Cruel Zinc Melodies

94

I was in my own bed. My head felt pleasantly empty. The Dead Man had flushed me out while I slept. My legs still hurt bad.

Tinnie was there. Her mouth moved too slowly to shape words. I heard an inarticulate bass roar.

The Dead Man touched me. The world and I matched speeds.

Tinnie’s presence made everything bearable. She told me, ‘‘We thought we were going to lose you this time, Malsquando.’’ She struggled with something inside. ‘‘Did you really want to get out of it that bad?’’ Then, ‘‘I couldn’t help that. I didn’t mean it. You scared me so much.’’

I made a noise. Hoping it was good enough. Hoping she wouldn’t demand explanations. I couldn’t manage that. Nor did I remember what I had to excuse.

Turn off your You. Stop being Garrett. Some things are best left untold. Some explanations, however true and sincere,are inadequate.

In simpler words, keep your big damned mouth shut.

I had only one foot in the real world but had no difficulty grasping the wisdom there. And for once was able to keep it shut.

Over the next half hour every member of the household wished me well, asked if there was anything they could do, then left looking worried. Even Melondie Kadare made a drunken buzz-through, accompanied by several more serious pixies. They made up an annoying swarm of oversize mosquitoes.

Oh, joy. The pixies were out of hibernation.

So. Winter was over.

‘‘I spent a night in Elf Hill,’’ I told Tinnie, thinking I was being clever. Unfortunately, rural folklore doesn’t resonate in the city. People see elves every day and can’t imagine them living inside mounds in the wild wood. City elves bear no resemblance to the dark, cruel folk our ancestors knew. Not in public.

Only Old Bones understood. Only he knew what I’d gone through. He promised he’d let me know what that had been, too.

He knew what happened after the dancing stopped.

You saved the city. You and your ghost woman. The dragon . . . the entity . . . did not go back to sleep, however. It is much too excited to sleep now that it knows there may be others like it. I sensed uncertainty. What might even be fear.It knows there is a world outside itself now. Which it understands only through two minds and two souls, one of them a woman murdered long ago and the other a . . . a you.

That didn’t sound so bad to me.

You became immortal that night.

‘‘Just a hero thing.’’

Desist. This is serious. And you are not going to be pleased.

That was his ‘‘Dire news ahead!’’ tone. I shut up.

Your ghostly friend warned you that you would not like the price. You thought that might mean losing the essence that lived on in her portrait. And you were correct. But the entity did not just take Eleanor. It took you, too.

I was too worn down to argue or question. But it sounded like he was full of something.

The thing couldn’t have taken me very far. Here I was, right here.

There is a copy of you, of the Garrett inside the flesh, identical to a percentage point so remote that it would be a waste of good numbers to state it. That Garrett will live on inside the entity forever. With Eleanor. Quite possibly never understanding that it is both a copy and the template by which the entity builds its new worldview and responds to the outside that it has just discovered.

No one else knows this. Nor ever will, so long as you control your tongue.

He then fed back selections of what he had harvested from my head once Singe and Saucerhead dragged me home.

My ratgirl had been the only one to figure out where to find me. Maybe because I hadn’t told anyone else where I was going.

Tinnie sipped tea and stared at me over her cup, across the kitchen table. I gobbled oatmeal mush, taking time off to ask, ‘‘Is it all right for you to be away again, already?’’

‘‘That problem has been handled.’’

‘‘You locked Rose in a cage?’’

‘‘Not Rose. Though she did do the hands-on. My uncle Archer came up with the idea. Rose is too lazy. The cage is reserved for Kyra. That girl is going to embarrass us all if she doesn’t show a little more sense.’’

‘‘Turning into one of the fuddy-duddies, are we?’’ I’d once heard her departed uncle Lester make a similar observation about her.

‘‘Gaining wisdom. Try it sometime.’’

‘‘I got wisdom coming out my ears.’’

‘‘That’s hair.’’

‘‘And if I don’t, you’ll make every effort to encourage me.’’

She eyed me suspiciously, then backed down, smelling a trap.

She’d heard a lot of male thoughts about the futility of trying to reform men. Mostly not from me. Being a selfish weasel, I try not to say things likely to put barriers in the way of my ambitions.

Being a slick weasel her very own self, Tinnie revealed none of her thoughts about domestic reeducation.

I will stipulate that, even after all this time, she might not have a fixed strategy. A glance round her circle of acquaintances wouldn’t betray any glittering example to emulate. The most successful couple either of us knows is Winger and the Remora.

I changed the subject. ‘‘If you hang around I’ll put you to work. Chuckles already has Singe shackled, scribing for him.’’ My formal penmanship leaves room for improvement. And I needed a final, formal report, full of final, formal recommendations and some creative bullshit to baffle Max and Manvil about the end of the dragon threat.

That should be an easy sell once you explain the dragon’s . . . the entity’s . . . willingness to assist with the elimination of waste from the World.

‘‘What?’’

So much that you do not remember. Look. It lives off rotting organic matter locked in the silt and organic matter that filters down from the river. It wants to grow now, in order to reach out to its brothers. It will be thrilled to take waste matter direct, through the tunnels created by the oversizeinsects. It began lining those with itself before Singe arrived to rescue you.

‘‘Really?’’

Truly. And the World will have an exclusive.

‘‘Damn! I have the knack! Sweetest heart. Ready to go do some writing?’’

Vaguely, I felt the Dead Man reach out to Singe.

Tinnie gave me the fish-eye again, entertaining the possibility that I was trying to run her off. She called my bluff. ‘‘I do need to stay away while the old folks work out what to do about Rose and Archer. I can do a few pages of transcription.’’

I didn’t slump.

Dean asked, ‘‘Shall I bring a tea service to your office, then?’’

Tinnie suggested, ‘‘Why don’t I take care of that? That’ll give him a chance to clear some of the mess away.’’

There would be clutter all over my little desk. She’d need room to work. ‘‘I’m going.’’ I little-old-manned it out the kitchen door. I used the wall for support, shuffling along the hallway.

Singe met me at the office doorway. She told me, ‘‘I found your painting in the theater. We brought it back when we brought you. I hung it up for you.’’

‘‘Thank you, Singe.’’ She would know all about the matter from the Dead Man. ‘‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’’

I was still in my office doorway when Tinnie arrived with the tea. ‘‘What’s the matter with you, Malsquando?’’ Irked and concerned at the same time.

‘‘Winter is over at last.’’

‘‘Huh?’’

I stared at Eleanor.

The dragon had left me with an unimaginable gift.

It had duplicated Eleanor, too.

The magic was back. But all the fear and foreboding had left the painting. The shadow against the darkness in the background had been replaced by the hint of a ghost of the face of a phantom dragon. It had a mischievous twinkle in its eye, telling me it would be a dragon if that was what we needed it to be.

Tinnie couldn’t see the difference.

Eleanor wasn’t running from anymore. Eleanor was runningto. Finally.

‘‘Winter is over at last.’’