Read Online Greenmantle by Charles De Lint - Free Book Online

thought.
    She remembered hearing Ali’s voice in the room. Ali scolding someone. The stag? Oh, please God, this had to be a dream. Let me wake up. The scurrying of whatever was in the attic grew louder, as though the rats or squirrels—if that was what they were, if they weren’t little stick men—were dancing. Panic reared in Frankie, a sheer terror that dwarfed any fear she’d had before. It took shape as a name that rose from deep in her chest and came out as a wail.
    “Alllliiiii!”
     
    * * *
     
    When she heard her mother scream Ali’s fear fled. She looked away from the yellow square of her bedroom window back toward the stag, only to find the lawn empty. She was out here by herself. But where…? She heard her mother cry out again and bolted for the house.
     
    * * *
     
    Valenti blinked. One moment the creature was there on the lawn, towering over Ali, the next it was gone and Ali was tearing across the lawn back to the house. He turned back to his own unwanted companion only to find that he, too, was now alone.
    The piping had stopped. But he heard something else. It sounded like the baying of hounds. Then he saw that the stag wasn’t quite gone. It was by the corner of the house, moving in long, springing bounds toward the road and the forest beyond it. It wasn’t gone for more than a couple of moments before a half-dozen loping shapes appeared, obviously in pursuit.
    They were dogs—big ones, Valenti thought. Then his eyesight betrayed him again. For an instant he thought he saw, not dogs, but men pursuing the stag, men in the habits of monks, or the robes of priests. He blinked and they were just dogs again, lost to his sight as they disappeared into the forest after the stag.
    Valenti wiped his brow with the sleeve of his jacket. Fercrissakes, he thought. What was going on here? He had to be going crazy. He looked up to where the girl with the slanty eyes had dropped from the lower branches of the tree, then down to where she’d crouched beside him.
    Had there been anyone there at all? The music, the stag, the girl… Slowly, he got to his feet and shook his head. He felt like he’d just broken a long fever. Looking at Ali’s house, he wondered if he should knock at the door to see if they were all right. He seemed to remember a scream….
     
    * * *
     
    A dream, Frankie thought with relief as she woke abruptly on the couch. Her own cries had roused her and it had all been a dream. She sat up and looked around herself. The stag in Ali’s room, the little twig men or squirrels, or whatever they’d been, scurrying around in the attic… She swung her feet to the floor just as Ali burst into the living room.
    “Mom!” Ali cried, then slowed to an undignified halt. “Mom…?”
    “I’m all right,” Frankie said. “I was just dreaming.”
    “It wasn’t about…?”
    “It wasn’t about you,” Frankie assured her. “Or at least not exactly. C’mere and give your mother a hug.”
    Ali plonked herself down beside Frankie and gave her the hug. “Boy, you really missed something,” she said. “There was this deer out in the backyard with horns—”
    “Antlers,” Frankie corrected automatically.
    “Whatever. But you should have seen it. It was huge !”
    “I did see it.”
    “But you said…”
    Frankie laughed. “I know. I said I was dreaming. And what I was dreaming was that you had this great big deer stashed away in your bedroom. I heard it moving around and when I opened the door to your room it was staring me right in the face.”
    “Is that ever weird,” Ali said.
    “You’re telling me, kiddo. Synchronicity and all that.”
    “Did you hear any music at all?”
    “Music? What kind of music?”
    “Sort of like on your Georges Zamphir record—you know, panpipes? Only without the orchestra and not so smooth. More…primal.”
    Frankie’s eyebrows lifted. “Primal?”
    Ali laughed. “No, really. I heard it up in my room and went out to the backyard to see if I could tell