So now I knew what she did with the bones. But it didn't tell me how she could find so many of them. Surely that many stray dogs didn't die, their bones scattered the length and breadth of the city like so much autumn residue?
***
Amy and I had a gig opening for the Kelledys that night. It didn't take me long to set up. I just adjusted my microphone, laid out my fiddle and whistles on a small table to one side, and then kicked my heels while Amy fussed with her pipes and the complicated tangle of electronics that she used to amplify them.
I've heard it said that all Uillean pipers are a little crazy— that they have to be to play an instrument that looks more like what you'd find in the back or a plumber's truck than an instrument— but I think of them as perfectionists. Every one I've ever met spends more time fiddling with their reeds and adjusting the tuning of their various chanters, drones and regulators than would seem humanly possible.
Amy's no exception. After a while I left her there on the stage, with her red hair falling in her face as she poked and prodded at a new reed she'd made for one of her drones, and wandered into the back where the Kelledys were making their own preparations for the show, which consisted of drinking tea and looking beatific. At least that's the way I always think of the two of them. I don't think I've ever met calmer people.
Jilly likes to think of them as mysterious, attributing all kinds of fairy-tale traits to them. Meran, she's convinced, with the green highlights in her nut-brown hair and her wise brown eyes, is definitely dryad material— the spirit of an oak tree come to life— while Cerin is some sort of wizard figure, a combination of adept and bard. I think the idea amuses them, and they play it up to Jilly. Nothing you can put your finger on, but they seem to get a kick out of spinning a mysterious air about themselves whenever she's around.
I'm far more practical than Jilly— actually, just about anybody's more practical than Jilly, God bless her, but that's another story. I think if you find yourself using the word magic to describe the Kelledys, what you're really talking about is their musical talent. They may seem preternaturally calm offstage, but as soon as they begin to play, that calmness is transformed into a bonfire of energy. There's enchantment then, burning on stage, but it comes from their instrumental skill.
"Geordie," Meran said after I'd paced back and forth for a few minutes. "You look a little edgy. Have some tea."
I had to smile. If the Kelledys had originated from some mysterious elsewhere, then I'd lean more toward them having come from a fiddle tune than Jilly's fairy tales.
"When sick is it tea you want?" I said, quoting the title of an old Irish jig that we all knew in common.
Meran returned my smile. "It can't hurt. Here." she added, rummaging around in a bag that was lying by her chair. "Let me see if I have something that'll ease your nervousness."
"I'm not nervous."
"No, of course not," Cerin put in. "Geordie just likes to pace, don't you?"
He was smiling as he spoke, but without a hint of Christy's sometimes annoying demeanor.
"No, really. It's just..."
"Just what?" Meran asked as my voice trailed off.
Well, here was the perfect opportunity to put Jilly's theories to the test, I decided. If the Kelledys were in fact as fey as she made them out to be, then they'd be able to explain this business with the bones, wouldn't they?
So I told them about the fat woman and her bones and what I'd found in her squat. They listened with far more reasonableness than I would have if someone had been telling the story to me— especially when I went on to explain the weird feeling I'd been getting from the whole business.
"It's giving me the creeps," I said, finishing up, "and I can't even say why."
"La Huesera," Cerin said when I was done.
Meran nodded. "The Bone Woman," she said, translating it for me. "It does sound like her."
"So you know her."
"No," Meran said. "It just reminds us of a story we heard when we were playing in Phoenix a few years ago. There was a young Apache man opening for us, and he and I started comparing flutes. We got on to one of the Native courting flutes which used to be made from human bone and somehow from there he started telling me about a legend they have in the Southwest about this old fat woman who wanders through the mountains and arroyos, collecting bones from the desert that she brings back to her cave."
"What does she collect them for?"
"To preserve the things that are in danger of being lost to the world," Cerin said.
"I don't get it."
"I'm not sure of the exact details," Cerin went on, "but it had something to do with the spirits of endangered species."
"Giving them a new life," Meran said.
"Or a second chance."
"But there's no desert around here," I said. "What would this Bone Woman be doing up here?"
Meran smiled. "I remember John saying that she's as often been seen riding shotgun in an eighteen-wheeler as walking down a dry wash."
"And besides," Cerin added, "any place is a desert when there's more going on underground than on the surface."
That described Newford perfectly. And who lived a more hidden life than the street people? They were right in front of us every day, but most people didn't even see them anymore. And who was more deserving of a second chance than someone like Ellie, who'd never even gotten a fair first chance?
"Too many of us live desert lives," Cerin said, and I knew just what he meant.
***
The gig went well. I was a little bemused, but I didn't make any major mistakes. Amy complained that her regulators had sounded too buzzy in the monitors, but that was just Amy. They'd sounded great to me, their counterpointing chords giving the tunes a real punch whenever they came in.
The Kelledys' set was pure magic. Amy and I watched them from the stage wings and felt higher as they took their final bow than we had when the applause had been directed at us.
I begged off getting together with them after the show, regretfully pleading tiredness. I was tired, but leaving the theater, I headed for an abandoned factory in the Tombs instead of home. When I got up on the roof of the building, the moon was full. It looked like a saucer of buttery gold, bathing everything in a warm yellow light. I heard a soft voice on the far side of the roof near the Bone Woman's squat. It wasn't exactly singing but not chanting either. A murmuring, sliding sound that raised the hairs at the nape of my neck.
I walked a little nearer, staying in the shadows of the cornices, until I could see the Bone Woman. I paused then, laying my fiddlecase quietly on the roof and sliding down so that I was sitting with my back against the cornice.
The Bone Woman had one of her skeleton sculptures set out in front of her and she was singing over it. The dog shape was complete now, all the bones wired in place and gleaming in the moonlight. I couldn't make out the words of her song. Either there were none, or she was using a language I'd never heard before. As I watched, she stood, raising her arms up above the wired skeleton, and her voice grew louder.
The scene was peaceful— soothing, in the same way that the Kelledys' company could be— but eerie as well. The Bone Woman's voice had the cadence of one of the medicine chants I'd heard at a powwow up on the Kickaha Reservation— the same nasal tones and ringing quality. But that powwow hadn't prepared me for what came next.
At first I wasn't sure that I was really seeing it. The empty spaces between the skeleton's bones seemed to gather volume and fill out, as though flesh were forming on the bones. Then there was fur, highlighted by the moonlight, and I couldn't deny it any more. I saw a bewhiskered muzzle lift skyward, ears twitch, a tail curl up, thick-haired and strong. The powerful chest began to move rhythmically, at first in time to the Bone Woman's song, then breathing of its own accord.