understand? You can't just turn on Blessing Way and Michigan and get there. But I got there.
'Inside, there were elves in leathers, whole-Worlders in destroyed denim, halfies in anything and all. A bunch of them were slamming, and though he might jitterbug or even Madison if the cause were strong, Birdsong does not slam. Two half-naked Ellyllon were doing the lambada-I don't suppose either of you has ever seen a lambada?'
They shook their heads.
'Good for you. Oh, and a werewolf was waltzing with an elf maiden. Waltzing, Jesus Matilda. So I watched for a while, and then went to the bar, because there are some true compasses in the thickest weather.
'I turned around then. Maybe something made me turn. I saw a man: my height, my build, my color. Thinner, but if any of my other parts got the exercise my tongue does I'd be pretty trim too. He was wearing buckskins, moccasins, and eagle feathers in his hair. He looked me dead in the eye, and he started to dance, solo. Slow, not hard to follow, one-two, step-two. And I follow.
'No one looked at us. What's strange enough to stare at in Danceland? Not dancers, surely. I danced all night with mv eagle brother, until the spells that drove the neon died, and the loose fairy dust in the air got thick enough to choke on, and the fire we show the World went out. Never did touch a drink.'
Lucius reached inside his jacket, took out a flat leather case. He showed them three feathers, black and white and golden. 'You're an open-spaces man, Doc: have you ever seen an eagle?'
'No. I thought I did once, but it was just a turkey buzzard.'
Lucius turned the feathers over in his ringers. 'Reporters have sources. That's like magic, but more expensive. There hasn't been a confirmed sighting of a wild eagle since the return of KIHaiul. ‹›r a California condor. And there are rumors about the ravens of Dresden.' He put the feathers away.
Danny said, 'Are you suggesting we go to Danceland?'
'Oh, no.' Lucius finished his beer. 'Birdsong on high adventure in one paragraph: Even if it were within my ability to send you, I was just pointing out that you don't really seek places out in the Shades. You find them.' Suddenly he reached out, put two fingers against Danny's jaw and turned his head. Ginny had been leaning against Danny's shoulder, and their cheeks touched with something like an electric shock. They both jumped.
'Good night and good hunting,' Lucius said, picking up his coat. 'See you in the funny papers.' He drifted out into the night.
Danny said to Ginny, 'Where do you think we should start looking?'
'Do you think you could find my place? I mean, up the stairs and everything?'
'It's worth a try.'
Ginevra's apartment was small, and tidy. No, it was austere. Ginny went into the kitchen to make tea, and Danny absorbed the details: a portable CD player and a few dozen discs, classical and old rock and folk; paperbacks on bare wooden bookshelves, plays and poetry and illustrated travel books; cardboard bins of magazines about travel and history. The rather hard chairs were softened a little by throw pillows, and a small orange rug lay precisely in the center of the polished wood floor. The only wall decoration-the only decoration at all, really-was a framed poster of an ornate, domed building with a tower, in the middle of a foreign city. Fl-RENZE, it said.
Ginny came out of the kitchen, holding a tea tray. Danny swallowed. She was wearing black cotton pajamas, a high-collared shirt and long trousers.
'You don't mind my getting changed,' she said.
'No. 'Course not. It's your house.' Shut up, he told himself.
She put the tray down, sat in the one comfortable-looking chair; she was scrunched over to the side, leaving room. Danny sat on the floor. She smiled oddly and tucked her feet up beneath herself. 'There's nothing in this room really big enough, sorry.'
He shrugged, shook his head. It was clear enough what she meant: there would be only one other furnished room in the apartment, and there was no bed in this one.
But he was happy just to look at her, the curves of her body under the cloth. She handed him a teacup.
Danny said, 'Do you think this is what Lucius had in mind?'
'Maybe,' she said, with a hint of a laugh. Then she said, 'He seems so lonely. He's at the club a lot, but he's never with anyone, unless it's someone he's talking to for a story. Or Kitsune Asa.'
'Is there really a typewriter there for him?'
She nodded. 'That's part of what I mean. He'll be in really late, sometimes the last person there, typing, like he didn't have anyplace else to go. As if going home were like dying.' She rubbed her hands on her teacup. 'When he told that story, tonight-I wondered where he was going, when he got lost.' She shifted again, looked at her bare feet, looked at him, smiled. 'Tell me a story. Doc.'
'What about?'
'About you. Tell me something nobody else in the city knows about you.'
'Oh-'
'Come on, please. You must have done things before you came here. You must have had friends.'
'Robin was my best friend at home,' he said, too quickly.
'What was she like?'
'No, Rob was a guy. He was about my size, sort of blond. I'm sure he was a lot better looking. He sure didn't have freckles.'
'Hmm.'
'But, see, the thing about Rob was that he could really talk to people. You always knew what he meant, know what I mean? See, I can't do it.'
'Go on. He was your best friend. You took twirls out together, that kind of thing?'
'No. I mean, nobody did, really. We were all a long way apart, and nobody had cars. We had bikes-bicycles, not motorcycles- but where can you go on a bike? The only place close to go, really, was when there was a social at the school, ami then everybody's folks went too.' He took a swallow of tea, bur ir didn't stop him: he was started now, and knew he was going to tell it all. The in credible thing was that he hadn't told it before now.
Ginny tucked herself up tighter in the chair. Danny put his cup down so he wouldn't spill it. Quickly he said, 'What happened was, we were haying on Danny's folks' place. We-were you ever on a farm?'
'No.'
'We all did that. Help's always short, and they don't use the machines too much, now, but-well, there was a mechanical baler. That's a machine that bundles up the hay with wire. Rob got caught in it. I don't know how, nobody saw what happened, but he yelled, and you could see blood…
'A couple of us got him out. He was really messed up bad. I'd read some first aid books-I kind of wanted to be a doctor, I guess, but it wasn't going to happen.'
'Why?'
'What?'
'Why couldn't you be a doctor?'
'Because you have to go away to school for a long time,' Danny said faster than he could think, 'and my folks didn't want that.' He paused. 'I don't have any brothers or sisters. I had a little sister, but she died of flu when she was four.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Yeah.' How could he explain that he had felt nothing? That she had been there, and then she wasn't, and at six years old Danny had no idea what all the fuss was supposed to be about?
Ginevra said, 'Rob got hurt in the baler machine.'
'Yeah. Like I said, I knew a little first aid, and I got tourniquets on, so he didn't bleed to death. But he lost his left arm, and most of his left leg.
'Rob's folks were really grateful. His dad was on county council, and he helped me get my EMT card; the county paid for the training, and I worked at the hospital, and then for the fire department after I made paramedic. And, uh, they helped me buy the TR3 from a sheriff's sale. I don't think my mom and dad were too happy about that.'
'And then you came up here.'
'Yeah. I hauled some stuff downstairs, and we yelled at each other, and I said they could shoot me if they wanted to but they weren't gonna stop me.
'I couldn't stand seeing Rob, see. I'd go visit, because we were friends, right? And I'd see him at school, and church. And he'd just sit there in the chair. I told you, Rob was good at letting you know what he meant. He sure
