Free Sympathy for the Devil by Tim Pratt; Kelly Link Page B

his chest and looked out across the fields, gaze tracking the slow circle of a hawk in the distance.
    "Lord, but it's peaceful out here," he said. "I could listen to this quiet forever."
    "I know what you mean," Staley said. "I love to travel, but there's nowhere else I could call home."
    William wasn't as content. As soon as he got out of the car, a half-dozen deerflies dive-bombed him, buzzing round and round his head. He waved them off, but all his frantic movement did was make them more frenzied.
    "What's the matter with these things?" he asked.
    "Stop egging them on--all it does is aggravate them."
    "Yeah, right. How come they aren't in your face?"
    "I've got an arrangement with them," Staley told him.
    They weren't bothering Robert either. He gave the ones troubling William a baleful stare.
    "'Preciate it if you'd leave him alone," he told them.
    They gave a last angry buzz around William's head, then zoomed off down the road, flying like a fighter squadron in perfect formation. William followed their retreat before turning back to his companions.
    "Nice to see some useful hoodoo for a change," he said.
    Robert grinned. "It's all useful--depending on which side of the spell you're standing. But that wasn't hoodoo so much as politeness. Me asking, them deciding to do what I asked."
    "Uh-huh."
    Robert ignored him. "So where's this trailer of yours?" he asked Staley.
    "Back in the woods--over yonder."
    She led them through the raspberry bushes and into the field. Robert started up playing again and for the first time since they'd met, Staley got the itch to join him on her fiddle. She understood this music he was playing. It talked about the dirt and crushed stone on the county road, the sun warm on the fields, the rasp of the tall grass and weeds against their clothes as they walked in single file towards the trees. Under the hemlocks, the music became all bass and treble, roots and high boughs, the midrange set aside. But only temporarily.
    When they reached the bottle tree, Staley glanced back. William gave the hanging bottles a puzzled look, but Robert nodded in apparent approval. His bottleneck slide replied to the clink of glass from the bottle tree, a slightly discordant slur of notes pulled off the middle strings of the Gibson.
    The bluesman and Grandma would've got along just fine, she decided.
    Once they came out from under the trees, they could walk abreast on the shorter grass. Robert broke off playing when Staley gave her scarecrow a little curtsey by way of greeting.
    "How well do you know that fellow?" he asked.
    Staley smiled. "About four years--ever since I put him up."
    "The clothes were yours?"
    She nodded.
    "And you collected the wood for his limbs?"
    She nodded again. "Why are you asking all these questions?"
    "Because he's halfway alive."
    "You mean the branches sprouting?"
    "No, I mean he's got the start of an individual spirit, growing there in the straw and applewood."
    Staley regarded the scarecrow in a new light. Now that it had been pointed out, she could feel the faint pulse of life in its straw breast. Sentient life, not quite fully formed, but hidden there as surely as there'd been a boy hidden in the raggedy hare she'd lost in the city.
    "But, how... ?" she began, her voice trailing off.
    Robert turned in a slow circle, taking in the whole of the meadow. Her trailer, the vegetable garden.
    "You've played a lot of music in here," he said. "Paid a lot of attention to the rhythms of the meadow, the forest, how you and your belongings fit into it. It's got so's you've put so much hoodoo in this place I'm surprised you only ever called over those two feuding spirits."
    William nodded. "Hell, even I feel something."
    Staley did, too, except it was what she always felt when she was here.
    "I thought it was home I was feeling," she said.
    "It is," Robert said. "But you've played it up so powerful it's no wonder the devil took notice."
    Staley shot a glance at her scarecrow which made Robert