A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [82]
“Then why did you come here?” I resisted the urge to get down on the ground and roll with him. He had horse hide beneath his velvet knickers and jacket. He wouldn’t chill in the November mist. I would.
“ ’Tis a mission I had,” he replied and wriggled some more before bounding to his feet and tossing his mane again.
“You appear to a person to let them know that death stalks them. A warning so they can prepare their estate and their soul,” I recited the phrases from a legend read long ago.
“Yes!”
“Who were you supposed to appear to?”
He turned his back on me and studied the grass as if choosing the right morsel to graze upon.
“Who?” I had to know. “Is it me?”
“No, no, not your lovely self, Warrior of the Celestial Blade.” He looked ashamed that I had misinterpreted his mission.
I set the tambourine on a park bench.
“Holly?” I barely dared breathe. If Holly died, a huge gaping hole would be left behind, in my life, in the lives of her fans, in the world of music. I had to get back and warn her.
“Not Holly. I be wishing her long life and much music. ’Tis a gift to humanity she is.”
“Then who?” I thought back to news headlines of the past few weeks. Had someone significant died recently?
“I was supposed to appear to a peace activist and grand writer of the philosophical in Ireland.” He grew quiet again. “He has been instrumental in bringing an end to the violence. He deserved a warning.”
“You were supposed to appear to him?”
“I got lost. He still lives. The assassin’s bullet went astray, harming no one. I’m right glad he still lives. Ireland needs him.”
“How does a Pookah get lost?”
Even in the dim light I could tell he blushed.
“You are a Warrior; you know of the Chat Room?”
“I call it Purgatory, but yes, I’ve made incursions into the great white nothingness between dimensions.”
“Then you know how many of the doorways be looking alike. You know how easy it is the wrong one to be choosing, or to misjudge the time when you step through.”
“I usually have an imp who takes care of that.”
He looked up hopefully. “Your imp could take me home. Or set me on the right course.”
“Scrap isn’t here right now. What were you thinking about when you stepped through the portal to Earth?”
“Twas a jig I was humming.”
“One of Holly’s jigs.”
“Aye. And the portal took me right to her. I was so hungry I began drinking in the music and the laughter, and the next thing I knew I be dancing and enjoying me freedom from my mission. I’d forgotten how to celebrate life until I found Holly. And doesn’t too much of me life revolve around Death?”
“I know the feeling.”
We stared in silence at the river for a time.
“I can’t go home or complete my mission.”
“But you have! You were sent to warn a person that death stalked them. Death does stalk the young man in the hospital.”
“But I was sent to the peace man.”
“A man who needs to live.”
“I hope the young man in hospital lives.”
“Sometimes people outsmart death.”
“Yes! You have, many times.”
“How do you know that?”
He smiled knowingly and dipped his head, letting his mane fall forward. “Death and me be linked like old drinking mates, half loving and half hating each other.”
“I think I know how to help you. You need to go home to be available for your next mission. How do you know where to go and when to go?”
He shrugged and tossed his head in that horsey way of his. “I walk beneath the moonlight and the knowledge comes to me like a mist filling the holes in me feeble brain. At dawn, ’twixt day and night, when neither sun nor moon rules the sky, I step between worlds through the mists of time and place. ’Tis a mercy I be giving, so that Death does not take people all unawares, so they have time to prepare.”
“Or figure out a way to cheat Death.” We both grinned. “You need to go home. I need to know your name to send you there.”
“Isn’t there some other way?”
“Not unless we wait for Scrap to return, and I don’t know how long that will be. Please. Just tell me your name. I won’t tell anyone. I promise. I’m Tess by the way.” I held out my hand to him.
He stared at