One was a pig that could see the wind and follow it anywhere. She was pink and fastidiously clean, big enough to ride to market—which Long sometimes did—and she could talk. Not pigtalk, or even pigLatin, but plain English that anyone could understand if they took the time to listen. Her name changed from telling to telling, but by the time Long’s story appeared in the book either she or Christy had settled on Brigwin.
Long’s other enchantment was a piece of plain string with four complicated elfknots tied in it—one to call up a wind from each of the four quarters. North and south. East and west. When he untied a knot, that wind would rise up and he’d ride Brigwin in its wake, sifting through the debris and pickings left behind for treasures or charms, though what Long considered a treasure, another might throw out, and what he might consider a charm, another might see as only an old button or a bit of tangled wool. He had a good business trading his findings to woodwives and witches and the like that he met at the market when midnight was past and gone, ordinary folk were in bed, and the beach towns belonged to those who hid by day, but walked the streets by night.
Ellen carried a piece of string in her pocket, with four complicated knots tied into it, but no matter how often she undid one, she still had to wait for her winds like anyone else. She knew that strings to catch and call up the wind were only real in stories, but she liked thinking that maybe, just once, a bit of magic could tiptoe out of a tale and step into the real world. Until that happened, she had to be content with what writers like Christy put to paper.
He called them mythistories, those odd little tales of his. They were the ghosts of fancies that he would track down from time to time and trap on paper. Oddities. Some charming, some grotesque. All of them enchanting. Foolishness, he liked to say, offered from one fool to others.
Ellen smiled. Oh, yes. But when the wind is right ...
She’d never talked to Christy about the Balloon Men, but she didn’t doubt that he knew them.
Leaning over the rail of the balcony, two stories above the walkway that ran the length of the beach, Christy’s book held tight in one hand, she wished very hard to see those rolypoly figures one more time.
The ocean beat its rhythm against the sand. A light breeze caught at her hair and twisted it into her face.
When the wind is right.
Something fluttered inside her, like wings unfolding, readying for flight. Rising from her chair, she set the book down on its wicker arm and went inside. Down the stairs and out the front door. She could feel a thrumming between her ears that had to be excitement moving blood more quickly through her veins, though it could have been the echo of a halflost memory—a singing of small deep voices, rising up from diaphragms nestled in fat little bellies.
Perhaps the wind
Perhaps only memories. Perhaps a fancy that Christy hadn’t trapped on a page yet.
There was only one way to find out.
Peregrin Laurie was as sharpfaced as a weasel—a narrowshoul-dered thin whip of a teenager in jeans and a torn Tshirt. He sat in a doorway, knees up by his chin, a mane of spiked multicolored hair standing straight up from his head in a twoinch Mohawk swath that ran down to the nape of his neck like a lizard’s crest fringes. Wrapping his arms around bruised ribs, he held back tears as each breath he took made his chest burn.
Goddamn beach bums. The bastards had just about killed him and he had no one to blame but himself. Scuffing through a parking lot, he should have taken off when the car pulled up. But no. He had to be the poseur and hold his ground, giving them a long cool look as they came piling drunkenly out of the car. By the time he realized just how many of them there were and what they had planned for him, it was too late to run. He’d had to stand there then, heart hammering in his chest, and hope bravado’d see him through, because there was no way he could handle them all.
They didn’t stop to chat. They just laid into him. He got a few licks in, but he knew it was hopeless.
By the time he hit the pavement, all he could do was curl up into a tight ball and take their drunken kicks, cursing them with each fiery gasp of air he dragged into his lungs.
The booger waited until he was down and hurting before making its appearance. It came out from under the pier that ran by the parking lot, black and greasy, with hot eyes and a mouthful of barracuda teeth. If it hadn’t hurt so much just to breathe, he would have laughed at the way his attackers backed away from the creature, eyes bulging as they rushed to their car. They took off, tires squeal—
ing, but not before the booger took a chunk of metal out of the rear fender with one swipe of a paw.
It came back to look at him—black nightmare head snuffling at him as he lifted his head and wiped the blood from his face, then moving away as he reached out a hand towards it. It smelled like a sewer and looked worse, a squat creature that had to have been scraped out of some monstrous nose, with eyes like hot coals in a smear of a face and a slick wet look to its skin. A booger, plain and simple. Only it was alive, clawed and toothed. Following him around ever since he’d run away ....
His parents were both burnouts from the sixties. They lived in West Hollywood and got more embarrassing the older he became. Take his name. Laurie was bad enough, but Peregrin ... Lifted straight out of that
His old man still had hair down to his ass. He wore wireframed glasses and listened to shit on the stereo that sounded as burnedout as he looked. The old lady wasn’t much better. Putting on weight like a whale, hair a frizzy brown, as long as the old man’s, but usually hanging in a braid. Coming home late some nights, the whole house’d have the sweet smell of weed mixed with incense and they’d give him these goofy looks and talk about getting in touch with the cosmos and other spacey shit. When anybody came down on him for the way he looked, or for dropping out of school, all they said was let him do his own thing.
His own thing. Jesus. Give me a break. With that kind of crap to look forward to at home, who wouldn’t take off first chance they got? Though wouldn’t you know it, no sooner did he get free of them than the booger latched onto him, following him around, skulking in the shadows.
At first, Reece never got much of a look at the thing—just glimpses out of the corner of his eyes—and that was more than enough. But sleeping on the beaches and in parks, some nights he’d wake with that sewer smell in his nostrils and catch something slipping out of sight, a dark wet shadow moving close to the ground. After a few weeks, it started to get bolder, sitting on its haunches a halfdozen yards from wherever he was bedding down, the hot coal eyes fixed on him.
Reece didn’t know what it was or what it wanted. Was it looking out for him, or saving him up for its supper? Sometimes he thought, what with all the drugs his parents had done back in the sixties—good times for them, shit for him because he’d been born and that was when his troubles had started—he was sure that all those chemicals had fucked up his genes. Twisted something in his head so that he imagined he had this twofoot high, walking, grunting booger following him around.
Like the old man’d say. Bummer.
Sucker sure seemed real, though.
Reece held his hurt to himself, ignoring Ellen as she approached. When she stopped in front of him, he gave her a scowl.
“Are you okay?” she asked, leaning closer to look at him.
He gave her a withering glance. The long hair and jeans, flowered blouse. Just what he needed.
Another sixties burnout.
“Why don’t you just fuck off and die?” he said.
But Ellen looked past the tough pose to see the blood on his shirt, the bruising on his face that the shadows halfhid, the hurt he was trying so hard to pretend wasn’t there.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
“What’s it to you?”
Ignoring his scowl, she bent down and started to help him to his feet.
