Tapping the Dream Tree by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online Page A

win, you’ll give me a kiss?”
    â€œA kiss?”
    He shrugged. “And if you enjoy it, maybe you’ll give me something more.”
    â€œAnd if I win?”
    â€œWell, what’s the one thing you’d like most in the world?”
    Staley smiled. “Tell you the truth, I don’t want for much of anything. I keep my expectations low—makes for a simple life.”
    â€œI’m impressed,” he said. “Most people have a hankering for something they can’t have. You know, money, or fame, or a true love. Maybe living forever.”
    â€œDon’t see much point in living forever,” Staley told him. “Come a time when everybody you care about would be long gone, but there you’d be, still trudging along on your own.”
    â€œWell, sure. But—”
    â€œAnd as for money and fame, I think they’re pretty much overrated. I don’t really need much to be happy and I surely don’t need anybody nosing in on my business.”
    â€œSo what about a true love?”
    â€œWell, now,” Staley said. “Seems to me true love’s something that comes to you, not something you can take or arrange.”
    â€œAnd if it doesn’t?”
    â€œThat’d be sad, but you make do. I don’t know how other folks get by, but I’ve got my music. I’ve got my friends.”
    The stranger regarded her with an odd, frustrated look.
    â€œYou can’t tell me there’s nothing you don’t have a yearning for,” he said. “Everybody wants for something.”
    â€œYou mean for myself, or in general, like for there to be no more hurt in the world or the like?”
    â€œFor yourself,” he said.
    Staley shook her head. “Nothing I can’t wait for it to find me in its own good time.” She put her fiddle up under her chin. “So what do you want to play?”
    But the stranger pulled his string strap back over his head and started to put his guitar away.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” Staley asked. “We don’t need some silly contest just to play a few tunes.”
    The stranger wouldn’t look at her.
    â€œI’ve kind of lost my appetite for music,” he said, snapping closed the clasps on his case.
    He stood up, his gaze finally meeting hers, and she saw something else in those clear blue eyes of his, a dark storm of anger, but a hurting, too. A loneliness that seemed so out of place, given his easygoing manner. A man like him, he should be friends with everyone he met, she’d thought. Except…
    â€œI know who you are,” she said.
    She didn’t know how she knew, but it came to her, like a gauze slipping from in front of her eyes, like she’d suddenly shucked the dreamy quality of the otherworld and could see true once more.
    â€œYou don’t look nothing like what I expected,” she added.
    â€œYeah, well, you’ve had your fun. Now let me be.”
    But something her grandmother had told her once came back to her. “I tell you,” she’d said. “If I was ever to meet the devil, I’d kill him with kindness. That’s the one thing old Lucifer can’t stand.”
    Staley grinned, remembering.
    â€œWait a minute,” she said. “Don’t go off all mad.”
    The devil glared at her.
    â€œOr at least let me give you that kiss before you go.”
    He actually backed away from her at that.
    â€œWhat?” Staley asked. “Suddenly you don’t fancy me anymore?”
    â€œYou put up a good front,” he said. “I didn’t make you for such an accomplished liar.”
    Staley shook her head. “I never lied to you. I really am happy with things the way they are. And anything I don’t have, I don’t mind waiting on.”
    The devil spat on the grass at her feet, turned once around, and was gone, vanishing with a small
whuft
of displaced air.
    That’s your best parting shot?