He made a dive for his knapsack and withdrew his tin whistle. “Anybody for a tune?”
The midget brightened. “D’ye know ‘Whiskey Before Breakfast’?”
“Do I not?” said Liam, and began to play. If he hadn’t been tipsy and perhaps a little more than tipsy, it’s likely he’d have made a pig’s ear of it, with his heart thundering in his breast and the spit dry in his mouth. As it was, “Whiskey Before Breakfast” came pouring out of his tin whistle as clear and clean as a May morning in Ballynoe, with all the birds singing.
The midget tapped his tiny, beautifully shod feet. The boyo hooked his elbows over the shelf nailed along the wall and sighed. The small man laid down his clay pipe and clapped time. “Whiskey Before Breakfast” rippled out over the room, until the whole saloon was listening to the bright notes skip through the rafters and ring against the stone bottles ranged behind the bar.
After playing the air three times through, Liam dropped the tin whistle from his lips and opened his eyes.
“Another,” the midget said hoarsely.
Liam gave them “The Witch of the Glen” and “The Lady’s Pantaloons” and “I Buried My Wife and Danced on Top of Her,” which jig had them dancing as they roared out the words. And then he segued, without thinking about it, into an air he’d made before he’d decided to make his fortune in America.
When he was done, the boyo embraced him, dripping salt tears on the top of his head.
“All hail the fluter!” the midget shouted, and lifted his tankard.
“The fluter!” the others echoed.
A tankard appeared at his hand. When he’d drained it, another took its place. Liam wet his mouth and played again.
By and by, Liam felt a nudge at his knee and looked down to see Madra, looking, if possible, more miserable than he’d looked before, with a great mat of twigs and mud tangled in the fur at his neck and a wild look in his piss-yellow eyes.
Liam tucked the whistle away and knelt. “Is it well with you, Madra, my dear?”
“It is not so,” said Madra, irritably. “How do you think it makes me feel, responsible for you as I am, to see you hobnobbing with leprechauns and cluricans and gancanagh and other such scrapings from the depths of the faerie barrel? And me no more fit to protect you than a day-old puppy?”
Liam laughed. “Is that what they are? Well, they seem to like my music well enough. They’ll not harm me, I’m thinking, as long as I play for them.”
“Very likely,” said Madra dryly.
Liam felt a hand upon his shoulder and looked up to see Maeve McDonough herself smiling down at him.
“My thanks, sir, for the entertainment. You’ve put a thirst on my customers the like of which I’ve not seen since I came to these shores. I’ve sold enough drink this night to pay for your dinner—yes, and your dog’s, too, if he’s a stomach for a bit of meat. Come eat it in the back room, away from this moither, and then you’d best take yourself off to bed before they suck you dry entirely.”
Left to himself, Liam might have taken the dinner and forgone the bed, so flown was he on beer and praise and his own dancing music. But he’d Madra to think of, and Madra looked to be on his last legs. So Liam followed Maeve into the back room, where he absorbed a bowl of quite reasonable stew, as well as Madra’s portion, which the poor beast was far too ill to eat.
Indeed, the Pooka could not have been worse. The charm Maeve had given him to counteract the iron- sickness bit into his neck like a wolf. His muscles trembled, his vision blurred, and he’d a mighty thirst on him that water did nothing to assuage. In all the long years of his existence, he’d never suffered so—not even when he’d stumbled into a steel trap set for poachers, which he’d been saved from by a stale-drunk horse trainer named Liam O’Casey.
By the time Liam had eaten, the Pooka was too weak and sore even to stand. Clucking, Liam scooped him up in his arms and carried him bodily up the rickety stairs.
The state of Maeve’s saloon had given Liam a tolerably accurate notion of the accommodations she had to offer.
It was a dismal enough apartment, low ceilinged and airless, with a door at each end. The side walls were lined with wooden shelves upon which Maeve’s boarders were stacked four high and two deep. Liam found an unclaimed space on the lowest shelf, near the far door and right over the piss pot, and tucked Madra into it. He fit himself as best he could around the dog’s burning, shivering body and fell asleep.
Thanks to the excitement of the day and the number of five-cent beers he’d downed, Liam slept heavily. He woke once when his fellow boarders retired, drunk and stumbling on the rickety ladders to the upper sleeping shelves. He woke once again when someone trod on his hand climbing down to use the piss pot. The third time he woke, it was to the piteous whines of a dog in agony.
Liam opened his eyes to see a dozen tiny, glowing creatures. Their gauzy wings whirred as they hovered about Madra, pulling at his ears and whiskers and the small hairs about his eyes. Liam shooed them away like bees, and like bees they turned upon him and pinched at his face with sharp little fingers. Owning himself defeated, Liam gathered Madra in his arms and bore him carefully down the stairs to the saloon. And there the pair of them spent the balance of the night, curled on a floor only a little fouler than the sleeping shelf above.
In the gray dawn, the Pooka woke to the toe of a boot in his ribs and Maeve’s face looking down at him. “The top of the morning to you, trickster,” she said. “And how are you finding yourself this lovely spring day?”
The Pooka levered himself to his feet. His body was sore but no longer wracked with pain, and the burning glede upon his neck had cooled a degree or perhaps more. He yawned hugely and shook himself from ears to tail. “I’m alive,” he said. “Which comes as a pleasant surprise. As to the rest, I wish I were back in Erin, deep in a nice bog, and a rainy night descending.”
“And so do I, trickster. So do I.” For a moment, Maeve allowed her true face to show through the glamour, gaunt and fierce as a mewed hawk. “Now wake your mortal, trickster. I’ve the floor to sweep and the charms to make for any iron-sick Folk who chance to wash up at my door the day.”
So the Pooka nudged Liam O’Casey with his nose and gave him to know it was time to be up and about.
Liam awoke with a foul mouth, a griping in his belly, and an aching head. Dunking his head in a barrel of stale water did something to resign him to a new day. A five-cent beer and a slice of soda bread hot from the oven did more. Thus fortified, Liam O’Casey set out into the April morning in search of employment.
Madra came with him.
Left to his own devices, Liam might have stopped to pass the time of day with someone, preferably a mortal like himself, who might give him advice a mortal could use. As it was, he could only follow Madra, trying not to get knocked down by a heavily laden cart or trip over a feral pig or run into a pushcart or one of the hundreds of gray- faced men on their way to work. He was hot and out of breath when Madra stopped in front of a big square clapboard warehouse.
Liam looked up at the sign: GREEN’S FINE FURNITURE. EST. 1840. EBENEZER GREEN, PROP.
“No doubt it’s slipped your mind that I’m a horseman, Madra, not a carpenter.”
Madra heaved a sigh. “There’s a stable behind, you great idiot—I can smell it. Go on in now; it can’t hurt to ask.”
Liam brushed down his jacket, straightened his cap, and walked into the warehouse. The place was busy as an ant’s nest, with an army of roughly dressed men running about with raw lumber and finished furniture, while a burly man in a loud silk waistcoat over his shirtsleeves and a porkpie hat shouted orders. Presuming this to be Ebenezer Green, Liam approached and greeted him in his best English.
Mr. Green turned a pig-eyed glare on him. “Speak American, Paddy, or git out. Better yet, do both. This is a know-nothing shop. We don’t do business with Micks and such-like trash.”
The man’s voice was flat and loud, his accent unfamiliar. His tone and look, however, were as clear as the finest glass goblet.
“I’ll be bidding you good day, then,” Liam said. “Mr. Know-Nothing, sir.” Then he turned on his heel and marched out.
