Charles de Lint - Moonheart

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You open a de Lint story, and like the interior of a very
genial Pandora's box, the atmosphere is suddenly full of
deep woods and quaint city streets and a magic that's
nowhere near so far removed as Middle Earth'
James P. Blaylock
'Mr de Lint's handling of bits of ancient folklore to weave
into an entirely new pattern has never, to my knowledge,
been equalled.
Andre Norton
'Charles de Lint is a folksinger as well~as a writer and it is
that voice we hear . . . both new and old, Iyric, longing,
touched by magic'
lane Yolen
'De Lint's touch is deft and clean'
Parke Godwin
'. . . knows his folklore inside and out'
Fantasy Review
Charles de Lint
MOONHEART
FANTASY
PAN BOOKS
London, Sydney and Auckland
First published in Great Britain 1990 by Pan Boah Ltd
This edition published 1991 by Pan Books Ltd,
Cavaye Place, London SWIO 9PG
35798642
Charles de Lint 1984
ISBN O 330 31576 5
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Robin Williamson
for permission to use a portion of "For the Three of Us,', from the
album Songs of Love and Parting, ~ 1981 by Robin Williamson
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
This book is sold subject to the condition that it
shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold,
hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior
consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in wbich
it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
jor
MaryAnn
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who helps it happen
i
CONTENTS:
PART ONE:
The Wren's Thistle C10ak
PART TWO:
The Dancer.and the Drum
PART THREE:
Warriors and Huntsmen
PART FOUR:
Grandmother Toad's Circte
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR'S NOTE 479
APPENDIX:
Brief Descripfion of the Weirdin 481
1
113
285
423
477
PART ONE
The Wren's
Thistle Cloak
Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the hean or in the head?
-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Chapter One
.
.~
Jl
.
.
l
_
_ ~
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SARA KENDELL once read somewhere that the tale of the world
is like a tree. The tale, she understood, did not so much mean
the niggling occurrences of daily life. Rather it encompassed
the grand stories that caused some change in the world and
were remembered in ensuing years as, if not histories, at least
folktales and myths. By such reasoning, Winston Churchill
could take his place in British folklore alongside the legendary
Robin Hood; Merlin Ambrosius had as much validity as Martin
Luther. The scope of their influence might differ, but they were
all a part of the same tale.
Though in later years she never could remember who had
written that analogy of tale to tree, the image stayed with her.
It was so easy to envision:
Sturdily rooted in the past, the tale's branches spread out
through the days to come. The many stories that make up its
substance unfold from bud to leaf to dry memory and back
again, event connecting event like the threadwork of a spider's
web, so that each creature of the world plays its part, understanding
only aspects of the overall narradve, and perceiving,
each with its particular talents, only glimpses of the Great
Mystery that underlies it all.
The stories on their own are many, too myriad to count,
and their origins are often too obscure or inconsequential on
their own to be recognized for what they are. The Romao
statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero said it best: "The beginnings
of all things are small."
Though he lived and died some two thousand years before
Sara was born, and though the tale was so entangled by the
time she came into it that it would have been an exercise in
3
r
Charke de l~lat
futility to attempt to unravel its many threads, Sara herself
came to agree with Cicero. Years later she could pinpoint the
exact moment that brought her into the tale. It was when she
found the leather pouch with its curious contents in one of the
back storerooms of her uncle's secondhand shop.
The Merry Dancers Old Book and Antique Emporium was
situated on Bank Street, between ThW Avenue and Fourth in
the area of Ottawa called the Glebe. It was owned by Jamie
Tams who took his inspiration for the name from the aurora
borealis, the northern lights that the French call les chevres
dansantes. The dancing goats.
"It's quite appropriate," he told Sara one day. He was leaning
on the long display case that supported the relic of a cash
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register which worked by turning a crank on its side. "Think
about it. The Arctic's what? Ice and snow. Tundra and miles
of nothing at best. Who'd expect a treasure like the Dancere
in a place like that?"
Sara smiled. "Are you implying that somewhere in all thii
junk there're similar treasures to be found?"
"Implying? Nope. It's a straight fact. When was the last
time you went through the jumble of boxes in the back rooms?
There could be anything in them-not valuable, mind, but
treasures all the same."
He stared pointedly at Sara's typewriter, an IBM selfcorrecting
Selectric, and the pile of paper that was stacked
beside it.
"If you weren't so busy writing the Grcat Canadian Novel . . ."
"What sorts of thingsT' Sara wanted to know. "Like Aladdin's
lamp?"
"You never can tell."
"I suppose not." ~` ~
"And,t' Jamie finished triumphantly, "if you never look,
you'll never know either!"
Sara tried, but she couldn't keep a straight face any longer.
They both broke into laughter.
Neither of them needed to work-at least not for financial
considerations. Iamie in his time, and now Sara in hers, ran
The Merry Dancers as a hobby. That it showed any sort of a
profit at all at the end of each fiscal year was as much due to
luck as through any particular effort on their part, though Sara
was more consctentious in her management than Jamie'd ever
been. ("Comes with being young," Jamie warned her darkly.
MooN~r
5
"Wait'll you get older. The whole place'll fall to pieces asound
you as you go doddering about. You'll sec.")
It was a standing joke betwocn them that whenever Jamie
visited the store, at one point or another, he'd play the concemed
proprietor. But for all the teasing, they both knew that
if they ever made the shop as tidy as some of the newer ones
on the street, it would lose half of its charm.
Thc Merry Dancers was cluttered, certainly somewhat dusty,
but not dirty. Lcaning bodkshelves stuffed with fat, leatherbound
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volumes took up two walls, while the bay windows in
front held a curious sampling of items the store offered, set
out in a confusing array that put off as many people as it
attracted. Therc were trcasurcs to bc found, indeed, but not
for thc fastidious. Clutter swirled like autumn leaves around
old chairs, dressers, sideboards, desks, rockers, wicker tables
and an umbrella stand overflowing with rolled-up maps, knobbyended
walking sticks and an African shaman's staff.
Behind the cash area it was no tidier. A walnut-paneled door
led to the storerooms, a washroom, and a tiny kitchen meant
only for someone without a trace of claustrophobia in their
mental make-up. There were more shelves on the walls, laden
with everything from books and calendars stacked a foot high
to more curious wonders. To one side, set up so that she could
look out the front windows when she was thinking, was Sara's
desk holding her typewriter, paper, ashtray, coffec mug, tottcring
piles of reference books, a stuffed brown bear called
Mr. Tistle with a plaid patched stomach, a stack of National
Geographics and a copper-and-brass pencil holder-all in a
four-by-three-foot surface area.
That didn't include the pigeonholes at the back of the desk,
stuffed with letters (answered and unanswered), envelopes
more paper, her driver's license (that she never remembered
to take with her when she used the car), a small Aiwa cassette
player, that was connected to a pair of Monitor Audio speakers
balanced precariously on wrought iron brackets above the bay
windows, and the filing system for her fledgling writing career
that included notes (hundreds of them on anything from matchbook
covers to the small sheets torn out of her spiralbound
notebook), information on who had what story and how often
it'd been rejected, a list of her accepted stories (eleven of
them!), and the addresses for all her correspondents that had
started out being in alphabetical order but somehow degenerated
into catch-as-catch can.
6 Charlce dc LInt
On the day that Sara found the pouch she'd been tbinking
of the storeroom and all those unopened boxes gathering dust.
It was easier to think of them than to decide if she was writing
a thriller, a Gothic, a fantasy, or some bizarre permutation of
the three. The boxes came from rummage sales, estates, country
auctions and Lord knew where. Her writing hadn't been going
well that day so she decided to make a start on them.
Perched on a stool behind the counter, her typewriter covered
with a piece of velvet with frayed edges and motb-holes
to keep the dust from it, she was working on her third box.
Like the first two it had decidedly more junk and dust in it
than any sort of treasure. Sighing, she ignored the grime tbat
coated her hands and entrenched itself under her fingernails
and tried to make tbe best of it. She tapped her foot along with
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Silly Wizard, a Scots folk group that were playing on the
cassette machine, her thoughts lost in daydreams.
Wbile Sara was one of that exiguous segment of the wadd's
popuhtion that views the commonplace through a screen of
whimsy, she was not flighty. She could dream about the history
of a particular knick-knack, creating in her mind all sorts of
implausible origins for it at the same time as she decided on a
price, neatly printed the amount on a small sticker, and attached
it to the bottom of the item in question.
Rummaging through the box that day, she was, if not a
candidate for the next cover of Chatelaine, at least a study of
enterprise. Her thick b~Dwn curls fell past her shoulders with
all the unruly orderliness of a hawthorn thicket. She was small
and thin, with delicate bones and intensely green eyes, bor
features not so much classically beautiful as quirky. She wss,
as usual, dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a shapeless old
sweater and a pair of practical brown leather shoes in desperate
need of a polish.
"I've got to feel real," she would respond wearily to wbichever
well-intentioned friend was the latest to ask why she couldn't
be a little more fashionable. "It's hard enough the way thing~
are, without walking around like a mannequin."
"But. . ." the intrepid soul might start to argue.
"Wbat I'd reslly like to be," Sara'd say then, "is a genuine
tstterdemalion. You know-all patches and loose bitsT'
Blowing the dust off the newest layer that the box had to
offer, she certainly felt resl, if not a complete ragamuffin. She'd
just managed to put three f nger-wide streaks of dirt on her
cheek snd breathed in a clbud of dust at the same time. Cougb~
MooNt~rr
7
ing, she dug out the latest treasure-a wind-up plastic bear
that would have beaten its tiny drum if its drumsticks weren't
broken off, its key lost, and-she ranled it speculatively-its
innards not a jumble of loose bits. She considered throwing it
out, glanced at Mr. Tistle, then found she didn't have the heart.
She wrote 10› on a stacker, stuck it on the bOnom of its foot,
and tried again. A brass ashtray joined the bear (75e), then a
saucerless teacup (50e), a tin whisk (15e), and a postcard of
the Chateau Laurier in a wooden frsme ($2.50-because of
the frame).
It tnust be time for lunch, she thought as she reached in
again.
This time she came up with a parcel wrapped in brown
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paper. The Scotch tape that held the end flaps down were yellow
and brittle with age. Pretending it was Christmas, or her birthday,
she squeezed and shock it about a bit. Then, when she
couldn't guess, she opened it.
Inside was a framed picture and a small leather bag that
looked like it was made of tanned moosehide. Its drawstrings
were tied in a knot. Well, this was nice, she thought, looking
the bag over. She could use it as a changepurse, seeing how
she'd lost her old one last night somewhere between leaving
the store and reaching home.
She set the bag aside to look at the picture. It was a penand-
ink line drawing that had been painted with watercolors.
The frame was a white wood that she couldn't place-a hardwood,
at any rate, with a very fine grain. The picture was of
two men sitting across from each other in a woodland glade.
Though the painting was small, there was a lot of detail packed
into it. The forest reminded Sara of Robert Bateman's work-
the tree trunks were gnarled and had a barky texture; the leaves
seemed separate and exact. The grass blades, the rough surface
of the big stone at the edge of the clearing were all intricately
rendered.
She turned her attention to the men. One was an Indian. He
sat cross-legged, with a small ceremonial drum on his knee,
his thick black hair hanging down either side of a squarefeatured
face in two beaded braids. His leggings and shirt were
of a plain doeskin, an ornamental band of colored beads and
dentalium shells formed the shirt's collar. His eyes, against the
coppery tan of his skin, were a startling blue.
Sara sat back and held the painting farther away for a moment.
The detail was incredible. Each bead in the Indian's
8 Charles de Lfnt
braids was a different colon She was amazed at the artist's
skill, for she'd tried painting once and had given it up as &
hopeless cause. But the experience left her with a sense of awe
whenever she came across something this good. Bending closer
again, she studied the Indian's companion.
He was obviously Caucasian, for all that the artist had given
him a dark tan, and didn't look anything like the first explorers
or coureurs de bois that Sara remembered from her history
books (though why she thought to date the scene didn't occur
to her at that moment). He looked older than the Indian, with
grey streaks in his red hair. His clothing was leather as well-
as primitive as his companion's but obviously of a different
culture. Around his neck was a leather thong holding a curious
Y-shaped object. By his knee was what looked for all the world
like a small Celtic harp. His eyes, Sara noted with a sense of
satisfaction, were as green as her own, though why that should
please her, she couldn't say.
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The two men were sharing a pipe-the Indian held it, smoke
streaming upward in a long spiral, and was passing it to the
red-haired man. It was probably a peacepipe, Sara decided.
She searched for a signature, but could find nothing to identify
the artist. Sighing, she laid it aside and had a look at the poucb
that had shared the painting's package. Maybe something in it
would give her a clue.
Untying the knot, she shook the pouch's contents onto the
countertop. Curious, she thought, examining the objects that
came to light. There was a curved claw, its pointed end too
dull to be a cat's. More like a dog's . . . or a wolf's. She turned
it over in her fingers and decided from its size that it had
belonged to something smaller. Like a fox.
Next was a bundle of tiny brown feathers, tied together with
leather. Then kernels of dried corn, ranging in color from a
very dark brown through rust to yellow, that were threaded on
another bit of leather. A rounded pebble, with thin layers of
what looked like quartz running through it, followed. The last
two objects were the strangest yet.
~ Ooe was a flat disc made of bone. Holding it up to her eyes,
she could make out a faint trace of design on either side. On
one was a pair of stag's horns, each point carefully delineated,
on the other a quarter moon. Around the edge of each side rao
a design that was worn so much it was almost impossible to
make out. She held it under the lamp that served to light her
desk and squinted, then finally dug a magnifying glass out of
MOONFEART
a drawer and studied the disc properly. The designs jumped
out under magnification. They were intertwioing bands of Celtic
ribbonwork.
She sat back and thought about that, laying both magnifyiog
glass and disc on the counter in front of her. Now here was
something to dream about if ever there was. The disc was about
the size of a checker and well worn, rounded like a fat buttoo.
What had it been used for?
The last object was a small ball of hardened clay, about the
size of the large marbles she used to play with in grade school.
Poking experimentally at the clay,~a piece flaked off to reveal
a dull gleam like brassy metal. A little pinprick of excitement
ran up iara's spine as she carefully broke away the clay. When
she was done, she held in her hand a tiny ring, about a quarterinch
wide, with, she discovered when she investigated it under
the magnifying glass, the same spiraling ribbonwork that she'd
found on the bone disc. Weird. She hefted the ring in her band,
decided it was made of gold and tried it on. It was a perfect
fit for the ring finger of her left hand.
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She admired it for a moment or two, then had a sudden
vision of cused rings that couldn't be removed and tugged it
off. When it lay in her hand again, she laughed at her overactive
imagination and set the riog down with the rest of the pouch's
contents. What a strange find, she thought, smiling at her luck.
Sara was the sort of peson who thought a lot about luck.
"Find a penny, pick it up; all the day you'll have good luck."
She always did, no matter how tarnished or grungy the coin
was. She never walked under laddes, nor let a black cat cross
her path, sometimes circling a whole block just to avoid that
invisible trail of ill chance. She always sent all twenty copies
of a chain letter on, for all that she was sure it was a con job.
Walking along a streambed, she'd pick one smoothed pebble
out of hundreds and keep it in her pocket for months. For luck.
And now there was this.
What it looked like was someone's collection of luck. The
claw, the pebble, the feathes, corn and bone disc-they were
the sorts of things you might expect to find in ao Indiao's
medicine bag. Except Indians didn't use Celtic ribbonwork,
nor did they have gold rings. At least not in those days.
This time she stopped and wondered why she assumed it
was so old. There was really no way that she could put a date
to either the painting or the pouch . . . but she knew they were
old. She just did. The intensity of that koowing gave her a
10 Charies de Llat
queer feeling. She glanced at the painting again. A shaman
and a Celtic bard, she thought.
Looking away, she blinked rapidly a few times and took a
deep breath. Okay, it was old. Time to move on to more
practical things. Whatever else the pouch had offered, there
hadn't been a clue to the identity of the artist. She looked at
the side of the box to see if Jamie had bothered to note where
they'd gotten the box. Printed in his neat handwriting, with a
magic marker, was:
FROM THE ESTATE OF
DR. ALED EVANS
Aled Evans. A Welshman, if the name was anything to go
by. Sara tried to picture what he'd looked like. Sort of Albert
Schweitzerish? She shrugged and studied the painting again,
bending so close that her nose was just a few inches away from
it.
For a moment everything wavered around her. She had the
decidedly weird sensation that the store had vanished, to be
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replaced by the forest in the painting. The feeling came over
her with a razor-sharp acuteness-so suddenly that it took her
breath away. She could sense the gnarled cedar thickets and
the thick grass of the glade, the tall pines sweeping skyward
on every side of her, their dark green points stabbing the clouds.
The rich pungent odor of dark loam filled her nostrils.
Startled, she looked up, half expecting the image to remain
and the store to be gone. But the shop was still there, as cluttered
as ever. Outside, the afternoon drizzle continued to mist down,
slicking the streets and spraying the windows with a million
tiny droplets. Silly Wizard were just finishing off a selection
of jaunty reels. Nothing had changed. Except maybe in her,
for to her eyes the store seemed~vague, lacking the clear definition
of the forest she'd just seen, felt smelled....
Her pulse beat a quick tattoo. She glanced at the painting
again, expecting the sensation to return, but the painting remained
what it was-an image of ink lines and watercolor in
a wooden frame. Strange. She pushed the pouch's contents
around with a finger and shook her head. lust for a moment
there, it'd seemed that she'd really been someplace else. Maybe
she was caming down with the flu.
At that moment the day bell above the front door jingled
MooNHEAar
11
and the real world intruded on her speculations in the unmistakable
shape of Geraldine Hathaway. She stood in the doorway
with her back to Sara, shaking out her umbrella, then closing
it up with a snap. Sara stifled a groan.
"Well, Ms. Kendell," Miss Hathaway said. Her glasses
clouded up with condensation and she took them off, rummaged
in her purse for a handkerchief, and wiped them before continuing. "
How is business today?"
"Quiet," Sara said. Or at least it had been.
"Ah, well. The weather, you know." The glasses returned
to her nose and the handkerchief to its purse. "I see," she
added, studying the litter on the countertop, "that you have
some new stock. Anything that might be of interest to me?"
"Hard to say," Sara replied. "It's mostly junk."
"Well, you know what they say. What's junk to some. . ."
Her voice trailed off as she neared the counter.
Sara stifled another groan. She'd yet to figure out what
made Geraldine Hathaway tick. The only timeshe ever seemed
to want to purchase something was when it was being held for
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