Newford Stories by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online Page A

ask my father.”
    Jilly gave a theatrical sigh. “We’re having
far too long a conversation about fruit and nuts, and whether or
not they have faeries, and not nearly enough about great, huge,
cryptic parliaments of crows.”
    “It would be a murder, actually,” the
professor put in.
    “Whatever. I think it’s wonderfully
mysterious.”
    “At this time of the day,” Meran said,
“they’d be gathering together to return to their roosts.”
    Jilly shook her head. “I’m
not so sure. But if that is the case, then they’ve decided to roost in your
yard.”
    She turned back to look out over the
leaf-covered lawn that lay under the trees, planning some witty
observation that would make them see just how supremely marvelous
it all was, but the words died unborn in her throat as she watched
a large, bald-headed Buddha of a man step onto the Kelledys’ walk.
He was easily the largest human being she’d ever seen—she couldn’t
guess how many hundreds of pounds he must weigh—but oddly enough he
moved with the supple grace of a dancer a fraction his size. His
dark suit was obviously expensive and beautifully tailored, and his
skin was as black as a raven’s wing. As he came up the walk, the
crows became agitated and flew around him, filling the air, their
hoarse cries growing so loud that the noise resounded inside the
house with the windows closed.
    But neither the enormous
man, nor the actions of the crows, was what had dried up the words
in Jilly’s throat. It was the limp figure of a slender man that the
dapper Buddha carried in his arms. In sharp contrast, he was
poorly dressed for the brisk weather, wearing only a raggedy shirt
and jeans so worn they had almost no colour left in them. His face
and arms were pale as alabaster; even his braided hair was
white—yet another striking contrast to the man carrying him. She
experienced something familiar yet strange when she gazed on his
features, like taking out a favourite old sweater she hadn’t worn
in years, and feeling at once quite unacquainted with it and
affectionately comfortable when she put it on.
    “That’s no crow,” Cerin said, having stepped
up to the window to stand beside Jilly’s chair.
    Meran joined him, then quickly went to the
door to let the new visitor in. The professor rose from the sofa
when she ushered the man and his burden into the room, waving a
hand toward the seat he’d just quit.
    “Put him down here,” he said.
    The black man nodded his thanks. Stepping
gracefully across the room, he knelt and carefully laid the man out
on the sofa.
    “It’s been a long time, Lucius,” the
professor said as the man straightened up. “You look
different.”
    “I woke up.”
    “Just like that?”
    Lucius gave him a slow smile. “No. A
red-haired storyteller gave me a lecture about responsibility, and
I realized she was right. It had been far too long since I’d
assumed any.”
    He turned his attention to the Kelledys.
    “I need a healing,” he said.
    There was something formal in the way he
spoke the words, like a subject might speak to his ruler, though
there was nothing remotely submissive in his manner.
    “There are no debts between us,” Cerin
said.
    “But now—”
    “Nonsense,” Meran told him. “We’ve never
turned away someone in need of help before and we don’t mean to
start now. But you’ll have to tell us how he was injured.”
    She knelt down on the floor beside the sofa
as she spoke. Reaching out, she touched her middle finger to the
center of his brow, then lifted her hand and moved it down his
torso, her palm hovering about an inch above him.
    “I know little more than you at this point,”
Lucius said.
    “Do you at least know who he is?” Cerin
asked.
    Lucius shook his head. “The crow girls found
him lying by a dumpster behind the Williamson Street Mall. They
tried to heal him, but all they could manage was to keep him from
slipping further away. Maida said he was laid low by ill will.”
    Jilly’s ears