CHAPTER 14

 

"And did they ever find out what the theory was?" asked the twelve-year-old at Camp Prairie Grass, where the campers all sat around a pond and listened to their old counselor tell them the ghost story.

"Well, yeah, but it was all in Scottish so Sir Walter had to tell Gussie and she had to explain it in simple English. I think the old wizard was a little apprehensive about talking about it, if you want to know the truth. He was a philosopher, you see, as well as a magician, but he lived during pretty early Christian times in Scotland and they still liked to use barbaric practices like burning folks at the stake and torturing them to death to enforce all the gentle teachings of Christianity. Michael Scott wasn't exactly a pagan, but he would have been considered a heretic if he'd told people what he really thought."

"So what DID he really think?" asked Spotted Owl Sokorski, a girl unfashionably tanned and unfashionably brown-haired and pretty as any ballad's nut-brown maid.

"It was kind of like what he told Sir Walter about Gussie. That when folks die, the material part goes to the grave and the essential inner part of them—what the Egyptians might have called the 'Ka' might go to heaven or hell or wherever—but there are lots of other parts to a person—I suppose intellect might be the best way to put it, or personality. That energy, like the energy created by the decomposing body, gets recycled into new folks."

"Like family members—maybe like genetic material

"Yeah, I think that's part of what he meant. Between you and me, I think he thought the Ka sometimes got redistributed too but was too chicken to say that. And Torchy Burns intimidated him."

"Why? Did he know she was a devil?"

"Nope, neither he nor Sir Walter knew her as a devil. But they knew her as something that mattered to them more, since they were of a people who were often Christian mostly on the surface. Sir Walter, church-going man that he was, would rather, like True Thomas, have seen Torchy Burns than Mary, the Queen of Heaven herself"

"Why?" asked Sequoia Thomas, whose parents owned the camp and had hired the counselor specifically to tell this story, which they had heard her tell at a convention.

"Because he knew what she used to be."

 

* * *

 

"So that's it—kind of like getting beamed back instead of up, like on Star Trek?" Brose asked when the Wizard had explained his theory. "You sort of split us up into component parts and reassemble us when we get where we need to be, that right?

"What the hell," Brose said. "I always wanted to do something like that. Can we call you Scottie, Wiz?"

Michael Scott's root-defined mouth curved in a hoary smile and he nodded once and said with the dignity of a lofty oak, "Gin thar be no furthair objections, I'll tell ye what ye maun do tae reclaim the ballads." He looked meaningfully at Torchy Burns but she merely smiled a sweet, encouraging cheerleader's smile.

"Hand me the instrument, please," the Wizard Michael instructed. "Tis in the nature of its spell that ah cannae magick it awa' frae ye."

Willie, feeling a little like Dorothy trying to take off her ruby slippers to save Toto, reluctantly handed it over, then took a long sip of his tea, not because he wanted it but to steady himself. He wished if something was going to happen to him, it would just go ahead and happen. The Wizard moved almost as slowly as a plant grows. Actually, Willie could already hear himself telling the others, "I had the weirdest dream last night and you were all in it. There was this Leaf Man. Who would have thought I could out-hokey Hollywood?"

Gussie meant to drink some of her tea but she didn't like that smoky smell. Since she'd been in the fire, the smell irritated her throat, and before she could bring the cup to her lips she broke into a coughing fit.

Julianne, Anna Mae, and Brose all took the opportunity to wet their whistles too. Willie offered some to Torchy who gazed up at him real sweetlike and said, "Oh, no, I've had more than my share, luv. Drink it down. There's a dear."

She was looking more and more like she was so tickled with herself she could bust. Gussie could not imagine what the woman was so chuffed about.

The Wizard Michael Scott said, "Ah shell instruct the instrument to play a ballad as it was played in mah ane day. Ah weel spare ye m'singin', but ah wot and ye will wot which ballad is bein' played. Ye folk are each of ye a different sort, very like the folk in the ballads. When ah play a tune of a distressed lady of noble blood, ah expect yon lassie"—he nodded to Julianne—"weel respond and when ah play of a roguish laddie, ye—" he nodded to Willie "—maun respond. A doughty warrior perhaps yersel', Moorish man, and ye, dearie, are the woodswoman, the dark sister, the brown gel who is the remnant of the auld folk amang the mortals. Ye, auld woman, are the mothers, the hags, the midwife, the nourice, the woman of counsel."

"And me?" asked Sir Walter.

"Ah'm that sorry, laddie, but bein' dead disqualifies ye. Ah wot not but that ye'll return tae yer grave as the spells tak' hold."

Torchy cleared her throat. "Wait a mo, mates. This is gettin' a bit oversimplified-like. It isn't going to be all as easy as Mick makes it sound or quite the lark you seem to think it'll be. You see, you've only got seven years to recapture these songs of yours—"

"Seven years?” Willie asked. "Who said anything about seven years! Hell, darlin', I don't think they're gonna let us stay that long."

"You disappoint me, Willie luv. You haven't let a little thing like mortal law stand in your way so far. And it doesn't matter, you know. Truly it doesn't. Natural law always has dominion over the laws of mere mortals and—ahem—supernatural law, of course, takes sovereignty over natural law."

"Do you always have to be the center of attention?" Anna Mae asked her angrily. "Can we get on with it now?"

"Oh, I really don't believe I'd do that without hearing a bit more, dearie."

"But the Wizard said we only had until cockcrow," Julianne said, "and it's getting lighter already. We have to get the songs back. Not that we haven't appreciated all you've done for us, Torchy hon, but you don't understand all of this. It's really a very cosmic situation."

Torchy laughed a loud, long, derisive laugh and her cockney accent broadened and slowed to a West Texas drawl as she said, "No, hon, it's y'all who don't understand. I understand more than any of you, even more than Mick here."

Willie's eyes widened as her accent altered. "Lulubelle—" he said. "Lulubelle Baker! Why in the hell didn't I recognize you before?"

"Easy, sugar. I didn't want you to. Besides, if you'll pipe down and pay attention, you'll learn that Lulubelle Baker and Torchy Burns are only a couple of the names I'm known by. Mick and Wattie both know me as someone else entirely, don't you, boys?"

Both ghosts—the Wizard in his rustling state and Sir Walter using Gussie's body—bowed in response.

"Now then, shall we get on with this, since you're all so eager?" Torchy asked.

"I hope to tell you we sure as hell better. You're one of those critters been killin' off our friends, siccin' the cops on us, all that stuff. I don't think we have much to say to each other. Wiz, buddy, you can pull your rabbit out of your hat or the brier patch that you're wearin' there or whatever, but lay it on us. I don't want to hear another word out of this lyin', cheatin', low-down excuse for a female."

"Why, Willie, how sweet of you to say so!" Torchy taunted.

"Wait a minute, here," Brose said. "I want to hear a little more about this seven-year business."

"It's a good idea to know the rules ahead of time," Anna Mae agreed.

"I'm very relieved to hear the voice of reason enter into all this paranoid hysteria," Torchy said. "Mick, luv, I'll tell you what. You're in a rush and we have loads of time. Why don't you play the tune on that—uh—play the tune that will send our friends where they want to go, but then after I've had a chance to have a wee chat with them over a nice cup of tea and let them know what they're getting into—you naughty wizards always keep the catches to yourself, trying to be so mysterious—why then each of them can make his or her own decision and play the tune for himself or herself when he or she is ready to go bye-bye. Isn't that fair?"

"Yeah, sure, if it'll work," Brose said.

"Oh, it'll work. Won't it, Mick?"

"If ye so will it, lady, wark it will," the Wizard replied.

"I so will," Torchy said in a formal tone that was neither her working-class British accent nor her southern Lulubelle Baker one.

The Wizard's root-veined hands stroked from the banjo no strange and eldritch tune but one they'd all heard a million times, or so it seemed. Each of them recalled its strains coming from fiddles, banjos, guitars, mandolins, dulcimers, concertinas, every sort of instrument at every folk festival, jam session, workshop, and around every campfire they'd ever been to. And each of them recalled a different set of words to it, while realizing that any lyrics they could recall to any of the ballads would have fit the tune.

The Wizard played it one time through and Julianne, Brose, Willie, and Anna Mae nodded that yes, they could play that and Torchy snapped her fingers. "Enough then. Cock's about to crow, Mick luv. Back to the clay with you before someone thinks you're a vegetarian vampire and runs a tomato stake through your heart."

The Wizard finished silently and the banjo reappeared in Willie's hands. Immediately afterward, somewhere on the farms to the west, a cock crowed and the leaves and roots that formed the Wizard began to wither back into the lid of the tomb.

Torchy laughed. "Only ghosties have to go to bed when the boy chicken sings. The Trust people don't get here till ten. We've plenty of time. So, you lot, come along with me. Bring your cups. We'll want several strong cups of tea and a nice long chat before you go making any rash decisions."