Song of Susannah

Susannah guessed somewhere between six and ten hours-certainly before midnight saw in June second-but tried to keep this to herself.

I don’t know. Not all that long.

Then we have to get started. I have to find a telefung. Phone. In a private place.

Susannah thought there was a hotel at the First Avenue end of Forty-sixth Street, and tried to keep this to herself. Her eyes went back to the bag, once pink, now red, and suddenly she understood. Not everything, but enough to dismay and anger her.

I’ll leave it here, Mia had said, speaking of the ring Eddie had made her, I’ll leave it here, where he’ll find it. Later, if ka wills, you may wear it again.

Not a promise, exactly, at least not a direct one, but Mia had certainly implied-

Dull anger surged through Susannah’s mind. No, she’d not promised. She had simply led Susannah in a certain direction, and Susannah had done the rest.

She didn’t cozen me; she let me cozen myself.

Mia stood up again, and once again Susannah came forward and made her sit down. Hard, this time.

What? Susannah, you promised! The chap-

I’ll help you with the chap, Susannah replied grimly. She bent forward and picked up the red bag. The bag with the box inside it. And inside the box? The ghostwood box with UNFOUND written upon it in runes? She could feel a baleful pulse even through the layer of magical wood and cloth which hid it. Black Thirteen was in the bag. Mia had taken it through the door. And if it was the ball that opened the door, how could Eddie get to her now?

I did what I had to, Mia said nervously. It’s my baby, my chap, and every hand is against me now. Every hand but yours, and, you only help me because you have to. Remember what I said… if ka wills, I said-

It was Detta Walker’s voice that replied. It was harsh and crude and brooked no argument. “I don’t give a shit bout ka,” she said, “and you bes be rememberin dat. You got problems, girl. Got a rug-monkey comin you don’t know what it is. Got folks say they’ll he’p you and you don’t know what dey are. Shit, you doan even know what a telephone is or where to find one. Now we goan sit here, and you’re goan tell me what happens next. We goan palaver, girl, and if you don’t play straight, we still be sittin here with these bags come nightfall and you can have your precious chap on this bench and wash him off in the fuckin fountain.”

The woman on the bench bared her teeth in a gruesome smile that was all Detta Walker.

“You care bout dat chap… and Susannah, she care a little bout dat chap… but I been mos’ly turned out of this body, and I… don’t… give a shit.”

A woman pushing a stroller (it looked as divinely lightweight as Susannah’s abandoned wheelchair) gave the woman on the bench a nervous glance and then pushed her own baby onward, so fast she was nearly running.

“So!” Detta said brightly. “It’s be purty out here, don’t you think? Good weather for talkin. You hear me, mamma?”

No reply from Mia, daughter of none and mother of one. Detta wasn’t put out of countenence; her grin widened.

“You hear me, all right; you hear me just fahn. So let’s us have a little chat. Let’s us palaver.”

STAVE: Commala-come-ko
Whatcha doin at my do’?
If you doan tell me now, my friend,
I’ll lay ya on de flo’.

RESPONSE: Commala-come fo’!
I can lay ya low!
The things I done to such as you
You never want to know.

5th STANZA THE TURTLE

ONE

Mia said: Talking will be easier-quicker and clearer, too-if we do it face-to-face.

How can we? Susannah asked.

We’ll have our palaver in the castle, Mia replied promptly. The Castle on the Abyss. In the banquet room. Do you remember the banquet room?

Susannah nodded, but hesitantly. Her memories of the banquet room were but recently recovered, and consequently vague. She wasn’t sorry, either. Mia’s feeding there had been… well, enthusiastic, to say the very least. She’d eaten from many plates (mostly with her fingers) and drunk from many glasses and spoken to many phantoms in many borrowed voices. Borrowed? Hell, stolen voices. Two of these Susannah had known quite well. One had been Odetta Holmes’s nervous-and rather hoity-toity-'social” voice. Another had been Delta’s raucous who-gives-a-shit bellow. Mia’s thievery had extended to every aspect of Susannah’s personality, it seemed, and if Detta Walker was back, pumped up and ready to cut butt, that was in large part this unwelcome stranger’s doing.

The gunslinger saw me there, Mia said. The boy, too.

There was a pause. Then:

I have met them both before.

Who? Jake and Roland?

Aye, they

Where? When? How could y-

We can’t speak here. Please. Let us go somewhere more private.

Someplace with a phone, isn’t that what you mean? So your friends can call you.

I only know a little, Susannah of New York, but what little I know, I think you would hear.

Susannah thought so, too. And although she didn’t necessarily want Mia to realize it, she was also anxious to get off Second Avenue. The stuff on her shirt might look like spilled egg-cream or dried coffee to the casual passerby, but Susannah herself was acutely aware of what it was: not just blood, but the blood of a brave woman who had stood true on behalf of her town’s children.

And there were the bags spread around her feet. She’d seen plenty of bag-folken in New York, aye. Now she felt like one herself, and she didn’t like the feeling. She’d been raised to better, as her mother would have said. Each time someone passing on the sidewalk or cutting through the little park gave her a glance, she felt like telling them she wasn’t crazy in spite of how she looked: stained shirt, dirty face, hair too long and in disarray, no purse, only those three bags at her feet. Homeless, aye-had anyone ever been as homeless as she, not just out of house but out of time itself?-but in her right mind. She needed to palaver with Mia and get an understanding of what all this was about, that was true. What she wanted was much simpler: to wash, to put on fresh clothes, and to be out of public view for at least a little while.

Might as well wish for the moon, sugar, she told herself… and Mia, if Mia was listening. Privacy costs money. You’re in a version of New York where a single hamburger might cost as much as a dollar, crazy as that sounds. And you don’t have a sou. Just a dozen or so sharpened plates and some kind of black-magic ball. So what are you gonna do?

Before she could get any further in her thinking, New York was swept away and she was back in the Doorway Cave. She’d been barely aware of her surroundings on her first visit-Mia had been in charge then, and in a hurry to make her getaway through the door-but now they were very clear. Pere Callahan was here. So was Eddie. And Eddie’s brother, in a way. Susannah could hear Henry Dean’s voice floating up from the cave’s depths, both taunting and dismayed: “I’m in hell, bro! I’m in hell and 1 can’t get a fix and it’s all your fault! ”

Susannah’s disorientation was nothing to the fury she felt at the sound of that nagging, hectoring voice. “Most of what was wrong with Eddie was your fault!” she screamed at him. “You should have done everyone a favor and died young, Henry!”

Those in the cave didn’t even look around at her. What was this? Had she come here todash from New York, just to add to the fun? If so, why hadn’t she heard the chimes?

Hush. Hush, love. That was Eddie’s voice in her mind, clear as day. Just watch.

Do you hear him? she asked Mia. Do you-

Yes! Now shut up!

“How long will we have to be here, do you think?” Eddie asked Callahan.

“I’m afraid it’ll be awhile,” Callahan replied, and Susannah understood she was seeing something that had already happened. Eddie and Callahan had gone up to the Doorway Cave to try to locate Calvin Tower and Tower’s friend, Deepneau. Just before the showdown with the Wolves, this had been. Callahan was the one who’d gone through the door. Black Thirteen had captured Eddie while the Pere was gone. And almost killed him. Callahan had returned just in time to keep Eddie from hurling himself from the top of the bluff and into the draw far below.

Right now, though, Eddie was dragging the bag-pink, yes, she’d been right about that, on the Calla side it had been pink-out from underneath the troublesome sai Tower’s bookcase of first