly now, trudging through the drifts, not thinking so much of two girls sitting on top of a fence as remembering how, when he was a boy, he used to dream that he could fly.

After fiddling a little more with her sketch, Jilly finally put her charcoal down. She made herself a cup of herbal tea with the leftover hot water in the kettle and joined Geordie where he was sitting on the sofa, watching the snow come down. It was warm in the loft, almost cozy compared to the storm on the other side of the windowpanes, or maybe because of the storm. Jilly leaned back on the sofa, enjoying the companionable silence for a while before she finally spoke.

“How do you feel after seeing the crow girls?” she asked.

Geordie turned to look at her. “What do you mean, how do I feel?”

“You know, good, bad . . . different . . .”

Geordie smiled. “Don't you mean ‘indifferent?' ”

“Maybe.” She picked up her tea from the crate where she'd set it and took a sip. “Well?” she asked when he didn't continue.

“Okay. How do I feel? Good, I suppose. They're fun, they make me smile. In fact, just thinking of them now makes me feel good.”

Jilly nodded thoughtfully as he spoke. “Me, too. And something else as well.”

“The different,” Geordie began. He didn't quite sigh. “You believe those stories of Jack's, don't you?”

“Of course. And you don't?”

“I'm not sure,” he replied, surprising her.

“Well, I think these crow girls were in the Cyberbean for a purpose,” Jilly said. “Like in that rhyme about crows.”

Geordie got it right away. “Two for mirth.”

Jilly nodded. “Heather needed some serious cheering up. Maybe even
something more. You know how when you start feeling low, you can get on this descending spiral of depression . . . everything goes wrong, things get worse, because you expect them to?”

“Fight it with the power of positive thinking, I always say.”

“Easier said than done when you're feeling that low. What you really need at a time like that is something completely unexpected to kick you out of it and remind you that there's more to life than the hopeless, grey expanse you think is stretching in every direction. What Colin Wilson calls absurd good news.”

“You've been talking to my brother.”

“It doesn't matter where I got it from—it's still true.”

Geordie shook his head. “I don't buy the idea that Maida and Zia showed up just to put your friend in a better mood. Even bird people can get a craving for a cup of coffee, can't they?”

“Well, yes,” Jilly said. “But that doesn't preclude their being there for Heather as well. Sometimes when a person needs something badly enough, it just comes to them. A personal kind of steam-engine time. You might not be able to articulate what it is you need, you might not even know you need something—at least, not at a conscious level—but the need's still there, calling out to whatever's willing to listen.”

Geordie smiled. “Like animal spirits.”

“Crow girls.”

Geordie shook his head. “Drink your tea and go to bed,” he told her. “I think you need a good night's sleep.”

“But—”

“It was only a coincidence. Things don't always have a meaning. Sometimes they just happen. And besides, how do you even know they had any effect on Heather?”

“I could just tell. And don't change the subject.”

“I'm not.”

“Okay,” Jilly said. “But don't you see? It doesn't matter if it was a coincidence or not. They still showed up when Heather needed them. It's more of that ‘small world, spooky world' stuff Professor Dapple goes on about. Everything's connected. It doesn't matter if we can't see how, it's still all connected. You know, chaos theory and all that.”

Geordie shook his head, but he was smiling. “Does it ever strike you as weird when something Bramley's talked up for years suddenly becomes an acceptable element of scientific study?”

“Nothing strikes me as truly weird,” Jilly told him. “There's only stuff I haven't figured out yet.”

Heather barely slept that night. For the longest time she simply couldn't sleep, and then when she finally did, she was awake by dawn. Wide awake, but heavy with an exhaustion that came more from heartache than lack of sleep.

Sitting up against the headboard, she tried to resist the sudden tightness in her chest, but that sad, cold wasteland swelled inside her. The bed seemed depressingly huge. She didn't so much miss Peter's presence as feel adrift in the bed's expanse of blankets and sheets. Adrift in her life. Why was it he seemed to have no trouble carrying on when the simple act of getting up in the morning felt as though it would require far more energy than she could ever hope to muster?

She stared at the snow swirling against her window, not at all relishing the drive into town on a morning like this. If anything, it was coming down harder than it had been last night. All it took was the suggestion of snow and everybody in the city seemed to forget how to drive, never mind common courtesy or traffic laws. A blizzard like this would snarl traffic and back it up as far as the mountains.

She sighed, supposing it was just as well she'd woken so early since it would take her at least an extra hour to get downtown today.

Up, she told herself, and forced herself to swing her feet to the floor and rise. A shower helped. It didn't really ease the heartache, but the hiss of the water made it easier to ignore her thoughts. Coffee, when she was dressed and had brewed a pot, helped more, though she still winced when Janice came bounding into the kitchen.

“It's a snow day!” she cried. “No school. They just announced it on the radio. The school's closed, closed, closed!”

She danced about in her flannel nightie, pirouetting in the small space between the counter and the table.

“Just yours,” Heather asked, “or Casey's, too?”

“Mine, too,” Casey replied, following her sister into the room.

Unlike Janice, she was maintaining her cool, but Heather could tell she was just as excited. Too old to allow herself to take part in Janice's spontaneous celebration, but young enough to be feeling giddy with the unexpected holiday.

“Good,” Heather said. “You can look after your sister.”

“Mom!”
Janice protested. “I'm not a baby.”

“I know. It's just good to have someone older in the house when—”

“You can't be thinking of going in to work today,” Casey said.

“We could do all kinds of stuff,” Janice added. “Finish decorating the house. Baking.”

“Yeah,” Casey said, “all the things we don't seem to have time for anymore.”

Heather sighed. “The trouble is,” she explained, “the real world doesn't work like school. We don't get snow days.”

Casey shook her head. “That is
so
unfair.”

The phone rang before Heather could agree.

“I'll bet it's your boss,” Janice said as Heather picked up the phone. “Calling to tell you it's a snow day for you, too.”

Don't I wish, Heather thought. But then what would she do at home all day? It was so hard being here, even with the girls and much as she loved them. Everywhere she turned, something reminded her of how the promises of a good life had turned into so much ash. At least work kept her from brooding.

She brought the receiver up to her ear and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Hello?”

“I've been thinking,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “About last night.”

Heather had to smile. Wasn't that so Jilly, calling up first thing in the morning as though they were still in the middle of last night's conversation.

“What about last night?” she said.

“Well, all sorts of stuff. Like remembering a perfect moment in the past and letting it carry you through a hard time now.”

If only, Heather thought. “I don't have a moment that perfect,” she said.

“I sort of got that feeling,” Jilly told her. “That's why I think they were a message—a kind of perfect moment now that you can use the same way.”

“What
are
you talking about?”

“The crow girls. In the café last night.”

“The crow . . .” It took her a moment to realize what Jilly meant. Their complexions had been dark enough so she supposed they could have been Indians. “How do you know what tribe they belonged to?”

“Not Crow, Native American,” Jilly said, “but crow, bird people.”

Heather shook her head as she listened to what Jilly went on to say, for all that only her daughters were here to see the movement. Glum looks had replaced their earlier excitement when they realized the call wasn't from her boss.

“Do you have any idea how improbable all of this sounds?” she asked when Jilly finished. “Life's not like your paintings.”

“Says who?”

“How about common sense?”

“Tell me,” Jilly said. “Where did common sense ever get you?”

Heather sighed. “Things don't happen just because we want them to,” she said.

“Sometimes that's
exactly
why they happen,” Jilly replied. “They happen because we need them to.”

“I don't live in that kind of a world.”

“But you could.”

Heather looked across the kitchen at her daughters once more. The girls were watching her, trying to make sense out of the one-sided conversation they were hearing. Heather wished them luck. She was hearing both sides and that didn't seem to help at all. You couldn't simply reinvent your world because you wanted to. Things just were how they were.

“Just think about it,” Jilly added. “Will you do that much?”

“I. . .”

That bleak landscape inside Heather seemed to expand, growing so large there was no way she could contain it. She focused on the faces of her daughters. She remembered the crow girls in the café. There was so much innocence in them all, daughters and crow girls. She'd been just like them once and she knew it wasn't simply nostalgia coloring her memory. She knew there'd been a time when she lived inside each particular day, on its own and by itself, instead of trying to deal with all the days of her life at once, futilely attempting to reconcile the discrepancies and mistakes.

“I'll try,” she said into the phone.

They said their goodbyes and Heather slowly cradled the receiver.

“Who was that, Mom?” Casey asked.

Heather looked out the window. The snow was still falling, muffling the world. Covering its complexities with a blanket as innocent as the hope she saw in her daughters' eyes.

“Jilly,” she said. She took a deep breath, then smiled at them. “She was calling to tell me that today really is a snow day.”

The happiness that flowered on their faces helped ease the tightness in her chest. The grey landscape waiting for her there didn't go away, but for some reason, it felt less profound. She wasn't even worried about what her boss would say when she called in to tell him she wouldn't be in today.

Crow girls can move like ghosts. They'll slip into your house when you're not home, sometimes when you're only sleeping, go walking spirit-soft through your rooms and hallways, sit in your favorite chair, help themselves to cookies and beer, borrow a trinket or two which they'll mean to return and usually do. It's not breaking and entering so much as simple curiosity. They're worse than cats.

Privacy isn't in their nature. They don't seek it and barely understand the concept. Personal property is even more alien. The idea of ownership—that one can lay proprietary claim to a piece of land, an object, another person or creature—doesn't even register.