Dreams Underfoot

The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it.

—Romany saying

A light Friday night drizzle had left a glistening sheen on Yoors Street when Lorio Munn stepped out of the club. She hefted her guitar case and looked down at her running shoes with a frown. The door opened and closed behind her and Terry Dixon joined her on the sidewalk, carrying his bass.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

Lorio lifted a shoe to show him the hole in its sole. “It’s going to be a wet walk.”

“You want a lift? Jane’s meeting me at the Fan—we can give you a lift home after, if you want.”

“No, I’m not much in the mood for socializing tonight.”

“Hey, come on. It was a great night. We packed the place.”

“Yeah. But they weren’t really listening.”

“They were dancing, weren’t they? All of a sudden, that’s not enough? You used to complain that all they’d do is just sit there.”

“I know. I like it when they dance. It’s just—”

Terry caught her arm. Putting a finger to his lips, he nodded to a pair of women who were walking by, neither of whom noticed Lorio and Terry standing in the club’s doorway. One of them was humming the chorus to the band’s last number under her breath:

I don’t need nobody staring at me, stripping me down with their 1-2-3, I got a right to my own dignity—who needs pornography?

“Okay,” Lorio said when the women had passed them. “So somebody’s listening. But when I went to get our money, Slimy Ted—”

“Slimy Toad.”

Lorio smiled briefly. “He told me I could make a few extra bucks if I’d go out with a couple of his friends who, quote, ‘liked my moves,’ unquote. What does that tell you?”

“That I ought to break his head.”

“It means the people that I want to reach aren’t listening.”

“Maybe we should be singing louder?”

“Sure.” Lorio shook her head. “Look, say hi to Jane for me, would you? Maybe I’ll make it next time.”

She watched him go, then set off in the opposite direction towards Stanton Street. Maybe she shouldn’t be complaining. No Nuns Here was starting to get the decent gigs. In the City had run an article on them—even spent a paragraph or two on what was behind the band, instead of just dismissing what they were trying to say as postpunk jingoism like their one twoline review in The Newford Star had.

Oh, it was still very in to sing about women’s rights, gay rights, people’s rights, for God’s sake, but the band still got the “aren’t you limiting yourselves?” thrown at them by people who should know better.

Still, at least they were getting some attention and, more importantly, what they were trying to say was getting some attention. It might bore the pants off of Joe Average Jock—but that was just the person they were trying to reach. So where did you go? If they could only get a decent gig. A big one where they could really reach more

She paused in midstep, certain she’d heard a moan from the alleyway she was passing. As she peered into it, the sound was repeated. Definitely a moan. She looked up and down Yoors Street, but there was no one close to her.

“Hey!” she called softly into the alley. “Is there someone in there?”

She caught a glimpse of eyes, gleaming like a cat’s caught in the headbeams of a car—just a shivery flash and they were gone. Animal’s eyes. But the sound she’d heard had seemed human.

“Hey!”

Swallowing thickly, she edged into the alley, her guitar case held out in front of her. As she moved down its length, her eyes began to adjust to the poor light.

Why was she doing this? She had to be nuts.

The moan came a third time then and she saw what she took to be a small man lying in some refuse.

“Oh, jeez.” She moved forward, fear forgotten. “Are you okay?”

She laid her guitar case down and knelt beside the figure, but when she reached out a hand to his shoulder, she touched fur instead of clothing. Muscles moved under her fingers—weakly, but enough to tell her that it wasn’t a fur coat. She snatched back her hand as a broad face turned towards her.

She froze, looking into that face. The first thing she thought of were the orangutans in the Metro Zoo.

The features had a simian cast with their closeset eyes, broad overhanging brow and protruding lower jaw. Reddish fur surrounded the face—the same fur that covered the creature’s body.

It had to be a costume, she thought. Except it was too real. She began to back away.

“Help ... me ....”

This couldn’t be real.

“When they track me down again ... this time ... they will ... they will kill me ....”

The gaze that met her own was cloudy with pain, but it wasn’t an animal’s. Intelligence lay in its depth, behind the pain. But this wasn’t a man wearing a costume either.

“Who will?” she asked at last.

For the first time, the gaze appeared to really focus on her. “You ... you’re a Gypsy,” the creature said. “Sarishan, Romani chi.”

Lorio shook her head, unable to accept what she was hearing. “The blood’s awfully thin,” she said finally. “And I don’t speak Romany.”

Though she knew it to hear it and remembered the odd word. The last person to speak it in her presence had been her uncle Palko, but that was a long time ago now.

“You are strangely garbed,” the creature said, “but I know a Gypsy when I see one.”

Strangely garbed? Well, it all depended, Lorio thought.

Her long curly hair was dyed a black too deep to be natural and grew from a threeinch swatch down the center of her head. Light brown stubble grew on either side of the mohawk where the sides of her head had been shaved. She wore a brown leather bomber’s jacket over a bright red and black Forties dress, net stockings, and her running shoes. A strand of plastic pearls hung around her neck.

Six earrings, from a rhinestone stud to threaded beads, hung from her right ear. In her left lobe was a stud in the shape of an Anarchy symbol.

“My mother was a Gypsy,” she said, “but my father—”

She shook her head. What was she doing? Arguing with a ragged bundle of orange fur did not make much bloody sense.

“Your people know the roads,” the creature said. “The roads ofthis world and those roads beyond that bind the balance. You ... you can help me. Take my place. The hound caught me before—before I could complete my journey. The boundaries grow thin ... frail. You must—’’

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lorio said. “God, I don’t even know what you are.”

“My name is Elderee and this time Mahail’s hound did its job too well. It will be back ... once it scents my weakness ....” He coughed and Lorio stared at the blood speckling the handlike paw that went up to his mouth.

“Look, you shouldn’t be talking. You need a doctor.”

Right. Maybe a vet would be more like it. She started to take off her jacket to lay it over him, but Elderee reached out and touched her arm.

“You need only walk it,” he said. “That’s all it takes. Walk it with intent. An old straight track ...

there for those who know to see it. Like a Gypsy road—un Romano drom. It will take you home.”