When the Greenlaw clan first arrived at the Moonwatch Trailer Park, the dozen nearly new travel vehicles checking in as a group, the proprietor had spoken to Max Harper, and Harper had checked them out. Since then, Dulcie had seen the police cruising that area on several occasions. She didn't know what such a large traveling group might add up to, to alert Max Harper, but she didn't laugh at him.
Standing before the hearth, Dirken waited. The parlor was hushed. The family, usually so violent and loud, so rude, was quiet now, and gentle-as if the tradition of story time touched powerful emotions, drawing them together.
"What shall it be?" Dirken said. "What will you hear? 'Paddy's Bride'? 'The Open Grave'?"
"Tell 'Drugen Jakey,'" Lucinda said softly. "Tell 'Drugen Jakey' again?"
"Yes," said old Pedric, laying his hand on hers. "'Drugen Jake' fits these hills."
Dirken looked at them with annoyance.
But then he masked his frown, whatever the cause. His voice softened, his manner and stance gentled, his voice embracing the old-country speech. "That tale be told twice before," he told Pedric.
"Tell it," a young nephew spoke up. "That tale belongs well to these coastal hills."
"Ah," Dirken said. "The green, green hills. Do they draw you, those rocky hills?" His laugh was evil. No one else laughed. Lucinda looked startled. Pedric watched quietly, clasping his wrinkled hands together, his lined face a study in speculation.
"All right, then," Dirken said, "'Drugen Jakey' it will be. Well, see, there was a passel of ghosts down the village coomb, and worse than ghosts…"
Standing tall before the fire, his red hair catching the flame's glow, his booted feet planted solidly, Dirken seemed to draw all light to himself.
"No man could graze his beasts down there for fear of th' underworld beings. Th' spirits, if they rose there and touched his wee cattle, wo'd send them flop over dead. Dead as th' stones in th' field. Devil ghosts, hell's ghost, all manner of hell's critters…"
In the silent room, cousins and aunts and nephews cleaved to Dirken's words, as rapt as if they had never before heard the ancient myth.
"Oh yes, all was elder there…" Dirken said, and this was not a comfortable tale; Dirken's story led his listeners straight down into a world of black and falling caverns that, though they excited Dulcie, made her shiver, too. Joe Grey didn't want to hear this story; it made him flatten his ears and bare his teeth, made him want to scorch across the room and bolt out the nearest window.
But as the tale rolled over them all, painting the deep netherworld, Lucinda looked increasingly excited. Soon she seemed hardly able to be still, drinking in the nephew's words as he led his listeners down and down among lost mountains and ragged clefts and enchanted fields that had never seen the sun, never known stars or moon.
Speaking the old words, Dirken seemed caught, himself, in the story, though he might have told it perhaps a hundred times-his broad Irish face gleaming as he painted for them a Selkie prince who, taking the form of a ramping stallion, charmed three human girls and led them down from this world through a clear, cold lake to waters that had never reflected earth's sky. He spoke of griffons, of harpies, of a lamia rising from the flames of hell; he described so convincingly the hellbeasts that soon Dulcie, too, wanted to escape. Dirken spoke of upper-world fields and hills quaking and opening to that cavernous land. The stories made Joe Grey swallow back a snarl, made Dulcie back deeper beneath the buffet, hunched and tense.
It's only a story, she told herself. Even if it were true, this place and this time are safe. Those stories, those times are ancient, they are gone. Whatever might once have lain beneath these hills, that was olden times, that isn't now. Whatever strange tie that Joe and I might have to such a place, it can't touch us here in this modern day, can't reach us now.
And that knowledge both reassured and saddened her. Crouched in the shadows beneath Lucinda's buffet, she felt a sense of mourning for her own empty past.
She had no certain history such as the Greenlaws knew. No real, sure knowledge of the generations that had come before her. The stories she had adopted as her own, from the Celts and Egyptians, were tales she had taken from books. She could not be certain they were hers, not the same as if the mother she had never known had given them to her.
If you don't know the stories of your own past, Dulcie thought sadly, what can you cling to, when you feel alone? If you don't have a family history to tell you who you are, everything flies apart.
It was when the storytelling had ended and trays of sandwiches were brought out from the kitchen with pots of tea and coffee, and everyone was milling about, that the cats saw Cara Ray rise and move away through the crowd, through the kitchen, and out to the backyard. They followed her, winding between chair legs and under the kitchen table and swiftly out through the screen door.
Crouched beside the back porch, they watched Newlon come out, too, furtively looking about. He saw Cara Ray, a dark shadow standing by the far fence, and approached her through the weedy yard. Cara Ray turned away stiffly, not as if she were waiting for Newlon, but as if she didn't want him there. When he moved close to her, she pushed him aside so hard he lost his balance and half fell against the fence.
"Leave me alone, Newlon. Stay away from me."
"What did I do, Cara Ray? You were all sweetness, there in the parlor."
"Only in front of the others, so they wouldn't… Stay away, Newlon. And stay away from Lucinda. You didn't need to come here."
"Of course I needed to come. On the boat, you… Shamas is dead, Cara Ray. Now we can…"
"I told you, Newlon, leave me alone. I don't want to see you. Do you want me to go to the police?" she said, glancing toward the house. "Do you want me to tell them how Shamas died?"
"What would you tell them, Cara Ray?"
"You might be surprised."
The cats, crouched in a tangle of dead weeds, listened with interest but drew back when the back door opened again and Dirken stepped out, moving through the dark yard as if he knew exactly where Cara Ray would be standing.
"Go on, Newlon. Dirken won't like to find you here."
"But I… But Cara Ray…"
"Go on, Newlon." And, watching Newlon slip obediently away, Cara Ray smiled as lethally as a pit viper coiled to strike.
11
"I DON'T like to give you advice," Joe told Clyde from atop the back fence, "but dogs really don't respond very well to…"
Clyde looked up from the ragged lawn where he was trying to make Selig sit at heel. "Of course you like to give me advice. When have you ever been shy about laying your biased feline opinions on me?" Selig, in response to Clyde's command, lay on his back, waving his paws in the air.
"So do it your way," Joe said, amused.
Clyde turned his back, giving the pup his full attention. "Up-Sit," he told Selig.
Selig wriggled and whined.
Clyde jerked the lead. Selig flipped over onto his feet and danced in a circle around Clyde, leaping to slurp his tongue across Clyde's nose.
Silently Joe watched the little display of superior human intelligence.
Clyde turned to glower at him. "Shut up, Joe, and go away."
"I didn't say a word. But I can see that you're right. You don't need my advice. Anyone can tell you're doing wonders with that puppy. I'd say you have absolutely no peer as a dog trainer. In fact-"
"Can it, Joe. The truth is, he's just too young to train. He's still a baby. In a few months when he's older, he'll-"
"In a few months when he's older, if he keeps on playing with you and ignoring your commands, he'll be a hundred times harder to deal with."