Spirits in the Wires by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online Page B

first book,
How to Make the Wind Blow,
I suppose. Today I can’t imagine anything less mystical or learned, but she had a kind face and I was a newborn seven-year-old when I first met her. No doubt she was an appropriate shape to capture the interest of that child I was, and the immediate affection I had for her carries on to this day, for all that she’s just so … so silly-looking.
    But I’m getting ahead of myself.
    The first time I opened my eyes, I was this scruffy little girl in a raggedy black dress, skin the colour of a frappuccino, eyes the blue of cornflowers, red hair falling in a spill of tangles and snarls to my shoulders. I was in the field behind the Riddell house. I sat up and looked at the window that was Christy and Geordie’s bedroom. Paddy, their older brother, was already in juvie.
    I knew who they were. I knew everything Christy knew up until the moment he cast me off. After that our lives were separate and we had our own experiences, although I still knew a lot more about him than he did of me.
    He didn’t even remember casting me out. That came years later, when he was reading about shadows in some book and decided to try to call his own back to him.
    But I remembered. And I knew him. I’d follow him around sometimes, until I got bored. But I always came back, fascinated by this boy who once was me. Or I was once him. Whatever.
    When he started keeping a journal, I pored over the various volumes, sitting at the shabby little desk beside his bed, reading and rereading what he’d written, trying to understand who he was, and how he was so different from me.
    He woke once or twice to see me there. I’d look back at him, not saying a word. Closing the book, I’d return it to its drawer, turn off the desk light, and let myself fade back into the borderlands. I’d read later in his journal how he thought he’d only been dreaming.
    But that first night I didn’t go into the house. I was too mad at him for casting me out of the life we’d had together.
    How dare he? How
dare
he just cast me off. Like he was putting out the trash. Like I was the trash. I’d show him what trash was.
    Little fists clenched, I took a step toward the house, planning I don’t know what—throw a rock through his window, maybe—but I accidentally stumbled out of this world and into the borderlands.
    Where Mumbo was waiting for me.
    Remember how easily distracted you could be as a kid? Oh, sorry. I guess you don’t. Well, take my word for it. You can be in a high temper one moment, laughing your head off the next.
    So I stood there, blinking in this twilit world that I’d suddenly found myself in, too surprised to be angry anymore. I can’t tell you how I knew I’d stepped from one world to another, I just did. The air was different. The light was different. The biggest clue, I guess, was how the Riddell house at the far end of the field that I’d been walking toward wasn’t there anymore.
    I suppose I might have gotten scared, though I’ve never scared easily, except that was when Mumbo showed up.
    I watched this brown ball come bouncing across the meadow toward me. When she stopped herself with her little spindly limbs and I saw her face, the big kind eyes twinkling, the easy smile so welcoming, I clapped my hands and grinned back.
    â€œHello, little girl,” the brown bail said.
    â€œYou can talk.”
    â€œOf course I can talk.”
    â€œI’ve never heard a ball talk before.”
    â€œThere are a thousand things and more that you have yet to experience,” she said. “If you spend less time being surprised by them, you’ll have more time to appreciate them.”
    â€œAre you going to be my friend?” I asked.
    â€œI hope so. And your teacher, too, if you’d like. My name’s Mumbo.”
    â€œI’m Christy,” I said, then realized that wasn’t true anymore, so I quickly