The next time she went to the library, she decided, she’d pick up a book on dreaming. Maybe she should just do that now. Dream herself walking over to the Lower Crowsea Public Library and checking out a book. She could dream herself reading it and who knows what her subconscious would make it say. Except, knowing her luck, she’d also dream that the librarian at this time of night—never mind that in the real world the library wasn’t open past nine—was Professor Dapple’s unpleasant manservant. He’d probably hit her on the head with the book, rather than let her take it out.
She became aware of a sound then, realizing that she’d been hearing it for some time—it just hadn’t registered until now. Tick-tappa-tappa-tick-tick-tappa-tick ...
It was like the sound of sticks, rhythmically clacking against each other. Simple wooden clappers. It was odd to hear them here, ticking and tapping so clearly in the hush that the snowfall had placed upon the city.
... tick-tick-tappa-tick-tappa-tappa ...
She hesitated for a moment, then followed the strange sound. It led her down the driveway where Kathy had first seen Paddyjack—now that she had read Kathy’s story, the little man would always be Paddyjack to her. The snow was even deeper here, in between the buildings, and she found herself wishing for the snowshoes that she used to wear back home on the island when she went exploring in the winter fields. As it was, she made her slow way down to the end of the driveway to where a ramshackle garage leaned precariously against its neighbor. In the summer it was overhung with grapevines; tonight it was the heavy snowfall that blurred its shape.
Still following the curious tick-tappa-ticking, she slogged through the narrow path between the two garages and out onto the old carriage lane that lay behind the buildings of Waterhouse Street, separating its properties from the ones on the street one block north. The lane was choked with thigh-high drifts, but Izzy forced her way through them until the lane took her to just behind the building where she and Kathy lived.
Thinking of the little creature from her painting as she had been earlier, she wasn’t at all surprised to find that it was him making the tick-tappa sound. He was crouched up on the fire escape beside her bedroom window, tapping the knobby twiglike fingers of his right hand against the forearm of his left arm.
The railings of the fire escape had all been festooned with torn lengths of long narrow strips of cloth that seemed to have been dyed from a palette of bright primary and secondary colors. Red and yellow and blue. Orange and green and violet. Attached to the fire escape, they were like the streamers of some Maypole gone all askew, fluttering and dancing in the wind as if they were actually keeping time to the strange, almost melodic rhythm that Paddyjack was calling up, fingers rap-a-tapping against his arm.
Tick-tappa-tappa-tick-tick-tappa-tick ...
Izzy was enchanted—by both the scene and the sound. She felt just as if she’d stepped into some winter fairy tale, courtesy of her own and Kathy’s imaginations, rather than the more traditional ones collected by Lang or Grimm. The little treeskin’s presence seemed all the more precious for being here in the middle of the city, with the snowy winds blowing and the streets all hushed except for the lovely music he woke, fingers on limb.
... tick-tick-tappa-tick-tappa-tappa ...
Now if she could only figure out what he was doing. Though why should he have to be doing anything? she immediately asked herself: Couldn’t what he was doing be as natural as birdsong in the spring, the cicada in summer, the geese flying overhead on a crisp autumn day?
Granted, she thought. But then why appear outside her bedroom window? Why the ribbons?
She wondered if he’d talk to her—if he could even talk. Perhaps the only sound he could make was the rhythm he played on his body.
There was only one way to find out.
The small metal gate leading into the backyard behind her building was too bogged down in snowdrifts to open properly, so she moved toward the short chainlink fence separating the lane from the yard, planning to climb over it. And then, hands on the metal bar that ran along the top of the fence, she saw him again—the little hooded figure with his crossbow, creeping along the side of the building where the snow was less deep.
Not this time, she thought, hauling herself over the fence. Her heartbeat went into double-time as she floundered through the snow. She opened her mouth to cry out a warning to Paddyjack, but before she could make a sound, his rescue was taken out of her hands.
Another figure appeared behind the first, leaping upon the hooded man and wresting the crossbow from his grip. It was John, Izzy realized, as he tossed the crossbow into the deep snow of the backyard.
The hooded figure threw a punch at him, but John easily deflected the blow. He struck back, dropping the man to his knees.
The whole scuffle took place in a strange silence. When John had leapt on the hooded man, Paddyjack had left off his tick-tappa-tapping. Now he clambered quickly down the fire escape. The snow didn’t seem to slow either him or John down. It was almost as though they could walk over its surface, they moved with such ease.
“John!” Izzy cried, when she realized that the two were leaving.
He turned to look at her and the coldness in his eyes struck a deeper chill in Izzy than might have any amount of wind and snow. He held her gaze for a long moment before he turned away again. Taking Paddyjack by the hand, he led the little treeskin off into the night, leaving Izzy alone in her backyard.
Alone with the snow and the storm—and the hooded man, who had made it back onto his feet once more. Except his hood had fallen back from his face and now she could see that it was Rushkin standing there by the side of her building. Rushkin with the stiff corpse of a winged cat hanging from his belt.
Rushkin glowering at her with all the fury of one of his towering rages distorting his features. When he started for her, Izzy scrambled backward in the snow, trying to get away, but her legs were all entangled and she—
—woke in her bed with the sheets all wound about her legs, her breath coming in sharp, sudden gasps. The T-shirt she was wearing clung damply to her skin. She stared wild-eyed about her bedroom, expecting Rushkin to come lurching out of the shadows at any moment, crossbow in hand. But there was no one waiting for her in the darkness—only her painting of John.
She looked at it and her chest went tight. Just a dream, she told herself, as she had earlier, when she was dreaming that she was out wandering on snowy Lee Street. But the look in John’s eyes before he left with Paddyjack remained imprinted in her memory. The coldness of it. And behind that coldness, the hurt, the ache that twinned her own, all wrapped around with an unfamiliar anger that she’d never seen in him before.
I put that there, she thought before remembering again that it was only a dream. But it had all seemed so very real.
Izzy slowly disentangled her legs from the sheets, then wrapped them around her as she began to shiver. She pulled the sheets free from the end of her mattress and got up, trailing them behind her as she made her way to the window. She went to look at the night and the snow outside her window, to tear her gaze away from the painting at the foot of her mattress and all the hurt that looking at it called up in her.