Greenmantle by Charles De Lint Page B

Paul Horn’s Inside , only this wasn’t the sound of a flute. Too breathy. It didn’t even sound real in a way….
    She leaned back against the couch herself, feeling a little woozy. When she closed her eyes, sparks danced in her vision. She’d never had much tolerance for alcohol, but the high she was feeling now didn’t seem related to what she’d consumed. It was like doing mushrooms, she thought, surprised herself at how clearly she could remember that sensation since her days of psychedelia had been a good sixteen, seventeen years ago. Mescaline. MDA—though its rushes had been stronger than what she was feeling now. This was lighter, a floating sensation, just like—
    The cassette machine suddenly clicked off at the end of the tape and she sat up, startled. She reached for her wine glass, then thought better of it. Her head was still buzzing.
    “That’s some recording,” Valenti said softly.
    “You’ve heard it before, haven’t you?” Ali asked. “Not this tape, but the music.”
    “Sure. Lots of times.”
    “Where’s it coming from?”
    Valenti made a motion with his hand. “Back there, in the bush somewhere. I mostly hear it in the spring or summer, so I figure it’s got to be a cottager who’s got himself some kind of flute. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
    Ali shook her head. “No, it’s not just pretty. It’s magical. There’s something…otherworldly about it. Something really spacey.”
    Frankie found herself nodding, then studied her daughter. Had Ali started experimenting with drugs? God, she hoped not.
    “Well, yeah,” Valenti said. “It’s different, sure. But I don’t know about magic.” Still, thoughts of the strange girl who’d dropped out of a tree to sit beside him earlier in the week rose to the top of his mind. The eyes in that thin face—they’d just grabbed him and made him sit still in his place until they were ready to let him go. And then the stag…and the way the music made him feel…Maybe he didn’t know about magic, but he knew about weird.
    “Don’t you feel something inside you when you hear it?” Ali asked.
    Valenti shrugged. “I suppose…”
    “Maybe we should be going,” Frankie said. “It’s getting on to ten-thirty.”
    Ali looked from her mother to Valenti, then nodded. “Okay,” she said without much enthusiasm.
    “We’ll talk about it some more—next time you come up,” Valenti said.
    That made Ali feel better. When Valenti took the cassette from the machine and went to give it to her, she shook her head.
    “No. You can keep it for a while if you want.”
    Valenti smiled, a curious look touching his eyes for a moment. “That’s great,” he said. “Listen, do you want some company going down the road…?”
    “Maybe halfway,” Frankie said. “Just so’s the boogieman doesn’t nab us.”
    “Okay,” Valenti said. “I’ll just change my coat.”
     
    * * *
     
    “Ali?”
    Frankie stood in the doorway to her daughter’s room and looked in. Ali was sitting on her bed wearing the long T-shirt that passed for a nightie in the summer months. She looked up at her mother’s voice.
    “Hi, Mom. What’s up?”
    “I was just wondering. This business with the tape…?”
    “Well, I know you didn’t hear the music the night I saw the deer in the backyard. When I heard it again last night, I taped it. I wanted to see if you and Tony’d feel the same kinds of things I did when I heard it. You see—you’re going to think I’m crazy—but there’s something secret about that music, only I don’t know what it is.” Her shoulders lifted and fell. “It just makes me feel, oh, I don’t know. Alive, I guess. Am I making sense?”
    “I suppose,” Frankie said. She was about to go to her own room, when she paused. “You haven’t been trying drugs at all, have you? You know, marijuana or…?”
    Ali shook her head. “Come on , Mom. I might hear weird things in music, but I’m not that dumb.”
    Not like I was, Frankie