He had strutted around the stage demonstrating. Out – cowboy, in – lady. Both with pointed toes and high heels. Both with hats. Out – In.
The man walked down the dirt driveway towards the trailer,
conscious of his elbows. He decided they
weren’t really out or in, and that the real difference was that he walked with
his knees loose. A lady wouldn’t do
that. A woman wouldn’t, either.
She knew he was there, of course. Probably had known before he got there. Maybe she’d see the time spent at the end of
the drive as politeness. Maybe not.
Dogs came pouring out from under the trailer, straight
through the dusty red fringe around its bottom.
They were baying or yapping, depending on their bent. Although running, they weren’t running in
much of a hurry. They’d have a few
seconds before they got far enough down the drive to reach him.
He stopped and shifted his hat. They were an odd assortment, but he couldn’t
place any new ones. No danger or nips or
bites, then. At least none from the
dogs.
He let them boil around him, sniffing and raising a
dust. The whole yard was dusty, with a
bit of coarse grass growing here and there.
He looked around while he let them get their noses full of him.
The red fringe on the trailer was raveling a bit, but might
still be usable. Rolled flying carpets
laid around the front, in a disordered pile under the one tree. Two rose bushes flanked the front porch
stairs. They weren’t blooming now, but
when they did the tops of each petal was a velvety red while the bottoms were a
silky white. They were quite a sight
when they were going at it.
Around each bush was a round watering trench, currently dry
and cracked, the way clay soil did when it dried. Each trench had a green garden hose balanced
on the crater’s edge.
Just off the drive from where the man was standing was a
yard lamp. There was a small model rug
tethered to it with some fringed macramé.
It dipped and flew in the breeze, looking sharply patterned and dust
free. He guessed it was gathering solar
energy to power the lamp at night. Big
Kay did good repair work when she got around to it.
The dogs began to lose interest. He started back up the driveway, then stopped
as Big Kay, herself, came around from the back.
“It’s on the front porch,” she said. “I left it alone because I knew someone would
send someone out to check. I was
perfectly legal. Perfectly within my
rights.”
The woman was dressed in faded denim overalls and a purple
flowered shirt. She wore work boots and black
leather work gloves with the ends of the fingers gone. Two grey and brown braids were looped back
and tied at the base of her neck. She
was probably less than five feet tall, but stocky and solid and obviously used
to getting her way, although, if he remembered correctly, she was usually
polite about it.
“Hey, Kay,” he said.
“Hey, Jasper,” she replied.
He waited. They
looked at each other for a space. Then he
ducked his head.
“Better get on with it, then,” he said, and sauntered up the
swaying steps.
There were only two steps, and the porch was maybe four foot
deep and ten foot wide. Jasper knew the
steps and porch had been meant to be temporary, but had been there nearly
twenty years, now. That’s the way
temporary fixes went, sometimes.
A roof rug hovered over the porch. It was striped white and black and brown and
red, although nearly all of the colors were closer to grey than when it was
new. There was a slit running against
the stripes through two thirds of it. It
had been patched. You could see the
sagging interlacing holding it together.
Only Big Kay could get a carpet that damaged in the air on a regular
basis. At least, she was the only one that
he knew of.
She followed behind him, but didn’t step up. She stayed back out of his business and let
him get on with things comment-free. He
appreciated that.
“You get a complaint?
Or was it just a tattle?”
“Oh, it was a full-on complaint. Went to the Sheriff.”
“Any particular reason that the Sheriff didn’t come?”
“Got paperwork, I expect.
That or the Deputies are near overtime.”
“Yeah, that would do it.”
Jasper looked at the porch.
There were shards of glass. He
squinted. If he looked at them just
right, If he thought of them as coming originally from the front door, well,
then they looked like they had sprayed out in a narrow cone from the door to
nearly east.
“Mirror?” he said.
“Yup. Defensive
spell. Pure defence.”
“Well, nothing is completely pure. This all finished?”
“Yeah. It’s
spent. Completely inert. Unless you want to say that nothing is
completely inert.”
“Well, that is true.
Nothing is. At least not
completely. Mind if I take a sample?”
There was a squeaking sound, like rubber netting being
stretched.
“Flying pigs?” he asked.
“Yup. No idea why
anyone would want them. I raise ‘em up,
they take them home. Then they end up
back here again. “
The pig pen was located in the back of the lot. Jasper would take a look at them before he
left. He had a weakness for flying pigs.
He got out his metal retractable tape measure with the plumb
bob and the compass. He fiddled with it
a bit on the porch. Then he backed down
off the porch and fiddled with it across the porch, from ground level. When he was satisfied, he made a few marks in
the little red book. Then the book went
back in the back pocket and the measure clipped to his belt.
“Recon you know who it was.”
“Coulda been, oh, about three different folks.”
“Folks?”
“Well, three different groups a’ folks. Some people just don’t want to believe that
their rug can’t be fixed. Or that it
ought to cost what it does. Or that they
bought a lemon.
Over all time it’s more than three bunches a folks that
might be mad at me. But recently – only
the three. And I don’t suspect one bunch
more than another, I just wanted to be safe and sure. The babies need me to look after them.”
Jasper looked back at Kay.
Some of the dogs were laid in the dust around her. Two of the bigger ones had gone to lay in the
shade of the tree. They were sniffing
out a good place in the rug pile to sprawl.
“And some folks just don’t take kindly to wizard . . .
esses. At all.”
“Just wizard, Jasper.”
“Wizards, then. They
just don’t like them.”
“Then they shouldn’t come looking for one. Pure foolish, that is.”
“I’d have to agree with you, there. Say. . . “ he squinted at the trailer. “Is that a whistle hanging from the
doorknob?”
“Yup.” Kay shifted
something around in her mouth. She knew
Jasper meant something more by that question and she was making him figure out
how to ask it.”
“What does the whistle add to the mirror?”
Damn. The man knew
more about the spell than she thought.
“I know that the silver disappears from the mirror glass
when the spell is triggered. I know that
the glass splinters to absorb the force of the spell and then rebounds back the
way the off-en-sive spell came in.
I also know that it usually happens quiet-like and
slow. The glass floats down slow and
deliberate-like and looks like it’s going too slow to embed in the wood like
that, but it’s going fast just, well, on a different plane or something. And it’s spooky quiet. Nothing to warn the caster that his spell’s
coming back at him. Or her.”
“That about covers it.”
“I’ve heard it needs the quiet to turn certain kinds of
spells, just like it needs the slow to turn certain other kinds. If you tied a whistle in, you’d be introducing
a flaw into your defence.
Seems to me a body would only do that if they knew what kind
of spell was coming in.” He turned to
squint at her. “Did you know?”
“I . . . suspected.”
“That’s a lot to leave riding on ‘suspected.’”
Kay rolled something around in her mouth and than spat onto
the porch. The spit sizzled, hopping
around in shiny little balls, like angry mercury.
Jasper’s jaw dropped.
“That’s an active spell. Dammit,
woman! That’s an active spell!”
“Yup,” said Kay. “I had a suspicion that someone would be
stubborn. So I added the whistle, to
warn them.”
“You mean they’re hearing the whistle. They’re feeling the spell come back at them,
and they’re still pouring it on?”
“Yup,” she said.
“Stubborn. And possibly they
think women are weak. Lotsa men make
that mistake.”
“Damn.”
“Yup. Some folks,”
Kay shook her head , “some folks, there just ain’t no tellin’ ‘em.”
“Damn. Can you tell
what kind of spell it’s sending back.”
“Not safely. And I
don’t feel like getting burned or worse to help out someone who’s doing me
harm. Especially not when they’re this
determined about it.’
“You just going to sit here and wait to see what breaks
first, your hater or your front door?”
“Well, the other thing the whistle does is warn me when the
spell’s about to break, or when his spell stops. There’s that comfort.”
“You sure it’s a he?”
“Pretty sure.”
“I’d still be worried about staying near that.”
“Can’t take the babies away with me. Certainly can’t take the pigs. Don’t want my roses to die, or my lilies.”
“You got lilies, now?”
“In the back. I’m
making a patio. With a fountain and a
patchwork dome.”
“That sounds nice.
You’d know if an actual ‘nother wizard moved in, wouldn’t you?”
“A full-on wizard, sure.
If it’s just someone who stored up a lot of spite and then let it go –
that wouldn’t show up on the radar, as they say.”
“I’ve heard that phrase.
You know what a radar is? It’s
one of those capital words. Well,
almost. It takes more than one letter
from a couple of the words in the phrase.”
Jasper waited.
“It stands for RAdiating Demon ARray.”
“Huh,” said Jasper.
“That makes sense. Sounds military.”
“Commercial, too. If
I could do radar, even just the maintenance and repairs, I’d be making the big
bucks.”
“You do all right.
That’s a nearly new double-wide I see there, right? With the fringe still on so you can move it?”
“Yeah, if I had sense or more get up and get, I’d wrap that
so the dogs didn’t fray it.”
“They like the added shade, though, don’t they.”
Kay blushed a bit at being caught out. Not that there was anything wrong with liking
your dogs and indulging them a little.
Still. Working fringe was
expensive.
Speaking of which – Kay dug into her pocket. She fumbled with what looked like a tassel,
mumbling to herself. Then she tossed it out into the yard.
It went dancing and bobbling along, just over the heads of
the dogs, who ran after it with wide grins.
It took fifteen to twenty seconds before one of them caught it and
started to shake it in snaps of the head from side to side.
“Release.” Kay called, and the tassel rose and bobbed again. The chase resumed.
“They love that thing,” she said.
“You sell those?” Jaspar asked.
Kay shrugged. “Have
to tune it to the yard it’s used in and to the hand that throws it. Have to figure the command that would work
for a non-wizard. Be expensive for what
it is.”
“Less than a day’s wages?”
They both knew he meant a field hand’s wages. There were all kinds of local
currencies. Folks sorted them out by
comparison to minimum wage in all of them.
Hour, day, week, etc.
“Almost. Well, about
that.”
“Might be worth it for some.
Especially old folks whose arms get tired before their dogs do.”
“Thinking of anyone in particular?”
“Sadly, thinking of someone who lives a ways out of town.”
“Well, it might be worth it if you help me out with this.”
Jaspar let himself look completely surprised.
“I thought you were holding back on me, here. You know I’m working for the Sheriff, right?”
“Yeah, and I’m not offering to give it to you for
nothing. I’m just willing to travel,
assuming it’s only about a day and the boys can ride in the truck.”
“We’ll see. You’re
gonna have to come cleaner than this, though.”
“I expected that.”
Kay looked Jasper over, then sighed and said, “Come on around back. That’s where the real money is.”
Jasper felt a tightening in the small of his back. Wizards got up to things. Even wizards out in the sticks in trailers
with dogs in the front and pigs in the back.
He did not relish having to decide whether to tell the Sheriff whatever
he was about to find out.
But he couldn’t leave that spell twanging away on the front
porch, there. It was dangerous. The Sheriff would approve of lying to the
Wizard to get that cleared up.
Unfortunately, the Wizard would approve of lying to the Sheriff for the
same reason. Jasper had an older sister
and a younger sister and they had given him a profound aversion to being caught
in between. It never worked out well.
He straightened and concentrated on holding his elbows in a
manly way as he followed Kay around the trailer. As he came around the corner, he saw the pig
pen and the sheds behind it. They were
low-roofed. One was directly behind the
pen, so that the pigs could get in, out of the sun. He bent and looked into the shadow. There were only three pigs, total, in the
pen. It sounded like more. There was plenty of room for more.
Three more sheds ran parallel to the trailer, the last in
the line being deeper and therefore coming out even with the edge of the pig
pen, making an upside down U from his perspective.
Perspective, he thought.
That’s a word about seeing.
Spec. That meant either seeing or
eye, he wasn’t sure which.
Spectacle. Specs. Inspect. Suspect. Speculate? Did that fit with the
others?
The pigs were big.
Not a piglet in the lot. Fully
grown. Fully grown pigs could get mean.
There was a rubber net over the top of the pen. It looked rugged. The wings on the pigs looked tiny compared to
all that pork. Could one of them really
get airborne? Airborne enough to make
the net creak? They sure weren’t doing
it now.
One of the sheds rattled and more pig noises came through
the closed doors. The movement of one of
the doors drew Jasper’s eye. The door
didn’t quite reach to the ground and Jasper could see hooves milling around
behind it. Pig sounds were coming from
all of the sheds. It sounded like old
boars, and not happy ones.
Kay unlocked the padlock on the deep shed and threw open the
door. Inside were no pigs, just the
sound of pigs. Jasper ducked and entered
slowly. He looked around. Here and there, in corners or on tables, were
teacups. They were thin and white and
delicately fluted. Jasper inspected
one. There was water inside. A single lily was balanced straight up in the
water.
Jasper looked more closely.
There was nothing propping the lily up.
Its stem barely broke the surface of the water, he was sure. Up from the cup and through the lily came the
sound of irritable pig.
Wizards.
He looked around for something besides dangerous pigs,
now. On six saw horses, resting on
plywood planks were four rugs in the process of being sewn together. Well, not just four. At each junction, another small rug
overlapped, and then another overlapping on top of that, so that there were two
rugs on three rugs on four rugs. Then at
the ends, there were runners that crossed the front and the back and draped down
the sides to the ground.
String came out from the inner joints of the rugs and wound
around spindles and spools. More spools
held red and black yarn. On a frame, the
red and black yarn was being woven and knotted into netting and tassels.
The yarn in the rugs had been bleached light grey and was
being slowly dyed into geometric shapes by clasping syringes. He was sure that if he took it apart, the
exact pattern would match up on each layer of rug.
“It’s a semi-tapestry,” he breathed.
“Almost,” she said.
“It’s illegal for someone unlicensed to build the engine. So this has to be towed by a cut-back hauling
tap. It’s an all purpose commercial- weight
hauling trailer.” She sounded proud, and
Jasper didn’t blame her. This was going
to sell for a pretty penny.
“Does anyone know that you’re doing this?”
“I’d have said no, but then I’ve got a spell knocking on my
door. One more persistent than
normal. Not that there aren’t people
fool enough to do that over a small slight.
I’ve met a few who would have.
The ones I know of, mainly, their families would step up and shake them
out of it.”
“But if one didn’t have a family. . .”
“Eventually they’d come to the notice of the law. The law frowns on resentful, defensive
Wizards.”
“True. Well, now I suppose it’s time to get the
names of the folk who might be peeved at you.”
“S’pose it is,” said Kay.
