Free Widdershins by Charles de de Lint Page A

were on the table in front of her, a plate with a few crumbs left on it and the inevitable pot of tea.
    “Hey,” Lizzie said, taking the seat opposite her.
    Siobhan looked up and smiled. “Hey, yourself. How’d you sleep?”
    “Deeply, though I didn’t get enough.”
    “That’s what you get for playing the night bird. I have to say I was kind of surprised to find you here this morning.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, the last time I saw you, you were getting in your car and driving back to the city.”
    “I didn’t spend the night here?”
    “You weren’t in the room at three, which is when I turned off the light.”
    Lizzie buried her face in her hands. “Oh, god. I was so sure it had been a dream.”
    Siobhan set down her book and took off her glasses, laying them down on top of the paperback.
    “What are you talking about?” she asked.
    Lizzie lifted her face from her hands. “You wouldn’t believe me in a million years.”
    Siobhan’s eyebrows rose. “Now you have to tell me.”
    “I don’t even know where to begin.”
    “Start at the beginning. Where did you go last night if you weren’t going back to the city?”
    “I was going back. But the car broke down in the middle of nowhere and then . . .”
    Lizzie went on to relate what had happened, from the arrival of the bogans through to her meeting with Walker, the tall man with the deer’s head that wasn’t a mask. She paused only when the waitress came by to take her order, finishing up before the arrival of her coffee and toast.
    “Well, say something,” she said when she was done and Siobhan just sat there across the table from her.
    “I don’t know what to say.”
    “You think I’m nuts.”
    “No. I think you think all of that happened. But . . .”
    “It couldn’t possibly have,” Lizzie finished for her when her cousin’s voice trailed off.
    “Well, it does sound like one of Pappy’s fairy tales.”
    Lizzie nodded. Their grandfather knew hundreds of them. When she and Siobhan were small, they would sit by his knee and listen to him for hours. And even later, when they’d outgrown the stories and were learning tunes from him, he’d find a way to bring stories of his wee folk—who weren’t all that “wee” most of the time—into the origins of some of the tunes he taught them.
    “Could you have fallen asleep in the car?” Siobhan asked.
    “And dreamed it all?”
    Her cousin nodded.
    “I suppose. Only how did I get back? It was totally dead until Grey fixed it.”
    “Unless you woke up half-asleep and gave it another try, and this time it did start.”
    “I suppose. But the battery was completely drained because the alternator’s shot. Even if I could have gotten it started, it would have died on me again.”
    “Unless the alternator’s not the problem. Where did you leave the car?”
    “At that garage he recommended.”
    Lizzie sighed. She’d mechanically added sugar and cream to her coffee while they were talking and had a sip of it now. Like everything else in the cafe, it was absolutely wonderful.
    “I hate feeling like this,” she added.
    “If you were just dreaming,” Siobhan told her, “you’re not crazy. I’ve had tons of dreams that seemed so real, even after I woke up.”
    Lizzie nodded. She’d had them herself. Like buying some great new album only to find when she woke that it didn’t even exist.
    “I guess I need to go to the garage,” she said, “and see what’s happening with my car.”
    “I’ll come with you.”
    “Thanks. Just let me finish this.”
     
    “So where are the boys?” Lizzie asked later, after they’d fetched their jackets from the room.
    They were walking along Sweetwater’s main street, making for the garage on the edge of the village where Lizzie had left her car last night. There were no sidewalks, but there wasn’t much traffic. Lizzie had heard that there was a good farmer’s market on the other side of the village, so maybe that was where you’d