It is hard to see what is going on across the river. Chinese waiters in elegant tuxedos are dipping dancing princesses. There are a lot of sequins. They are dancing so fast, things get blurry. Things run together. I think I see alligators dancing. I see a fat old man dancing with the girl detective's mother. Maybe even the housekeeper is dancing. It's hard to tell if their feet are even touching the ground. There are sparks. Fireworks. The musicians are dancing, too, but they don't stop playing. I'm dancing up in my tree. The leaves shake and the branch groans, but the branch doesn't break.
We dance for hours. Maybe for days. It's hard to tell when it stays dark all the time. Then there is a line of dancers coming across the river. They skip across the backs of the white alligators, who snap at their heels. They are hand in hand, spinning and turning and falling back, and leaping forward. It's hard to see them, they're moving so fast. It's so dark down here. Is that a dancing princess, or a bank robber? Is that a fat old man, or an alligator, or a housekeeper? I wish I knew. Is that the girl detective or is it her mother? One looks back at the other and smiles. She doesn't say a thing, she just smiles.
I look, and in the mossy glow they all look like the girl detective. Or maybe the girl detective looks like all of them. They all look so happy. Passing in the opposite direction is a line of Chinese waiters. They swing the first line as they pass. They cut across and dosey-do. They clap hands. They clutch each other, across the breast and the back, and tango. But the girl detectives keep up towards the restaurant and the bathroom and the secret staircase. The waiters keep on towards the water, towards the nightclub. Down in that nightclub, there's a bathroom. In the bathroom, there's another staircase. The waiters are going home to bed.
I'm exhausted. I can't keep up with the girl detectives. "Wait!" I yell. "Hold it for just a second. I'm coming with you."
They all turn and look back at me. I'm dizzy with all of that looking. I fall out of my tree. I hit the ground. Really, that's all I remember.
When I woke up.
Someone had carried me back to my tree and tucked me in. I was snug as a bug. I was back in the tree across the street from the girl detective's window. This time the blind was down. I couldn't see a thing.
The end of the girl detective?
Some people say that she never came back from the underworld.
The return of the girl detective.
I had to go to the airport for some reason. It's a long story. It was an important case. This wasn't that long ago. I hadn't been down out of the tree for very long. I was missing the tree.
I thought I saw the girl detective in the bar in Terminal B. She was sitting in one of the back booths, disguised as a fat old man. There was a napkin in front of her, folded into a giraffe. She was crying but there was the napkin folded into a giraffe – she had nothing to wipe her nose on. I would have gone over and given her my handkerchief, but someone sat down next to her. It was a kid about twelve years old. She had red hair. She was wearing overalls. She just sat next to him, and she put down another napkin. She didn't say a word to him. The old man blew his nose on it and I realized that he wasn't the girl detective at all. He was just an old man. It was the kid in the overalls – what a great disguise! Then the waitress came over to take their order. I wasn't sure about the waitress. Maybe she was the girl detective. But she gave me such a look – I had to get up and leave.
Why I got down out of the tree.
She came over and stood under the tree. She looked a lot like my mother. Get down out of that tree this instant! she said. Don't you know it's time for dinner?
About the Author
Kelly Link is the author of the collection Magic for Beginners, editor of the anthology Trampoline, and co-editor of the zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. With Ellen Datlow and Gavin J. Grant, she edits The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (St. Martin 's Press).
She once won a free trip around the world by answering the question "Why do you want to go around the world?" ("Because you can't go through it.") Link lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
PUBLICATION HISTORY
These stories were previously published as follows: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, Fence, 1998
Water Off a Black Dog's Back, Century, 1995
The Specialist's Hat, Event Horizon, 1998
Flying Lessons, Asimov's, 1995
Travels with the Snow Queen, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, winter 1996/7
Vanishing Act, Realms of Fantasy, 1996
Survivor's Ball, or, The Donner Party, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, 1998
Shoe and Marriage, 4 Stories, 2000
The Girl Detective, Event Horizon, 1999
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am extremely grateful to the following people. Some of them are relatives, some are friends, some are writers or editors. All of them have been incredibly kind encouraging. Some of them have cooked meals for me, or taught me various card games, or pointed me towards necessary books, or read my stories when I needed readers. I was a member of various workshops while writing these stories: I owe a lot to the instructors and members of the MFA workshop at UNC-G, Clarion East, Sycamore Hill, the Cambridge Auxiliary Women's Workshop, CSFW, and Rio Hondo. Partial inspiration for "The Specialist's Hat" came from an exhibit at the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, MA. I borrowed part of a passage (stuck up beside an empty exhibit case) to begin the longest poem in that story. Also adapted, for that same story, is a passage about snake whiskey from a folklore exhibit in Raleigh, NC. I would like to thank my mother, Annabel J. Link, who read to me until her voice gave out; my father, Bill Link, who read me books when my mother was too hoarse; my sister, Holly; my brother, Ben; Sam, Babs, Bryan and Laurie Jones, my grandparents, Edwin and Lou Jones; my wicked stepmother, Linda. I am indebted to Joyce Nissim, Michele Harley, Barb Gilly, Lynne and Tom Casey, Fleur Penman, Ada Vassilovski, Pete Cramer, Jack Cheng, Margaret Muirhead, Jim Clarke, Cassandra Silvia, Vincent McCaffrey, the fabulous Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, Bill Desmond, K. Wyndham, Mimi Levin, Janis Fields, Lea and Anna (girl sleuths), Christopher Hammond, Jim Clark, Fred Chappell, Lee Zacharias, Michael Parker, Raymond Kennedy, RAchele Taylor, Hadas Steiner, Melissa DeJong, John Golz, Lauren Stearns, Justine Larbalestier, Jenna A. Felice, Vanessa Felice, Veronica Shanoes, William Smith, Anna Genoese, Steve Pasechnick, Bryan Cholfin, Terra Cholfin, Ian McDowell, Anne Abrams, Mr. Jeremy Cavin, Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling, Delia Sherman, Ellen Kushner, Gwenda Bond, Neil Gaiman, Nalo Hopkinson, Dora Knez, Jim Patrick Kelly, Sarah Smith, John Kessel, Richard Butner, Walter Jon Williams, Greg Frost, Sean Stewart, Tim and Serena Powers, Jonathan Lethem, Shelley Jackson, and Karen Joy Fowler. (Especially Karen J. Fowler.) I am so very grateful for the hard work and patience and generosity of Gavin J. Grant, who has given me, among other things, a pair of shoes, a glass eye (I broke it), CDs by Mayumi Kojima and Super Butter Dog, a kimono, and, on my thirtieth birthday, thirty books, wrapped up in paper.
