Free Spirits in the Wires by Charles De Lint

wrote that you were in.”
    Maxie laughed. “Sure. He was saying, ‘Look at me. I’m pathetic and I can’t write a word, but that’s not going to stop me from being published.’ Though he didn’t say it in so few words.” She grinned at me. “He didn’t have to. All you had to do was try to read it.”
    â€œThat’s a little harsh.”
    â€œYou
did
read it, right?”
    â€œYeah. But I’m sure he must have been trying to do something good. There must have been something in what he was writing that meant a lot to him if he’d spend all that time writing it and then self-publishing it.”
    â€œYou wish.”
    â€œCome on, Maxie. At least allow that he gave it his best shot.”
    â€œDid he?” Maxie said. “And don’t get me wrong. I’ve nothing against self-published books, so it’s not because of that. I just don’t like crap.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œAnd I guess it particularly ticks me off because
that’s
the story I got born in. It couldn’t be a good book. Oh, no. I had to get born in the literary equivalent of an outhouse.”
    â€œBut he made you,” I said. “You were good in the story. And you’re still here, so there must have been something in what he was doing.”
    Maxie shook her head. “The only reason I’m here is because I’m tenacious and I was damned if I was going to fade away just because I had the bad luck to be born on the pages of some no-talent’s story. I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t discovered I have a gift for teaching shadows. But I would have done something.”
    Some days I really feel bad for the Eadar. It must be so hard to be at the whim of someone else’s muse.

    I also asked Christy about Wunschmann.
    â€œI still have that?” he said when I showed him the chapbook. “I thought I’d thrown it out years ago.”
    â€œDid you know him?”
    â€œUnfortunately. He was this little pissant who was in some of the classes I was taking when I was in Butler U.—always talking, full of big ideas and pronouncements, super critical of everybody. But that little chap-book’s all he ever produced. I remember he used to really be down on me and anyone else who was actually getting stories published.”
    â€œSo you didn’t like him.”
    Christy laughed. “No. Not much.”
    â€œAnd the story?”
    â€œWell, I liked this one character—Mixie, Marsha … ?”
    â€œMaxieRose.”
    He nodded. “Yeah. She deserved a better writer to tell her story.”
    â€œMaybe,” I said. “Or maybe she figured out a way to do it herself.”
    He gave me a funny look, but I didn’t elaborate.
    Mumbo’s was a sweeter story. Or perhaps I should say it was bittersweet. It was certainly better written.
    The only edition was a little hardcover children’s picture book called
The Midnight Toyroom
that I found in the Crowsea Public Library. The author was a man named Thomas Brigley. The watercolours, done in that turn-of-the-century style of children’s book illustrators like Rackham or Dulac, were by Mary Lamb.
    The book was published in Newford in the late nineteen-twenties to some local success but never really made much of a mark outside of the city. I looked Brigley up in a biographical dictionary, but he didn’t even get a mention. I did find him in
The Butler University Guide to Literature in Newford,
where he got a fairly lengthy entry. He was a life-long bachelor who worked for a printing company, writing and publishing his books in his spare time, which I guess he had a lot of. Of the thirty-seven books that were published under his by-line, only one was for adults—a nonfiction history of the tram system called
Cobblestone Jack,
named after a fictional conductor he had telling the history.
    Mary Lamb, his collaborator on all the