Anthology 1: The Far Corners Read online

  Tink yawned. Even her runes looked haggard and worn. One openly snoozed, nestled in the cleft of her breasts.

  "Look, Tink," I said. "You've got two choices, as I see it. One is to just leave Tir Na Nog, right now."

  "That I may not do," she said, eyes downcast. "Would that I could, but -- no, Cannon Dale. This I may not do."

  "I merely brought it up for the sake of thoroughness," I said. "Your other option is to sleep. Sleep, and rest, and let me take a shot at building you a bike, right here, in the next twenty hours."

  Her sleeping rune awakened, stirred, looked nervous. So did Tink.

  "Can you do such a thing, Cannon Dale?" she asked. "Moonlight was no ordinary bike."

  "I know what Moonlight was, and wasn't," I said, perhaps a tad more harshly than I'd intended. "All I can do is the best I can do. Maybe I can put enough of Moonlight into the new bike to recapture some of the magic. I don't know if that'll work. But I don't know what else to do." I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax. "I'm open to suggestions," I said. "Any other ideas?"

  Tink looked at me, her lips half-parted, though no words came. After a moment, she nodded and sighed.

  "It's the best thing," she said. "I can pay. Later."

  "Go to bed," I said. "I'll add it to your tab. You pull this off, the Family will pay without blinking, and you know it."

  Tink nodded.

  "There's a washroom in the back," I said. "And there's a refrigerator next to the bed. You know how to work a light switch?"

  She nodded. I hear those are catching on too, even among the Families.

  "Then go. I've got a lot of work to do."

  I don't know what I expected. Nothing, really, maybe a smile or a nod or a half-hearted flirt.

  But she hugged me. Stepped across the space between us, caught me up, and before I could even gasp my face was buried in her hair and my arms were reaching clumsily about her tiny twig-thin frame and my hands fell upon the fragile webs of her wings.

  Her wings were warm. Warm and yielding, more rubber than bone. I'd always wondered.

  "Thank you, my friend," she said, and her body racked as though she were briefly sobbing. "No matter the night. Thank you."

  And she was gone, my door closing behind her. An instant later, the slice of light beneath it flicked out, and I heard bedsprings squeak.

  On his wall, the Nick spun his tires and flooded the shop with shimmering slices of plain warm sun. I swear for a moment I even heard the sounds of Huntsville's white-knuckle rush hour traffic.

  "Time to get to work, huh?" I said.

  The Nick laughed with a squeal of his brakes and I cracked my knuckles and pushed back my Elf-length hair (no barber shops on this side of the Veil, yet) and set about building a fitting heir to Moonlight.

  * * *

  I prowled the shop bent like a troll. I scrounged, I hunted, and I gathered, making a pile of parts on my biggest bench while the Nick spun his silver spokes and hinted at shifters and sundries with subtle glints of lights and dartings of shadows.

  And he sang. You'd have to be a biker to recognize the music, I suppose. You'd need to know, and love, the singsong whine of smooth paved road passing under two fresh road thins. You'd need to appreciate the barely perceptible metallic chime of an expertly-oiled chain working its way around a precision-machined, many-toothed gear. You'd need vivid memories of wind whistling past your ears, of your own heart pumping loud and strong and steady within your chest.

  Those are the notes by which the Nick sings. I'd first heard him sing that day in Huntsville, that day the Nick and I caught enough Faery magic to haul us, whole and pedaling furiously, right through the Veil itself.

  Magic is motion. Motion is magic. And my Nick is steeped in both.

  I'd built him myself, in a tiny shop in Huntsville, practically under the shadow of the big Saturn V lunar rocket that still stands lonely and proud on the outskirts of town. And even before I knew anything of the Veil or Tir na Nog I'd known the Nick was more than just a collection of gears and high-carbon steel. On the day he was born, with my last wipe of an oily rag across his newborn frame, I'd even named him aloud -- The All-Wheeling All-Racing All-Cycling Nick of Time.

  A name, as I said, can be a powerful and wondrous thing. I didn't know it then, but had the Nick not been named, I'd have never pierced the Veil, that day on Bob Wallace Avenue.

  My laptop chimed the passing of an hour. I cursed and eyed my pile.

  I had a solid Shang crank and a new set of Venture Force street thins. I had an older CobraHeart frame that might be a bit tall for Tink, but was a good eight ounces lighter than anything else in the shop. I had a Stegosaurus shifter pair and a set of Nitro grips, which wasn't bad, but I was still missing a derailleur and a chain and a front fork and a dozen other small but vital components.

  So I tore the shop apart. I opened boxes, hauled all my junked parts out of the dumpster in the alley, even went up in the shop's foggy attic, where stars ride and twinkle between the rafters, and actually found a so-so Navajo Joe seat wedged between a pair of twisted ceiling joists.

  And then, dreading the act, I gave poor Moonlight another going over.

  Despite my 'dead is dead' speech to Tink, I'd hoped to salvage at least some of Moonlight's parts -- and maybe just a spark of the magic that once gave Moonlight song, as well.

  But the more I looked, the more I despaired. Tink hadn't just been chased and attacked physically. Moonlight's carbon-fiber frame was rusting away in big impossible flakes as I watched.

  It started from the crank, and worked its way outward, and there wasn't a part on poor Moonlight that hadn't been touched by decay.

  Which meant hostile magic, of course. Strong magic, to keep operating under the influence of my 15 amp Veil plugs and the Nick's bursts of unFaery sun and the Alabama interstate markers that admonished a top speed of 70 MPH peering down from my ceiling.

  I was sweating by then, waiting every moment for the damned laptop to chime away another hour. Tink slept just a room away. What was I going to tell her when she woke, if I had no bike to offer?

  "Parts," I said, aloud. The Nick's spinning wheels didn't change pace. "I need parts, dammit."

  But my next delivery of parts was still being prayed over by the Northeast Alabama Wiccan Circle, and wasn't due to arrive for at least three days, shop time.

  Three days? More like five. The Wiccans do more partying than praying, these days, I thought. Crossover times have gone way up since the Circle rented a hall and came out of the broom closet.

  I knew, then and there, that I just wasn't going to make it. The realization fell upon me like the proverbial sack of bricks. I could cobble together a bike, but it wouldn't be anything special, it sure as Hell wouldn't be Midnight, and Tink would die astride it.

  Unless.

  The Nick spun on his wall, wheels sending silver-grey Faery sunlight splashing about my shop.

  Unless, I thought, and the thought was a mere shadow of a whisper in my mind, unless Tink takes the Nick.

  A small, mean part of me wanted to shove the notion aside, wanted to pretend it had never occurred to me, wanted to take no part in any damned Faery foolishness involving the Families and invisible keys and Broken Doors. Part of me plotted quietly, in that moment, to put together the best bike I could, and let Tink take her chances.

  Magic is motion. But not all motion is magic. I might build bikes for another thousand years, even years spanned in shop time, and never build another Nick, never pierce the Veil again.

  I'd never go home. Not without the Nick.

  And then something happened, right there between enough Veil plugs to run a modest Huntsville house. The Nick spun his wheels, and light poured forth, choppy and strobing, as though sliced into bits by the Nick's pure silver spokes.

  But it wasn't a hot humid Alabama light -- no, it was pure grey-white Faery, in that peculiar shade of radiance that hints somehow of darkest night concealed just behind the bright of day.

>   My own shadow wavered and took a pair of steps, though I didn't move until after my shadow fell still.

  It's like that, over here. Sometimes you cast the shadows. Sometimes maybe they cast you.

  I fixed my eyes upon the Nick, squinted past the Faery light, worked hard to ignore the scamperings and the shiftings and the small, furtive dartings that suddenly surrounded me.

  His wheels spun faster, and the light shone brighter, and with it, the dark crept ever near.

  And then it was gone.

  And there came the distinctive pop and the attendant puff of displaced air that only accompanied a sizeable object piercing the Veil.

  The Nick's wheels slowed. I remembered to let out my breath.

  Another pop sounded, louder than before, back in my store-room.

  Right about in the center of the chalk-drawn pentagram that my Wiccans used as a Veil target.

  "Nick, "I said, hurrying for the back room, "I owe you another big one."

  He might have laughed, his chain still awash in the clinging grey light of Faery, but if he had more to say I was through the door and gone.

  * * *

  Oh, wonder of wonders.

  Bike parts. Parts upon parts upon parts.

  Dead center in the middle of my transport pentagram, stacked knee-high in neat piles, everything ringed round with the customary circle of ice-cream rock salt and that bright orange spray-paint telephone companies use to mark their buried cables.

  Here, draped in rice-paper sheets still, was a polished silver Egghead frame. There, a Duesler crank -- Hell, a Duesler crank so new it hadn't even hit the magazines yet. Beside the Duesler lay an unboxed Blazing Cricket shifter set, a gleaming Sequenced Sequence chain, and wheels -- my God, I gasped, wheels with hair-thin carbon fiber spokes straight from the hand of Senor HatTrick himself. The date of manufacture, barely visible in its traditional hiding place, was a date two years into the future.

  I made my way to the very edge of the rock-salt circle and peered, mouth agape. As I stood there, the rock salt shifted and blew in a wind I couldn't feel, and a pair of Rhinopaw Elite street thins popped softly through the Veil and fell, wobbling and wafting like late October leaves.

  Gentle as butterflies, the Rhinopaws touched my concrete floor, lay down, lay still. The rock salt ceased its stirring, and at last I smelled, full and unmistakable, the smell of the day-glo orange paint.

  It was done. I stepped across salt and Circle and knelt down, next to my treasures.

  I half expected the whole works to vanish when I touched something, but the Egghead frame was cold and solid in my hand, and there it remained.

  "Tink," I yelled, forgetting that she slept, "I believe I've found a bike."

  From the shop, I heard the Nick's wheels spin, saw him cast a new glow through the half-open door that lay between us.

  "Hurry," he said, with clickings and whirrings. "Night falls."

  I gathered up as many parts as I could and darted for the shop, being careful to break the salt circle with a quick dash of my boot-toe.

  As I returned for a second load, I realized that my beer-loving Wiccan friends were no more responsible for this last Veil delivery that I was. They'd never pushed so much so quickly through the Veil. No one had. But if not them, who?

  The Nick's wheels spun faster, and I pushed the thought aside, cleared a worktable and a bikestand, gathered my tools, and set out to work.

  And work I did. Magic is motion, and there's a special kind of magic in wrenching a bike, especially from the frame up. Some wrenchers like to work to music, and that's fine, but I prefer my silence, silence broken only by the soft clicking of a socket-wrench or the deer's-breath-faint turn of a lightly oiled German bolt.

  The Nick helped, of course, shining me light when I needed it, suggesting small things, prompting me not to forget this or rush through that.

  And oh, what a bike! Even before I'd slipped her wheels on, I realized she was a bike like no other. The Egghead frame, the Duesler crank, the raked Frozen Fright handlebars -- all angles, all swoops, all images seemingly blurred while in motion, and the whole illuminated by a single brief burst of lightning.

  "I shall name you Storm," I said, as I checked chain tension and found it perfect. "The Storm Which Rides, To and Fro, Where She Will."

  At that moment, the Nick's wheels blazed, and something like a brief crash of music sounded, and I knew with a chill down deep in my bones that yes, another bike -- a Faery bike, steeped in magic -- had been born.

  "Magic is motion," I said, suddenly exhausted.

  "Indeed, Cannon Dale," said Tink. I whirled, but it was only Tink, still sleepy-eyed and droopy-winged. She yawned and ran her fingers through her long gold hair shook her head so the locks fell back into place. It was only then that she peered past me, and saw Storm.

  Give Tink credit. She might have been born Elf, but the girl knows bikes. And when she saw Storm, she was struck silent.

  "Oh, Dale," she said, at last. "Dale, what have you done?"

  "Built you a bike," I said. Weariness settled over me like a coat of aches and pains. "It's what I do."

  Tink glided past, her too-small wings buzzing and blurred, though still unable to carry her aloft. She smelled of flowers, and I was suddenly aware that I most certainly did not.

  Tink oohed and ahed over Storm, praising my genius and leaning to reveal more cleavage than a dignified young elf-maid ought. So it was perhaps a minute or two before I noticed that the Nick's wheels were gone suddenly and utterly still.

  My eyes sought out the garage doors -- and there, dim beneath them, was only the faintest strip of Faery-grey dusk.

  I dodged tools, made it to the laptop, flipped up the screen, and cursed the aging processor and its too-slow screen-saver.

  "What is the matter, Dale?" said Tink.

  As if on cue, the display cleared, and the last two seconds of the countdown fell, leaving only a flashing "00:00:00" on the screen.

  "Sunset," I said. And indeed, as I watched, the light beneath my doors faded, faded, and died.

  "What of it?" said Tink. "You've done it, Cannon Dale. You've given me hope again."

  I turned to face her, just as she put her hand on Storm's right grip.

  I had no time. I don't even know how I knew, but I had no time to warn her, before Storm cast off her hand with a flash and a shouted "NO."

  Tink drew back as if struck.

  I came forward, but only a step, and then found the Nick standing full in my path.

  The Nick. Off his wall, for the first time since we'd crossed the Veil.

  "No," I said aloud. "Nick, no."

  Light shone from his wheels, though he didn't move. Clickings and shuttlings spoke, in that peculiar language of the road, but I heard one word clear and strong.

  Goodbye.

  Tink's bright elf eyes narrowed in confusion.

  "Dale?" she said, softly. "Dale, what has happened?"

  I was mute. Then the Nick beamed forth a sudden blaze of Alabama sun.

  Magic is motion, I heard.

  "Motion is magic," I said. "And motion moves on."

  The Nick wheeled smoothly back to Tink, and I forced a big wide smile.

  "Change of plans," I said. "You'll take the Nick."

  "Take the Nick?" she said. "But Dale --"

  "He's all yours," I said. I marveled at how calm I sounded. "And you're his. I wish you both well."

  Tink shook her head. Elves don't handle confusion well.

  "You'd better go," I said. "You know the cocklehunt will probably be back around any moment. With friends."

  The Nick nudged her, and she took his right grip, and it was done.

  I opened the doors for them, opened the doors to a cold clear Faery night. You can't see the stars in Tir Na Nog any more than you can see them in downtown Huntsville, but I stood in the street and looked anyway and didn't look back down until I heard the Nick's wheels turn around the corner at Matty's.

  The street was
n't silent. Oh no. It never is. Elves on foot, usually in bands of a dozen or so, pass and laugh and sing. Bikes fly past, at all hours, and even the odd elf-mount still clop-clops down the street. I even had to do a dancing back-step to dodge a '72 Corvette, two wheels on the sidewalk, as it howled past my door.

  Tir Na Nog never sleeps. And so I stood there, letting elves weave and dodge around me, getting cursed at by bike riders, flipped off by a skateboarding gnome.

  No, the street wasn't silent, but it felt that way. Silent and lonely and dark, and the Nick wasn't there to spread Alabama sun against the silver-grey Faery moon.

  I realized that even though I stood perfectly still, I was getting further and further from my shop. Another few minutes and I'd be downtown, mortal and alone and easy meat.

  I hauled ass back for my harsh shop lights. Back for my road sign sigils and my power tools and my empty, tiny shop.

  I did stop right under the doorway.

  "Goodbye, Nick," I said. I'd not been able to say it before.

  And then I slapped the door remote and I rummaged in my tool-chest and I found the only bottle of Jack Daniels this side of the Veil. It had been a gift from Dad on my 21st birthday.

  I took the Nick's pegs down before I cracked the seal. Took them down and spread spackle in the holes and put a Molly Hatchett CD in my player and then I toasted the Nick, toasted Tink's quest, and cursed damned short goodbyes.

  * * *

  I awoke to find a cartoon frog repeatedly slapping the tip of my nose.

  That's a rarity, even in Tir Na Nog.

  I squinted, exhaled whiskey, and the frog let loose a solid roundhouse that made my eyes water.

  "What the Hell," I said, swatting and flailing.

  I felt a sting at my right wrist, and after I blinked back tears I saw I had a brand new tattoo.

  Of an angry-looking helmeted frog.

  "What the Hell?" I said, again. The frog, now a tattoo, shook his little frog-fist at me, pulled a cartoon pencil out of my skin with another tiny prick, and began to write.