I can't hear the fiddles when you hum.
I can't see where the raven flies,
I can't hear the rhythm for the drum.
And I can't see the forest for your eyes.
"GYPSY DANCE"
Ed set down the receiver. "No luck. Guy at the rooming house says your Coachman hasn't come back. Bitched at me about the rent being overdue, too." He flung himself down in a saggy overstuffed chair and looked up at the ceiling.
"Where else does he hang out?" Durand demanded of Daniel, who was sitting beside him on the couch. Durand balanced a mug of coffee on his knee. Daniel held his with both hands, as if to still their shaking. They looked, Stepovich, thought, more like college buddies than a cop questioning a suspect. Stepovich took a sip of coffee, settled his shoulders against the door jamb again. "Bars?" Durand suggested. "Does he have a favorite? Is there a woman, a friend he'd go to?Where would he go?" Stepovich and Ed exchanged glances. Durand was pushing Daniel to answer before he'd had a chance to think.
Daniel shrugged wearily. "I don't know, I told you,I've only been here a short time. I haven't been living in his pocket."
"I saw blood in that carriage," Stepovich said suddenly. "Madam Moria didn't look hurt. Neither did the Coachman, but he might be able to take a bullet and not let it show for a while. So think about this;kid: If he was hurt, maybe bad, where would he go?"
"We could try phoning hospitals," Ed suggested."It's tedious, but it's paid off before."
"If we have to," Stepovich shrugged. "But let's have the kid think on it, first."
Daniel was trying. The strain showed in his face."With this Madam Moria, perhaps?" he suggested.His shoulders sagged suddenly. "I'm only guessing," he admitted wearily.
Stepovich fought back a yawn. "It's worth checking."
"Let's phone," said Durand,
Ed just looked at him. Stepovich said, "If she says he's there, we have to go get him. If she says he's not there, we still have to check. And we don't want to warn him, anyway."
"In the morning?" Ed suggested.
"Now," Stepovich and Daniel said in unison. Stepovich wondered if the gypsy lad felt the same strange urgency he did about this. Restlessness was running down his back with cold rat feet. He had that prickly feeling that something was happening, right now-something he should be in on. He caught his jacket up from the back of the chair, slung it on impatiently. Ed went to the door, jingling his keys. Durand came to his feet, stretching. Daniel rose, swayed slightly, squinting his eyes against pain or dizziness, but when Durand reached a hand to steady him, he waved it away. Tougher than he looked.
Ed drove, with Stepovich up front beside him.Daniel and Durand were in the back. Stepovich sat sideways on the seat; he couldn't quite trust his back to the gypsy. Not yet. He'd been good to Laurie, all right. But that didn't mean he was a good guy, not completely. Durand smothered another monstrous yawn. The kid was tired.
"Tell me why we got to find this Coachman guy tonight?" Durand complained rhetorically.
But Daniel took the question seriously. "There were three of us," he said, in the voice of a tale told many times. "The Owl, the Dove, and I."
"The Raven," Stepovich said, unaware of speaking aloud.
"Yes."
Durand was sitting forward, his lantern jaw slightly ajar, and Stepovich was aware of Ed listening as only Ed could, with every pore of his body as he let the big car drift down the road.
"We were brothers," but Csucskari, the youngest,he was a Taltos. He didn't eat, and he didn't drink, and he never felt the heat or the cold, and the animals would speak to him, and trolls feared him, and he fought dragons, while we followed him.
"And the Coachman was the one who sent us here,who brought us from a tale to a place where tales are told, because that was ever the Coachman's power. Why did he send us? Why did we go? Because of the Fair Lady, who had crossed the bounds of Her world; The Fair Lady, who brings the diseases that waste the body, who brings the sickness that rots the soul. She is in this world now, having Her way here.
"Owl said that She had left our world, and I tracked Her to this one, but it was the Coachman who brought us here, and the Coachman who can take us back,when our task is done. We each do our part-everyone who conquers his fear and greed long enough to repair some of the rot does his part. But the Dove,Csucskari, is the only one who can drive Her away."
He sighed. "For that, he needs us, the Owl and I. We didn't know this, at first. Csucskari came to this world alone, and with every step he took he lost apart of himself, until at last he was wandering, alone,not knowing who or what he was or what he had to do. Years later, my brother and I tried to follow him. We found his trail in France before the Great War,and in New Orleans after it, and here and there since then, but at last, hopeless, we quarreled and went our own ways.
"Now the call has come. The Coachman was bringing us together, but the Fair Lady struck first. I don't know what She has done to the others, but to me She sent a woman whose kiss was to be my death. And it would have been if-"
He stopped. Stepovich stared at him, waiting.
He shrugged. "But I was lucky enough to be hit on the head by the wrong man, so the right man changed his mind."
In the darkness of the car, their eyes met and locked. A dozen possible comments rattled through Stepovich's mind. He could snort and say, "Fairy tale!" He could remind him that Laurie was no woman, but only a little girl playing dress up. He could lean back and whisper that the "right" man hadn't had a chance at him yet.
But any of those would be- pretense. Because he believed Daniel, fairy tale and all. This gypsy was telling the truth. Stepovich could feel Ed reading that conclusion from his own body language, and accepting it as Ed had often accepted Stepovich's other hunches. And Durand was watching them stare at each other, with no idea of what was passing between them. Just like when he'd told Durand, however long ago it was, that the Gypsy with the scarred face wasn't the man they wanted, even if he did match the description.
So to the gypsy he said nothing, and to Durand he gave only a "wait and see" nod to keep the kid steady. Durand returned it, a barely perceptible movement.
"So," Daniel continued, as if he had not paused at all, "There are three of us, my brothers and I, and there are three of you. And as the Coachman has brought us three here, he will see us all three home. And as for you…" Daniel paused. "I will tell you how it was, for the Owl and me. Csucskari was gone. It is hard for me to describe for you what that means. Without him," Daniel paused, struggled for a smile. "Try to weave with no warp or woof, or to paint a picture without canvas to hold the colors, to, to…"
"To shoot with no target," Stepovich filled in softly.
"Yes. To live with your own purpose hidden from you. Your actions without form, no pattern or effort to what you do. We are one with our brother, a part of his tale. When he was gone, we were lost, though we traveled still with our kin over paths we knew well, and stood together upon the road, with the fires and the laughter of our kumpania at our backs. And there came a coach, such as we had not seen in many a year, drawn by horses such as no longer stir the dust of any road. And high on the box was the Coachman, with his fine cloak and coiled whip. And he halted his horses, and to each of us he said, "I offer a ride and I offer it but once. Whither away lies the dream of your soul?" And our bellies dreamed of rich food and potent wine, and our loins of beautiful women and the wealth of children they could bear us, and our ears were full of the music of days we had thought lost so long ago. But our hearts spoke first, and loudest, crying out, "Only put us upon the road our brother has taken and we will be content."And the Coachman's smile faded, and he said, "For good or ill, you have chosen," and the door opened to us and we entered the coach. And this place of yours is where he brought us, many and many a year ago."