Stepovich looked at Ed, who shrugged. The Caddy rolled on quiet as the wings of an owl through the night, through the night.

I touch your hand. your brow, your lip;

Hidden by the green,

Emerging to a weeping bush

And laughing tambourine.

"GYPSY DANCE"

Even after the thing tormenting the old women left, Laurie couldn't stop shaking. Her breath kept making a gulping, hiccuping noise in her throat. "This isn't real," she whispered aloud, and then, wailing, "This isn't real, none of this is real, please. God, tell me this isn't real."

The woman was very old, and her skin was a terrible color, as if someone had let all the blood out from under her once olive skin, and replaced it with milk. A skim milk in cold coffee color. She drew her skinny old legs and ruined feet up under her long skirts then felt about herself absentmindedly, as if looking for something. "None of this is real," she agreed in her cracked old voice. "And that's the worst part of it, you know. Real things end, somewhere,sometime."

"It'll end," Laurie whispered, unable to get enough air for real words. "It'll end when they kill us."

"I'm sorry, my dear," the old woman said slowly."But you're so very wrong. Why, for me. it didn't even begin until I was dead." The old woman casually examined her feet. The burns on them were black places, not red, nor swollen, nor bleeding. Black, as if the coals had been held to a wooden statue or a china doll.

"If you're dead, how can they keep hurting you?"Laurie wailed. Already she was seeing it happen to her. She clutched the fiddle case as if by holding it tightly she could hold herself together as well.

"They can do almost anything to me," said the old woman. She looked around the room, a sly look creeping over her face as she did so. "Almost anything they can do to me. But they must keep me here. And while they keep me here, there is much I can do to them." Once more she looked around carefully."Come here, child." she said.

Laurie's legs quaked under her as she crossed the room. The closer she got, the more she knew the old woman was dead. There wasn't an odor, but there was something she smelled with her skin, not her nose; when Laurie finally crouched down beside her,she knew that, while the old woman was dead, this was not her dead body. Rather it was as if the old woman was inside a mannequin, cunning as any trap.A body the Fair Lady had fashioned-one She could hurt endlessly. Laurie shivered.

The old woman looked at her shrewdly. "You've the Eye to you, then. It seldom comes to much, in one such as you, but it's a help to us here. It's probably what She didn't see about you at first, probably what drew the Raven closer to you than She'd planned. Yes, hug his fiddle tight, for it's all that stands between you and Her. Or, maybe not. Open the case, girl. Let's see what he's left in there for us."

Laurie hesitated, then set the case on her lap and unlatched each fastener. The case was lined with some deep green fabric, not felt, not velvet, not like anything Laurie had ever seen inside an instrument case. The bow was secured in its holder, and a storage box supported the neck of the fiddle and held it firmly in place. The old woman tapped the box wit hone arthritic finger. "In there," she whispered."Where he keeps his odds and sods. Look in there."

Laurie lifted out the fiddle and leaned it against her shoulder. The storage box had a tiny catch on it. She worked it and then eased back the lid. Inside was a worn cube of rosin, showing infinite tracks of bowstrings; white paper packets that held spare strings;smudged papers, folded up small, with musical notes on them like bird tracks; a button off a shirt; and a brush like a makeup brush. "What else, is that all? It can't be all. Look again, girl!"

"There's some lint. And a feather."

"Ah!" the old woman exclaimed with satisfaction."Pass me that here." She took the small black feather from Laurie's shaking fingers, whetted it once, twice,thrice across the amber rosin. She smiled an old smile."Now answer me a riddle, if you can. Why is the fiddler's music like the count's coach?"

Laurie stared at her. She'd stopped shaking. She was numb with terror now, still in the grasp of hopelessness.

The old woman smiled again, a hard smile. "You don't know, child? Why, they're both drawn forth by horses." She ran the edge of the rosin ed feather down the horse hair strings of the fiddle's bow. It made a breath of sound softer than a baby's whisper. "The right touch," she murmured to Laurie, "can draw them forth together." She handed the bow to Laurie and said, "Play now."

Laurie shook her head, bewildered.

The old woman smiled and said, "No, you have Wolf's blood in you, girl. You weren't made to lie down and die; not when you have the ghost of a prayer of hope. Take the fiddle and play."

Hope? Laurie had no idea what the woman was talking about, but she was holding the fiddle, and she knew that, hope or no hope, Daniel was real, and the fiddle was his. She tucked the fiddle clumsily under her chin, feeling her tears slide down her cheeks onto the wood. She hoped it wouldn't be damaged. She lifted the bow in her right hand and, with no thought to what she was doing, drew it across the strings.

FIFTEEN

How the Gypsy Called All the Animals

Old woman, tell me when to hold the sand

And when to let it spill.

Old woman, tell me when the sun's light

Will touch my window sill.

Old woman, tell me if it's me

Or those around me who are ill.

Old woman, promise me

That I will never have to kill.

"BLACKENED PAGE"

Csucskari cradled his brother as gently as if he were holding a bird, but the solidity of him in his arms was a comfort. He studied his brother's face as he bore him through the streets. Years walked lightly on the brothers, but it had been so long since he had seen Raymond that the tracks of time were plain to Csucskari. Bagoly had begun to grow a beard, and the street lights found red highlights in it. The depressions in his temples were accented by his hair,brushed sharply back. His brows were even more full than Csucskari remembered.

Bagoly. Bagoly, he sang silently. Jojjon velem, repulhazafele, O Bagoly, come with me, fly home, he said.Csucskari walked as he sang, his eyes all but closed.Feelings he had thought banished into the cold well of his past, never to be found again save for the distant splash as a sensation brushed him, now rose like mist. It was a tingling of old power, as when a limb that has gone numb stirs back to life, all pins and needles. It came to him, and flowed from him easily and naturally into his brother, as easily as he might put his mouth to the Owl's lips and breathe his own breath into his brother's lungs. Bagoly, Bagoly, jojjon velem, he sang silently. From a vast distance, his brother responded.

People passed them on the street, stepping off the sidewalk to avoid his lolling burden. Later, Csucskari could not recall if they had any other reaction to him; his only thought was to get to Madam Moria's rooms and to do whatever he must to bring his brother back.

As he maneuvered Bagoly through the narrow door of Madam Moria's building. Owl's eyelids suddenly squeezed tight, making lines in his weathered face.Slowly they opened to slits, and then sagged shut again. As he carried Bagoly up the creaking stairs, he felt a shudder move through his brother's body. And as Madam Moria unlocked her door he began to shiver.