Free Newford Stories by Charles De Lint Page A

would draw another’s soul, but I’ve withdrawn
from the world…”
    “And?” Meran prompted him.
    “I went into my own mind. I lived in my
memories. I didn’t remember . I lived in them.”
    “So if we knew who he was,” Cerin said.
“Then perhaps we could—”
    “We don’t need to know who he is,” Meran
broke in. “All we need to know is what he was thinking.”
    “Would the proverbial life flashing before
one’s eyes be relevant here?” the professor asked. “Because that
could touch on anything.”
    “We need something more specific,” Cerin
said.
    Meran nodded. “Such as…where the crow girls
found him. Wouldn’t he be thinking of his surroundings at some
point?”
    “It’s still a one-way door,” Cerin pointed
out.
    “But if we can open it even a crack…” Lucius
said.
    Cerin smiled. “Then maybe we can pull them
out before it closes on us again.”
    “We can do that,” Maida said.
    Zia nodded. “We’re very good at opening
things.”
    “Even better when there’s sweets
inside.”
    Zia rapped on the man’s head with a
knuckle.
    “Hello, hello in there,” she said. “Can you
hear me?”
    “Zia!” Lucius said.
    “Well, how else am I supposed to get his
attention?”
    “Hold on,” Meran said. “Perhaps we’re going
about this all wrong. Instead of concentrating on the door he is,
we should be concentrating on the door Jilly is.”
    “Oh, good idea,” Maida said.
    The crow girls immediately turned their
attention to Jilly. They leaned close, one on either side, and
began whispering in her ears.
     
    - 7 -
     
    “So I guess this is sort of like a
recording,” Jilly said, “except instead of being on pause, we’re in
a tape loop.”
    Which was why the traffic noise she heard
was so repetitive. Being part of his memory, it, too, was in a
loop.
    “You have such an interesting way of looking
at things,” the buffalo man said.
    “No, humour me in this. We’re in a loop of
your memory, right? Well, what’s to stop you from thinking of
something else? Or concentrating and getting us past the loop?”
    “To what purpose?”
    “To whatever comes next.”
    “We know what comes next,” he said.
    “No. You assume we do. The last thing
you seem to remember is lying here in this alleyway. You must have
passed out at that point, which is the loop we’re in. Except I
showed up and you’re conscious and we’ve been talking—none of this
is memory. We’re already somewhere else than your memory. So what’s
to stop you from taking us further?”
    “I have no memory beyond the point where I
closed my eyes.”
    But Jilly was on a roll.
    “Of course not,” she said. “So we’ll have to
use our imaginations.”
    “And imagine what?”
    “Well, crows would be good for starters. The
crow girls would have been flying above, and then they noticed you
and…” She paused, cocking her head. “Listen. Can you hear
that?”
    At first he shook his head, but then his
gaze lifted and the strip of sky above the alley went dark with
crows. A cloud of them blocked the sun, circling just above the
rooftops and filling the air with their raucous cries.
    “Wow,” Jilly said. “You’ve got a great
imagination.”
    “This isn’t my doing,” he said.
    They watched as two of the birds left the
flock and came spiraling down on their black wings. Just before
they reached the pavement, they changed into a pair of girls with
spiky black hair and big grins.
    “Hello, hello!” they cried.
    “Hello, yourselves,” Jilly said.
    She couldn’t help but grin back at them.
    “We’ve come to take you home,” one of them
said.
    “You can’t say no.”
    “Everyone will think it’s our fault if you
don’t come.”
    “And then we won’t get any sweets.”
    “Not that we’re doing this for sweets.”
    “No, we’re just very kindhearted girls, we
are.”
    “Ask anyone.”
    “Except for Raven.”
    They were tugging on her hands now, each
holding one of hers with two of their