CHAPTER 28

 

The storyteller had been so engrossed in her own story that she barely noticed the shifting movement of the people around her.

Toward morning, when she finished her story, the dawn pierced the fog at the same time a stiff breeze blew away the patch that had veiled the bus and the passengers to reveal that while the storyteller had been immersed in her own tale, the other passengers and the bus had disappeared except for one lone figure who sat across from her, her sandaled toes touching the storyteller's. As the last scarf of fog blew away, the remaining listener lifted her head, and her broad straw hat with the chili pepper and rattlesnake hide hatband tilted back to reveal unruly flame-red hair and a dopey, irreverent grin.

This last listener clapped three times, slowly. "Well done, Gussie, luv," she said. "But what happened to the others later? I've missed you, you know. I was—called away rather suddenly by the peace crisis in Eastern Europe."

"Well, Torchy, without interference from you, the kids spent the rest of their seven years researching and singing in Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, all of those places where the songs had direct relatives, then on to Germany and France, the rest of Europe, and back through Africa with Gachero. They'll be along directly."

"I know. I can hear the banjo. I suppose you were going to meet them?"

"I was."

"Well, then, I'll just give you a lift—"She indicated a bright red BMW.

"Mighty kind of you to bother, Torchy, and somewhat uncharacteristic," Gussie said, rising to her feet

"You've quite gotten the gift of gab since I saw you last."

"Wat's legacy."

"How nice," Torchy responded, climbing in the driver's seat. "Buckle up, now, there's a dear," she said, but the seat belt snaked around Gussie like an anaconda, strapping across her chest and waist and padlocking itself at her hip. "Safety first!" Torchy trilled, though she did not buckle her own belt as she gunned the car into a blurring takeoff down the steep mountain highway. "Now then, where are we meeting them?"

"In the desert, by the banks of the Rio Grande," Gussie said. "How have you been, Torchy?"

And the Debauchery Devil's eyes gleamed red, reflecting the dawn burning through her windshield, she said, "Not good, luvvie. In fact, you'll find I've been fully rehabilitated.”

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is the author of 22 solo fantasy and science fiction novels, including the 1989 Nebula award winning Healer's War, loosely based on her service as an Army Nurse in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. She has collaborated thus far on 16 novels with Anne McCaffrey, six in the best selling Petaybee series and eight in the YA bestselling Acorna series, and most recently, the Tales of the Barque Cat series, Catalyst and coming in December 2010, Catacombs (from Del Rey). Her last published solo novel was CLEOPATRA 7.2, soon to be re-released for e-book download and print on demand by an imprint of Gypsy Shadow Publishing.

Scarborough admits to having been a folk music fan back when she was a child, long before it was fashionable, throughout the Great Folk Music Scare of the 50's and 60's, and long after it was fashionable, up until today. She visited the Library of Congress Folk Music Archives for the first time while researching these books and met then-librarian Joe Hickerson, a fine musician and songwriter, and asked him if he'd mind dying heroically in the telling of this story while she blew up the Folk Music Archives. Hickerson and other museum staff seemed delighted to be so gloriously martyred and had the entire Songkiller Saga trilogy specially bound so it could have a place in the (thankfully not-blown-up) Folk Music Archives. Since writing these books, Scarborough has received fan mail about them from musicians she's admired all of her life and has made several new friends in the field.